Panpepato

Our panpepato is a dense, dark, time-honored gem, its recipe, a secret whispered from the 13th century. To hold it is to hold a piece of the past—a testament to resourcefulness and the deep-seated romance of tradition. Born of peasant culinary custom, the panpepato hails from Italy: a symbol of life, it originated with little pretense, only the simple, earth-gathered combination of its ingredients, bound together for centuries by a steadfast hand. At this, its earliest stage, it is a coarse, spiced bread of fruits and nuts, the pepper of its name—panpepato translates, literally, to ‘peppered bread’—not a flourish, but a necessity, something vibrant and heat-offering, a promise of warmth in the heart of a medieval winter. Shaped to form a small, humble dome, then baked, it was sustenance for those who worked in the fields during the period of the ‘mietitura,’ its makings a chronicle of the harvest year by year—figs, crack-skinned and jam-like, perhaps, or the last of the season’s grapes