Pane di Genzano (Genzano Bread)

Pane casareccio di Genzano is a soft-wheat sourdough loaf, round or long, weighing anywhere from half a kilo to two and a half kilos. Four ingredients only: type 0 flour, water, salt, and a natural sourdough starter that must make up at least ten per cent of the flour weight. It is baked directly on the floor of a wood-fired oven, on a scattering of cruschello, the fine bran left over from milling.

That bran is the whole trick. It stops the dough sticking to the oven floor, but more importantly it smoulders underneath the loaf and toasts the base almost to the point of scorching. The result is a crust of at least three millimetres, dark brown on top and darker still beneath, wrapped around a pale ivory crumb full of irregular holes.

The bread was engineered for keeping. Households in the Alban Hills baked once a week, so the loaf had to last: the heavy crust seals the crumb, still moist on day three and ideal for bruschetta by day five. In 1997 it became the first bread in Europe granted a Protected Geographical Indication.

Wheat first, then a clean, low sourness: this is a sourdough loaf, but a mild one, nothing like a San Francisco-style tang. Behind that sits a distinct toasted, almost bitter note that comes from the burnt bran on the base and reads as roasted grain rather than char.

The texture is the point. The crust cracks dryly and stays thick enough to chew; the crumb is dense, moist and slightly chewy, with none of the cottony softness of a supermarket loaf. Torn rather than sliced, it holds together in your hand.

Eaten with olive oil and salt, which is how everyone in the region eats it first, the bitterness of the crust and the fruitiness of the oil meet halfway. It is a savoury, grown-up loaf, and it stands up to strong things: aged pecorino, salted anchovies, roast pork with pepper and fennel.

By day three the sourness fades and the wheat gets rounder. Toasted, it tastes better than it did fresh, which is not something you can say about many breads.

On day one, do almost nothing to it: thick slices, good olive oil, coarse salt. This is the standard Roman way and it is the fairest test of whether you bought the real thing.

Day one is also porchetta day. In the hill towns around Genzano, Ariccia above all, the loaf exists largely to hold slow-roasted pork with pepper, garlic and wild fennel. Cut a piece the size of your hand, split it, load it with warm pork and skin, add nothing else. The crust keeps the fat off your fingers.

From day two, bruschetta. Slice a good finger and a half thick, grill or toast until the surface is marked, rub the hot crust with a raw garlic clove, pour oil over, salt. The tight crumb absorbs without going soggy, which is the specific thing a soft loaf cannot do.

From day three, put it in liquid on purpose. Roman panzanella uses a short soak and a firm hand with vinegar; pancotto is the same bread simmered with garlic and bay into a rough porridge; ribollita and pappa al pomodoro belong to Tuscany but work perfectly. Cube it, toast it and it becomes a crouton sturdy enough to sit in a bean soup for twenty minutes.

Stale and grated it makes a dark, savoury breadcrumb. Do not use it for delicate sandwiches or anything needing thin slices: the crust fights the knife and wins.

Never in the fridge and never in plastic. Between 0 and 8 °C is where starch retrogrades fastest, so a fridge stales bread in a day; a sealed bag traps the moisture leaving the crumb and softens the crust into leather. The traditional handling is a cloth: keep the loaf cut side down on a wooden board, covered with a linen cloth or in a paper bag, at room temperature. A whole loaf of this size holds its character for four to five days, and a cut one for two or three.

The staling is the point rather than the problem, and Roman cooking is organised around it. Water moves out of the crumb into the crust, so the inside firms and dries while the outside softens; the flavour concentrates and the sourness reads more clearly. By day three the loaf slices thin and holds liquid without collapsing, which is what panzanella and pancotto need. Freezing works if you cut the loaf into thick slices first, bag them and toast from frozen, and it holds a month or two. A hot oven for five minutes revives a whole loaf.

The loaf is large and round, half a kilo to two and a half, and the first thing you notice is bran: the crust is dusted with a coat of wheat bran that comes off on your hands. Under it the crust is dark, almost three millimetres thick, and it crackles audibly when squeezed. Inside, the crumb is ivory, faintly grey rather than white, distinctly moist, with irregular holes of very different sizes. It smells sour and toasted at once, and a slice bends without tearing.

Outside Lazio the genuine article is essentially unavailable, since the IGP ties baking to Genzano itself and the loaf does not travel by air in any useful state. What you are looking for in a bakery abroad is the nearest relative: a large wood fired sourdough with a bran dusted crust, made with a natural starter rather than commercial yeast, sold whole or by the half rather than sliced. Ask what the leavening is. Anything labelled Genzano abroad is a style reference, not the IGP, and priced like ordinary artisan bread at $6 to $12 a loaf.

Inside Italy, the reliable place is a bakery in Genzano di Roma itself, or a Roman market stall that takes daily deliveries: Mercato Trionfale in Prati and the Testaccio market both carry it. Ask specifically for Genzano IGP, because plenty of bread is sold as 'tipo Genzano', which means nothing at all.

Outside Italy the honest answer is that you will not find it. A loaf whose entire selling point is a fresh thick crust does not survive international logistics, and no producer exports it in any volume. What you can find, in Italian delicatessens in the US and the UK, is pane di Altamura, which travels better and does a similar job.

In the US, look for a bakery selling a large naturally leavened country loaf at moderate hydration, roughly 8 to 14 dollars for a kilo loaf. In the UK the equivalent runs 5 to 9 pounds. In Genzano itself the bread costs 3.50 to 5 euros per kilo, 5 to 7 in Rome.

When you buy it, check the base: it should be dusty with dark bran and noticeably darker than the top. A clean, pale bottom means a tin, and a tin means it is not the real loaf.

Genzano di Roma sits on the rim of the Nemi crater in the Castelli Romani, about forty minutes south of Rome. Consortium bakeries work through the night and sell from early morning along the main street. If you can time it, go on the third Sunday in June for the Infiorata, when a two-hundred-metre carpet of flower petals is laid down the steps of via Italo Belardi and the whole town is outdoors.

Ariccia, four kilometres away, is the porchetta capital of Italy and the home of the fraschette, the plain long-table taverns serving cured meats, cheese and loose wine. Genzano bread is the default there, not a choice. Nemi, on the far side of the crater, adds wild strawberries in June and a view over the lake.

Rome is an easy base: the Castelli are reachable by bus from Anagnina metro station or by regional train from Termini, and one day covers Frascati for the wine, Ariccia for the pork, Genzano for the bread and Nemi for the strawberries, twenty kilometres end to end. Inside the city, the trattorie of Testaccio and the Trionfale market stalls serve it daily.