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BREAD  Bread making was an ancient rite that was renewed once a week. The evening before cooking, the housewife took a piece of dry yeast from the previous bread making and mixed it with flour and hot water. At the end of this first operation the housewife cut a cross in the dough with the tip of a knife and having traced the sign of the cross three times in the air with her right hand, placed the little dough in the dresser in the centre of the white flour she had sieved by hand the day before; if it was winter she made sure she also put in a warmer or “bed warmer” because the heat helped the dough to rise. When everything was ready she would go and tell the baker: "tomorrow I’m making bread!". In the country every family had an oven, while in the village there were two public wood-fired ovens: One belonged to "Pulina" and the other to "Marino de Cece." At the first light of dawn the baker started his first round through the deserted streets of the town, calling all the housewives who had “reserved”. The women jumped out of bed and began the laborious operation of kneading, which involved mixing the already fermented dough with the prepared flour and hot water. So that the yeast could penetrate the whole mixture, the housewife manipulated and repeatedly knocked down the dough. She would then wrap it in a clean white linen cloth, cover it with a woollen cloth and leave it to rise slowly in the dresser. Some hours later, the baker’s voice called out to the housewives again. They got up again and worked the dough again, which in the meantime had risen to two or three times its original size. The housewife shaped round loaves and after having blessed each one of them with the sign of the cross, she made four light cuts on the surface and cut her own personal mark in the centre to identify it as hers. Then she placed it on the "spianatora" (board) on which she had put a freshly-washed cloth cloth, taking care to fold it between one loaf and another so that when they rose they would not come into contact with one another. She used part of the same bread dough to prepare "cacciannanze", a round pizza in which small dents were made here and there on the surface using her fingers. The border was pinched at regular intervals. It was then seasoned with oil, salt, garlic and rosemary and baked on the "mouth" of the oven together with the bread, but was taken out earlier. Once the operation was finished, she spread the loaves out on the board and covered them with the woollen cloth so that with the heat the bread would reach the right rise. After about an hour she placed the board on her head and took it to the oven for baking. Once the bread had been weighed and the baker paid the small sum due to him, the housewife returned home making a great show of her fragrant produce along the town streets.
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