Spoiler alert: we’re not talking about the next evolution of brioche and ice cream, but about an actual flavor, one that’s also part of many regional specialties.
From Aosta Valley to Apulia, as a snack option or as a delicacy served by some of the best chefs in Italy, in recent years bread ice cream has become a real trend.
One of the most noteworthy moments in the history of this pairing took place at the Identità Golose convention in 2011, when Corrado Assenza of Caffè Sicilia, in Noto, one of the greatest contemporary Italian pastry chefs in the world, introduced his bread ice cream.
In preparing it – and this is where he was a true revolutionary – he began with the bread itself, which in his prototype was naturally leavened and made with stone ground flour.
Once the desired form was obtained, he used it to create the foundation of his ice cream.
The road was paved: anything became possible with bread and ice cream, also toying with the simplest or the most sophisticated pairings, depending on your creativity.
Davide Oldani rose to this challenge with his bread, purple potato, and peach ice cream. As the chef explained, the role of the bread in this case was to counter the richness of the ice cream with a touch of acidity: a sensory detail to take into account and that we’ll find in other examples as well.
Do you remember how your favorite childhood snacks tasted? Bread and chocolate or bread, butter, and jam. Someone out there tried to recreate these in an ice cream flavor and succeeded. Alessandra Mauri and Luca Butti were quite young when, in 2011, they opened their ice cream parlor in Cantù. Their philosophy was to reconcile the use of outstanding raw ingredients, from pistachios to hazelnuts to chocolate, with flavors that transport us, through memory as well. It’s no coincidence, then, that in their selection of ice creams we find not only the flavor bread, butter, and jam, but also bread and Nutella.
Black bread is, in turn, an extraordinary source of inspiration for ice cream professionals, which is fortunate because this new use has also shone a spotlight on a product that for decades has been at risk of disappearing.
Black bread is a rye bread that, thanks to its long shelf life, was once the foundation of Alpine diets. Once the dough was prepared, the bread was baked during the waning moon and preserved throughout the long winter months.
Every year in the Aosta Valley this bread is celebrated with its own festival – Lo pan ner – which brings together some of the best bakers from both sides of the border. It’s no coincidence, therefore, that in 2015 a chef from the Aosta Valley, Paola Voulaz, won an international prize for her ice cream made only from Alpine milk, sugar, and black bread. Rye bread adds a fantastic touch to ice cream, on the one hand giving it an intense toasted flavor and, on the other, a note of bitterness that contrasts pleasantly with the fattier element, thus mimicking the effect created when one spreads a pat of butter on a slice of this bread.
Black bread ice cream also brings us to another wonderful use of this pairing, which is in keeping with the promotion of traditional products.
Have you heard of Bronte pistachios or Piedmont hazelnuts?
To what extent has ice cream played a role in promoting these products? And more importantly, who says that the same thing can’t repeat itself with bread? In a way it’s already happening.
In Ferrara, for example, one can try “ciupeta” ice cream, featuring a traditional bread from Ferrara that’s made with a stiff dough and has a unique “twisted” shape, as Cristoforo da Messisbugo described it, with a hard crust and a soft crumb.
Fabbri itself, a leading manufacturer of products for ice cream parlors and pastry shops, during preparations for Expo 2015, came up with a tour of Italian breads through ice cream: the rosetta, Lariano bread, taralli, pretzels, and piadina to name just a few, which could be further customized through pairings.
Even the pane di Altamura inevitably became an ice cream and, in this version, can be enjoyed all the way down to Bari. It’s here, in fact, that the story of bread and ice cream comes full circle, with a recipe from the early 20th century that uses the same ingredients, but in reverse.
It’s not the bread that becomes an ingredient in the ice cream, but rather the latter that gets put directly in the oven. We’re talking about Baked Ice Cream, first introduced at the Fiera del Levante in the 1930s by the Bari-based pastry shop, Felice Lippolis.
In this case the essential ingredient was the pane di Altamura ice cream, used to fill the sponge cake and, after the addition of meringue, also put in the oven. A recipe that today wouldn’t make a bad impression on the menu of an upscale pastry shop.
Just another moment in the history of bread (and ice cream).
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Let’s learn about the primary leavening agents together, along with the processes that they initiate during their growth in order to turn the mixture of our ingredients into a delicious fresh baked bread!
Homemade bread is one of the simplest and most satisfying things that you can make in the kitchen, even if you’re a novice. Just a few ingredients, simple instructions, and a guaranteed result. But if it’s true that there are many different kinds of bread, then it’s also true that there is only one basic recipe.