This Lombardian ‘village cake’ is simple, delicious and endlessly adaptable
O
ld sourdough is my secret ingredient. To stop it going mouldy, I take it out of any plastic packaging and keep it in the bread bin with plenty of airflow around it – that way, it will dry out slowly, rather than turning mouldy. Any odds and ends, meanwhile, I store in a cloth bag to use in various dishes, from pangrattato (or poor man’s parmesan) to strata, a savoury bread-and-butter pudding.
My new favourite recipe discovery for using up stale bread is today’s torta paesana, or village cake, from Lombardy. The best way I can come up with to describe it is that it’s a bit like a firm baked custard.
If I still ran a cafe, this would go straight on my menu as a way to use up our stale bread, not least because it’s quite miraculous that such a thin custard made from leftover bread bakes into such a brilliant cake. At its simplest, it is utterly delicious, but the addition of a few pantry staples – nuts, spirits, raisins, chocolate chips, candied citrus, aniseed – turn it into quite the delicacy. I added rum-soaked raisins and mixed nuts, because that’s what I had to hand, but if you fancy going traditional, pine nuts and grappa-soaked raisins would be the ticket.
