A delightful recipe from Testaccio market for a pizza with substance and that must-have chewiness
Andrea is measuring flour: 12.5kg soft wheat 0, 1.5kg wholemeal and 1kg farro. He scoops it from three paper sacks into one, which is then upended and poured into the mixer in the corner of the stall. If you’d asked me last year what dry flour smells like, I might have answered “not much”. Now, having spent the last six months meeting pasta and pizza makers, I’ve learned that good, fresh flour, and especially wholemeal, smells hopeful and sappy, like fresh sawdust and a clean baby. “It smells alive,” Andrea says as he pours 10 litres of water into the mixer. The smell is especially satisfying in the cool of the market at 8am. Once the flour and water are dough, they’re left to rest for an hour and we go for coffee at the market bar.
The new Testaccio market may be bright and modern, the opposite of its old, bosky incarnation, but its spirit has remained much the same. This is both good and tricky. Good because it means it’s still the resilient, hard-working market it has always been, with a tangible sense of shared history and community between stall holders, some of whom have been there for more than 50 years, and whose families have worked stalls for almost a century. Tricky, because it means suspicion and resistance to change – which means newcomers need to be resilient and hardworking.
Continue reading...from Lifestyle | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2MaeBKE