The breadstick “Grissino Rubatà”

Once upon a time, there was a King, the first of a dynasty of Dukes, the Lords of French Savoy who, after having elected Turin as the capital of their Duchy, brought there their wives, princesses related to the Kings of France and therefore owned by the Crown, as the “Sun King” Louis XIV said. Very young and unhappy, the princesses in a foreign land, bartered for dynastic purposes and entitled mares of the European Courts, in Turin took the title of Madame Reali. Among these, the history of Turin recalls, in 1700, the Madama Reale: Maria Giovanna Battista di Savoia Nemours, neglected wife and anaffective mother of the little Duke and heir to the throne, Vittorio Amedeo II, child and sickly, inappetent and several times close to death, so much so as to inconvenience the Holy Shroud for an exhibition to its benefit. Feverish, asthmatic, and with gastric problems, he was entrusted by his mother to the chief physician Teobaldo Pecchio who, mindful of his personal juvenile disorders, identified the origin of the duke’s illness, in the poor quality of the lightly leavened bread, the crumb of which was not very cooked and rich in moisture, favored the proliferation of bacteria that caused severe intestinal disorders. At the time, the unhealthy “ghërsa”, which in the Piedmontese language means “row”, was the elongated, poorly kneaded, and poorly cooked loaf that fed all the Piedmontese population, nobles or plebeians. So the doctor and the court baker Don Teobaldo Pecchi and the baker Antonio Brunero, both originally from Lanzo, in 1679 transformed the dough of the ghersa. This pulled and thinned until reduced to a well-cooked stick with very little crumb and water, became “ghersino” from the crust crispy, and since it contained less moisture, lasted longer than common bread, did not degenerate into the mold, and was more digestible. The sickly Duke, the future king of Sicily and Sardinia, was healed and was determined towards his widowed mother, his regent devoid of maternal sense, and towards his favorites and his French advisers. He then routed the French army of Louis XIV in the epic siege of Turin in 1706, making the defeated king pronounce «the Savoy never end a war under the same flag with which they began». He redesigned Turin to bring it up to the standards of the other Royal Courts, giving it the elegant and baroque look that it still retains and finally deserved the title of “Volpe Sabauda”. He never separated from his basket of breadsticks, so much so that the vulgate claims that his ghost appears in the rooms of the Reggia di Venaria, riding his horse, wrapped in the scent of bergamot and with a breadstick in hand. The grissino, “undisputed star “and typical of the local culinary tradition, later passed from the court to the bakeries of Turin and the Langhe, prepared and sold together with the 16 different types of the bread of Piedmont. Its preparation, before being mechanized, employed four people: the Stiror (the one who lays the dough), the Tajor (the one who cuts), the Coureur (the one who inserts the ingredients), and the Gavor (the one who removes), and was prepared in its two classic variants: stretched and rubatà. The oldest rubatà has the characteristic nodosity given by the handmade rolling while the stretch is stretched and is more friable. It is often pulverized outside with corn flour to prevent the breadsticks from sticking together or to the pan during cooking and gives extra crispness. Appreciated all the way in its countless variations, today the breadstick has a dedicated day; in fact, the last Friday of October is celebrated on “Breadstick Day”. Mario Soldati noted that “despite being remade everywhere in Italy and in the world, it cannot be exported because, even only fifty kilometers from Turin, it is no longer him”. In fact, Napoleon, hasty and distracted at the table, but a greedy consumer of breadsticks had to organize a periodic courier to receive the “petits bâtons de Turin elegant et savoreux” (small sticks of Turin elegant and tasty), because the Piedmontese bakers he sent to Paris could not match those of Turin. Delicious and appetizing they conquered the courts… In spite of the label, the Savoy King Carlo Felice nibbled them, kneaded with trout pulp, among the velvets of the Teatro Regio, regardless of the annoyance that was caused by his continuous munching. King Carlo Emanuele III took them on their honeymoon, in a special container, and Maria Felicita of Savoy was painted with the inseparable breadstick and nicknamed “the princess of breadstick, while empress Maria Luisa of Austria loved them chopped in broth. The Grissino was the essential ingredient in the “supa barbeta“, originally a unique dish of Waldensian cuisine, whose preachers “barbet” from the valleys of Piedmont moved to preach throughout Europe. The breadsticks, therefore, have become an icon of Piedmont, so much so as to be placed in the “box of time” in the excavation at the foot of the obelisk erected in 1853 with the subscription promoted by the Gazzetta del Popolo, to celebrate the Siccardian Laws that limited ecclesiastical privileges. The tin box contains the list of subscribers of the monument, a copy of the Siccardian Laws, the numbers 141 and 142 of the Gazzetta del Popolo, some coins, wheat, and rice seeds, a bottle of “ordinary wine of the country” (barbera) and four pieces of bread grissino. The “law is the same for everyone” says the inscription and the breadstick moving from the courts to the oven under the house subscribes to the sacrosanct impartiality.