Sardinia Bread & Pasta: Not Just Pane Carasau & Fregola

Most people have heard of the famous thin bread from Sardinia known as Pane Carasau or Carta Musica. You can find it in many places in the United States as well. This bread is the traditional flat crispy bread that one associates with Sardinia and is made from Sardinian flour, yeast and water. The dough is left to rise for half a day and then it is kneaded again and left to rise again, like Lazarus. The dough is then split into balls and rolled ou thinly. It is left to stand for several hours and then is baked.Once it rises, the bread is taken out of the oven and is cut horizontally through the middle. The new halves are baked again.

The bread can be stored for up to one year. In addition to Pane Carasau, Sardinian bakeries make Pane Pintatu which is a tad thicker and Pane Guttiatu, a bread flavored with olive oil and salt. This website gives recipes for a variety of interesting Sardinian breads.

Many pastas are also made in Sardinia. The most famous or well known is fregola made from durum wheat semolina but gnocchetti sardi and malloreddus are other pastas which shouldn’t be forgotten. Despite the fact that Sardinia is an island, the cuisine is not particularly seafood based but is more of a mountain cuisine. Traditionally, many Sardinians lived in the interior and have worked as shepards and the like, tending to a flock of sheep, hence the long tradition of pecorino cheese, roasted lamb and pork.

Getting back to pasta, Malloreddus, is a small, gnocchi-like pasta with some saffron in the dough. Traditionally it is cooked with a tomato or meat sauce. Another speciaty is their version of ravioli called culingiones, which is oval or round and stuffed with spinach and pecorino cheese. Still another dish which abounds is spaghetti with bottarga. Bottarga are dried roe of the grey mullet or Mediterranean tuna. The Sardinian version is a bit different than the Sicilian. Both are delicious but can be an acquired taste.