The history of chestnut-based bread in Lunigiana
The Land of the Moon and the Bread Tree
We are in Lunigiana, a historic region known for being "The Land of the Moon and the Bread Tree".
As this poetic expression suggests, in Lunigiana the bread tree, that is to say the chestnut, has been an ally for those who live in the area since time immemorial.
Over the centuries, in fact, its fruits and chestnut flour have fed one generation after another, both in periods of abundance and in those of war and famine, becoming a precious element of identity, a symbol for the community and today a product of excellence that distinguishes the Lunigiana area. If the chestnut is the bread tree, a chestnut-based bread that has a strong meaning in Lunigiana is the Marocca di Casola.
Marocca di Casola
But let's take a small step back. Bread, everywhere, is by definition a poor food. To make it you need just a few ingredients: flour, water and yeast. However, just add an ingredient, vary the shape, work the dough for more or less time and the results can be multiple and surprising. Across the country, Italy has countless types of traditional bread, which often tell and hand down the historical and social events of a country or even an entire region.
The Marocca di Casola was born as peasant bread, baked in common ovens in the villages of eastern Lunigiana and made with what was available at the time, namely a little wheat flour, a lot of chestnut flour, some potatoes and the precious oil. From this mix of ingredients emerged a not very malleable bread, in dialect “marocat”, capable of being preserved very well thanks to the presence of potatoes in the dough. This chestnut-based bread has represented for centuries the food base of the peasant civilization of the High Valley of the Aulella river, the border area between Lunigiana and Garfagnana, and was particularly precious during the Second World War, when Lunigiana was struck by food scarcity.
Fabio and his Forno di Canoara
With the post-war period and industrialization, Lunigiana, like many other territories of our country, was marked by a slow and inexorable abandonment of the countryside, which led to the decline of many of the precious traditions belonging to that rural world and refined over the centuries, from generation to generation. This is a destiny that would also have touched the Marocca di Casola, had it not been for the tenacity of Fabio Bertolucci.
Fabio, a young man from Lunigiana, at the age of 23 decided to leave his studies in sociology to devote himself fully to his homeland. Initially an apprentice at an old bakery with a wood-burning bakery, Fabio learned all the
secrets of the Marocca until he opened, in 2008, his own bakery in Regnano, a small hamlet in the municipality of Casola in Lunigiana.
Currently his bakery, Il Forno di Canoara, immersed in a fairytale setting between the historic passes of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines and the sharp peaks of the Apuan Alps, it is the only bakery that produces Marocca di Casola, today recognized as a Slow Presidium Food.
Used to serve crostini and gourmet appetizers on special occasions, or even just as an accompaniment to the sweet Lunigiana caciotta or traditional cured meats, the Marocca di Casola has gradually returned to the various restaurants and homes of many Lunigiana people.
More than a chestnut-based bread, the Marocca di Casola is a resistant tradition, almost lost but saved just in the end, capable of connecting us to the past and around which, we hope, many other stories of daily life will develop.
