Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

- I just got back from Rome and, of course, the menus in Rome tend to be similar, right?

Arrabbiata, amatriciana, etc.

But if you spend a little bit more time there and really seek out interesting places, you'll find surprises-- one of them is a cloud bread; it's made in a bakery near the Vatican.

And they fill that puffy bread with salad, a spaghetti with prosciutto, parmesan and peas, and then a gnocchi that's made with flour and not potatoes.

So stay tuned as we suss out what is old and what is new in Italian cooking.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - Introducing Hestan ProBond, crafted from the resilience of cold-forged stainless steel.

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- Just steps outside the Vatican, in Rome's Borgo Pio neighborhood, there's a bakery called Panificio Arrigoni.

This bakery has made bread for every pope from Pius XI all the way to Francis.

And they also bake a kind of bread unlike anything we'd ever seen in Italy.

Angelo Aragoni calls it "cloud bread."

- (speaking Italian) - (speaking Italian) - (speaking Italian) - When we set out to recreate cloud bread at Milk Street, we had a mystery to solve.

What, exactly, makes this bread hold its puffed up shape?

- (speaking Italian) - So, I have been asked to work on this really interesting cloud bread from Rome, and so I've been asked to try and replicate that in a home oven.

So there's a few challenges, but I'm getting closer.

Very excited.

Even though I'm using a really hot oven, I found that just putting the dough right on a cookie sheet didn't really puff at all.

This isn't really sticking to my hands at all, so I've added a little extra flour, but let's see if it still puffs with that much flour in it.

So this one's a little bready, and that's not really what I'm looking for.

I want something with a little more snap to it.

This one was a little too thin, so I'm kind of getting the puff on the edge, but I'm not getting enough steam in the middle to kind of lift the center of it.

This one's a little bit thicker, so we're getting a little bit more of that.

So I'm gonna try and see what can happen with that.

So I think what I'm gonna do is see if I can use some kind of baking stone or steel and what position in the oven is really gonna replicate kind of that pizza oven experience that they had in Rome.

So, we'll see what happens.

- So what is cloud bread?

I saw you make it, and it's this big puffy... - Yeah.

- It's like nothing I've ever seen.

It was invented in Rome at a bakery near the Vatican, Panificio Arrigoni.

And this guy Angelo's, who's still there, his grandfather started it in 1922, and it was sort of a happy accident that he figured out how to make this bread.

I still don't really understand why it works or how it works.

So, when we came back to Milk Street, we basically said, hey, take some pizza dough, roll it out, make it puff.

So, what worked?

What didn't work?

What did you find out?

- Well, some of the things that we found really needed to happen was the oven had to be hot enough.

That was something, if the oven wasn't hot enough, you just weren't gonna get any kind of puff.

The amount of yeast made a difference, and also the amount of water seemed to make a big difference.

- So, more hydration.

- Right.

You needed that steam to make it puff.

- So this starts as a basic bread dough?

- Yes.

Really simple ingredients: all-purpose flour, salt, yeast.

- Is this, like, just a teaspoon or half a teaspoon?

- It's a teaspoon.

And some water.

So if you want to mix that up, Chris.

The other thing I found was that, even though the dough is really wet, if you continue to knead it, it takes about eight minutes.

It comes together, and then it's not so sticky.

- So, hold on a second, I don't see a mixer here.

So, am I the mixer?

- You are the mixer.

- So you do this by hand.

- You do it by hand, yes.

- Okay.

- So, again, it's gonna seem like it's too wet, but it isn't.

You have to be committed.

I think that's what we found out.

So you don't want to add too much flour, even though it's gonna seem like you want to add more flour.

If you add too much flour, it's not gonna puff.

Like I said, some of them will be amazingly puffy, and some of them will have puff.

It's like a cloud.

Every cloud is different, right?

So... - Wow.

- Some of them... - You're getting, like, becoming an artist now.

- Right.

So this is gonna take about eight minutes to come together, and we're gonna work on that, and then we'll come back.

So, as you can see, it's come together.

So it's not gonna be completely smooth, and that's okay.

We're gonna put it in an oiled bowl and let it rise for about an hour, an hour and a half, until it doubles in size.

And about a half an hour before we're ready to use it, we're gonna turn the oven on, so we can get it nice and hot and ready for our cloud bread.

So I'm gonna cover it and let it rise.

So, this has been rising for about an hour, a little bit more.

And we're gonna divide it into four pieces, roll it into balls on a lightly floured counter.

When I was working on this, I would just roll them out and put them in the oven.

And some of those were not rising very well.

So, I found the ones that sat longer rose higher.

- Hmm.

- So letting it rest for about 15 minutes after you roll it into the balls really seemed... - But you'd do that for pizza, though, wouldn't you?

You'd cut it into four pieces, roll into balls, and let it sit... - Right.

- ...and rest, so that would be typical for pizza, too.

- Right.

- Right?

- So we're just gonna roll these into a ball, cover these with a towel and let them rise for 15 minutes.

Okay, so these have been sitting for 15 minutes.

We're gonna roll them into eight-inch rounds.

They don't have to be perfectly round.

They'll still work.

So we're gonna finish rolling these out, and then we're gonna bake them off.

So, moment of truth.

You ready?

We're gonna bake this up.

- Well, yeah, I really want to see this work because I can't process this yet.

- So, why, right?

- Yes.

- Well, one of the things we found was really critical, again, resting the dough when it was in the balls and also having something really hot in the oven, like a pizza steel, a pizza stone.

Or if you don't have that, flip over a baking sheet.

But you need something really hot for this to go on.

So that'll take about eight to ten minutes, and then we'll bake the rest of them and make the salad.

And now we wait.

- And we pray.

Those look great.

They puffed.

- They did.

- It worked!

So now they break it open and serve it with a salad inside, is that right?

- Yeah.

So it's kind of like a reinvented panzanella.

- Okay.

- So, for the dressing that we're using, we want it to have a lot of flavor.

So we've got some fresh garlic here and a couple of anchovies.

And I know you always say with the anchovies, it's not gonna make it fishy.

It's just gonna give it that extra umami.

So I'm gonna mash that up and one teaspoon of salt.

I'm gonna mash that together and make like a paste.

And I'm gonna whisk in some oil and lemon juice.

So, I'm mixing the salad.

Do you mind cutting up some fennel?

I like fresh fennel in this because it's kind of licoricey and crunchy.

A little extra crunch.

I'm gonna add a little pepper.

And then we have some sturdy bitter greens, some romaine and arugula I'm gonna toss with this dressing.

And I'm gonna add some toasted pine nuts.

And parmesan cheese.

- Okay.

- Okay.

So... do you like raw fennel?

I love it.

- I do.

I put in my salads all the time.

- The salad looks great.

So now we can plate it up.

Let's take one of the cloud breads, and it's optional to kind of brush it with a little olive oil.

- What is this, like, to make it pretty?

Or is this... - Yeah.

...to soften it or something.

- It's all about that.

So, if you don't have to do that, I do think it looks pretty.

And if you've got a really good quality olive oil, I think it adds a little extra flavor.

And then I think a little sprinkle of salt.

Okay.

So if you want to take the back of your knife and crack it open... - (groans) - I know, I know.

You can do it.

- Well, I went to all this trouble, and now we're just gonna, like, crush it with a knife?

I mean, what?

Really?

- Like this?

- Yes.

Go.

Yeah.

Go for it.

There you go.

See?

And then we're gonna put a half on each of our plates.

Break that open.

All right.

We're gonna fill it with salad.

Okay.

Some extra cheese?

- Yeah.

Salad's really good.

- I love that dressing.

I think it's really... - Yeah, the dressing's really good.

- I think it's the anchovy.

Do you care about presentation?

Once in a while I do.

I mean, this is great presentation.

If you serve this, people are gonna go like, that's, that's pretty cool.

- Right.

- But it's also simple: it's bread and salad together.

So, salad, bread, nice presentation.

What's not to like?

We love it.

- In Rome, we learn how to make pasta alla papalina, or the pope's pasta.

Our version was inspired by chef Andrea DellOmo from restaurant Mamma Angelina, who made an incredibly delicious version for us.

Pasta alla papalina is a take on the classic pasta carbonara.

It was in the early 1920s that a request came to make a more elegant version of this dish to serve to the pope.

And by more elegant, prosciutto stood in for the guanciale, and parmesan was swapped for the traditional pecorino romano.

So now, let's get started on our version of spaghetti with prosciutto, parmesan, and peas.

We'll whisk together five egg yolks, one quarter cup heavy cream, two teaspoons pepper and a cup of grated parmesan cheese.

Now we'll start cooking the spaghetti.

We'll start with a large pot and add four quarts of water.

When the water comes to a boil, we'll add a tablespoon of salt and one pound of spaghetti.

Then we'll let that cook, stirring occasionally, until the spaghetti is only al dente.

When the spaghetti's ready, first reserve one cup of the starchy pasta water.

You'll need that later to help with the sauce.

Then you drain the spaghetti.

Okay, now that the spaghetti is cooked, it's time to start making the sauce.

Now it's time to saut the onions and the prosciutto, which we'll add to the sauce later.

In a 12-inch skillet over medium heat, we'll melt three tablespoons of salted butter.

We'll add one small red onion that's been finely chopped, and we'll let that cook two to three minutes, stirring occasionally, just until the onion softens a little bit.

Next, we'll add the chopped prosciutto.

We want that to get a little crisp on the edges, so we'll cook that and stir only occasionally for about four to five minutes with the onion until the prosciutto gets slightly browned and a little bit crisp.

Then we just remove the pan from the heat and let that cool down a little bit.

We'll transfer one quarter of the prosciutto-onion mixture to a small plate because we'll use that for garnish a little bit later.

So when the spaghetti is drained, we add that back to the pasta pot, which is still nice and warm.

Now we'll transfer the rest of the prosciutto-onion mixture from the skillet right into the pot that has the pasta in it.

Then we'll add one cup of frozen peas, still frozen solid, and a quarter cup of the reserved pasta water.

We added peas at this late stage, and they were still frozen solid because we want them to retain their bright green color and not get overcooked.

Now, pasta alla papalina doesn't always have peas in it, but many versions do.

And we really love the bright pops of green and that fresh vegetable flavor it brings to the whole dish.

Then we'll just keep tossing that together over medium heat until everything's nice and hot.

While you're tossing, if the sauce looks a little dry or thick, add a little bit more of that reserved pasta water, just a tablespoon or so at a time, and that will adjust the consistency.

Right now, this one looks fantastic.

Okay, this is well heated through.

The peas are nice and hot.

We'll take this off the burner now because we are going to be adding our egg mixture, the eggs and the cheese that we mixed earlier.

And if we leave this over the hot burner, it could risk the eggs starting to cook.

All right, so we'll just give this a quick toss.

This sauce will start heating up.

The eggs will cook gently in this residual heat, and the entire sauce will thicken quite beautifully.

You also get that incredible flavor.

Okay.

The eggs and cheese are fully incorporated.

Now, if you noticed, we did not add any salt while we were making this dish, other than the pasta water, of course, because the prosciutto has a little bit of saltiness.

The parmesan that goes in with the eggs has a little bit of saltiness, as well.

So you wait until the very end to taste after it's sauced, then you can always adjust the seasoning.

Okay, we are ready to serve this.

While it's hot, of course.

All righty, get a little bit of prosciutto, a little bit of peas, of course, in every serving.

Hmm.

All right.

And then we'll top with some of our reserved prosciutto here to add a little bit of crisp texture and, of course, some extra grated parm.

Okay.

So we have a nice, creamy, rich, but lighter and more elegant spaghetti with prosciutto, parmesan, and peas.

Mmm.

Every bit as good as carbonara, but actually a little bit better.

(chuckles) - Gnocchi di farina are made with just flour, water, and salt.

Not a potato in sight.

We learned these from Antonio Cioffi on the Amalfi Coast, but they're emblematic of cucina povera in general, which is peasant cooking of Italy, where you basically spin gold from straw using what ingredients you have to make really hearty, beautiful meals.

So, to get started, you need your flour, water, and salt.

That's it.

And you need a sheet tray that you've lined with parchment that we're gonna use in a little bit, once we've made the dough.

All right, to get started, we have two cups of water boiling.

We're gonna add one teaspoon of salt, and then we're gonna add two cups of all-purpose flour.

I want to warn you that at first, it's going to look like a disaster.

It's gonna clump together, but you're just gonna keep stirring.

And what you're going to do is develop a beautiful, soft dough.

The boiling water is key to the texture we want to achieve.

We're gonna have pillowy, sort of bouncy gnocchi.

We're not gonna have anything dense.

And that's because hot water's absorbed more quickly by the flour in a process that's called gelatinization.

So the starches in the flour are swelling, and we're also inhibiting some of the gluten development.

Once your dough is uniform and fully hydrated, we're going to bring it over to a lightly floured counter.

And it's hot, so be careful.

You're sort of gonna dump it out.

We're gonna dust this with flour.

And then to protect our hands, because it's pretty hot, we're gonna use a rolling pin.

So we want to roll it into a rectangle that's about a half an inch.

That is good enough.

And just because the dough's hot, it's nice to use a bench scraper.

So this is about half an inch.

And now we're just gonna fold it into thirds, and we're gonna do the process again.

This is sort of like kneading bread.

This is going to help develop some gluten.

I mean, it's still flour, there's still gluten, and we still want structure.

We don't want our gnocchi to dissolve when we cook them.

Just by using the hot water, we develop less gluten, but we still have a nice, sturdy dough.

I'm gonna fold it in thirds again.

The dough is sort of transforming as I do this.

It went from that uneven, almost curdled-looking mess into something that's much more uniform.

And pretty soon, we're gonna just be able to knead this by hand.

But now we want to knead it for two or three minutes until it has a really smooth and supple texture.

We're not quite there, but you can see already how much smoother it is.

You can fold it over without it breaking.

Okay, we have a nice, smooth, uniform dough.

It needs to rest for a little bit, not long.

That's also an advantage of the hot water.

It's not a dough that rests for a long time.

But you do want to cover it and let it rest for about 15 minutes.

All right, it's been 15 minutes.

And now we get to do the fun part.

We get to shape our gnocchi.

So, we have our nice dough, and we're gonna divide it into, again, roughly thirds.

Just want to cover up the two pieces you're not working with so that they don't dry out.

Now we get to play with our food.

We're gonna make about an 18-inch long snake.

What's more important is that it be a uniform width so that your gnocchi are about the same size, and they cook at the same rate.

And if you have a smaller cutting board or surface to work on, just make a shorter snake.

Now, you want to use a bench scraper, and you want to make half-inch pieces.

But again, it's more important that they're uniform than they're exactly half an inch.

So now we're gonna make them into a classic gnocchi shape, but we just want to toss them in a little bit of flour so that our fork doesn't stick.

You can do something as simple as taking your fork and pressing down and getting a nice little gnocchi shape.

Then you put it on your sheet tray.

In Italy, they have gnocchi boards, and that's what we're mimicking with our forks.

The best part that happens when you use a gnocchi board is you use your thumb, and it creates a little divot in the back of your gnocchi, which is a sauce pocket, which is the best part of eating pasta.

So if you want a sauce pocket, which we all want, at home, and you don't have a gnocchi board, you take your fork, and you flip it over, and using your thumb, you drag it down the tines, and at the end, flip, and then you get your little sauce pocket.

Form all of these and line them up on your sheet, and then make the remaining two pieces of dough into snakes and form those out.

Then you boil some water, you make a quick sauce, and dinner's on the table.

All right, we're ready to cook our gnocchi.

So we have four quarts of water that's just come up to a boil.

And we're going to add a tablespoon of salt.

So I guess a secret fourth ingredient of making this gnocchi is the pasta water, because we'll definitely want to use that no matter what sauce we use at the end when we serve them.

Bring this back up to a boil.

And then we're gonna cook these in batches.

You don't want to overcrowd the pan.

They're a little bit delicate.

We're just gonna cook them until they float, and then transfer them to the sheet tray.

I'm gonna take about a third of the gnocchi.

Stir them up off the bottom gently.

Let them cook for about two minutes.

We're just gonna turn them once or twice, and they're done.

Okay, when they're really bobbing there, and they stay, then they're ready.

You want to use a slotted spoon to transfer them to a wire rack inside a sheet tray.

And they're a little bit fragile right now, but we're gonna let them sit for 15 minutes or up to an hour, and they will sort of firm up and get their final great texture during that rest.

All right, let's do our second batch.

You do want to make sure that the water's come back up to a boil.

All right, all of our gnocchi is cooked, and now we have to make the sauce for those sauce pockets, right?

We're making a simple pancetta, garlic, and parmesan sauce.

They're great with tomato sauce.

They're great with butter and parmesan cheese.

To make our pancetta sauce, we start with about a tablespoon of oil in a skillet, and then we add our diced pancetta.

We want to render the fat, and for the pancetta to get nice and crispy.

I think it's surprising nowadays to hear that pancetta and parmesan is cucina povera, which is really using what you have.

But remember that pancetta's preserved and parmesan is an aged cheese.

These are things that you can use a little bit of and you get a big impact.

So it really is cucina povera.

So we want to cook this until it's golden and crisp and most of the fat has rendered off, and it takes five or seven minutes.

All right, we have this gorgeous pancetta.

It smells wonderful.

You might use a slotted spoon to remove it to a bowl while we build the rest of the sauce.

If your pancetta has given off a lot of oil, you want to save just a tablespoon of it in the skillet and discard the rest of it.

Part of the reason that this sauce can have so much flavor is that we consider using all of the elements and not wasting any of that flavor, including the fat that the pancetta rendered.

So I don't have much oil.

I'm gonna leave it as is.

Maybe actually even add a little bit of olive oil.

And now I'm gonna add six sliced garlic cloves.

By slicing the garlic, though, we get a more mild garlic flavor in the oil.

It's more like we're perfuming the oil with that garlic flavor.

It's not going to be too aggressive like a minced garlic might be.

We want to cook this until it's golden, which is about two minutes.

All right, our garlic's getting beautifully golden brown.

I'm gonna also use a slotted spoon to transfer it to the same bowl that the pancetta is in.

We're just about two minutes from dinner.

So into this beautifully perfumed, garlicky pancetta pan, we're gonna add our gnocchi.

So, remember, they sat and they're much more firm.

You're not as worried about them breaking anymore.

To this, we're going to add some chili flakes.

A quarter teaspoon, a half teaspoon, none, it's your preference.

I'm gonna add a half teaspoon.

And now that secret fourth ingredient to our gnocchi, the pasta cooking water.

So, we want to start with just about half a cup.

And we're gonna stir as it cooks, so that we release more starches into that already starchy water.

And we create a velvety sauce that clings to each gnocchi.

So this is gonna take about three to five minutes.

And you're gonna see that the liquid on the bottom of the pan reduces, and the gnocchi become velvety.

This is a perfect sauce consistency.

So we're gonna add back in that pancetta and garlic and just heat everything back up together, which really shouldn't take much time.

30 seconds, maybe a minute.

Keep moving things around so nothing sticks to the pan and every piece of gnocchi sort of is evenly coated in the sauce and has a little bit of pancetta, a little bit of garlic.

Every bite is perfect.

All right, this is done.

So we're gonna turn the heat off.

And now we want to build that final punch, that contrasting note that we love.

This dish has plenty of fat in it, plenty of richness, plenty of umami.

And so a little fresh lemon juice and some fresh parsley are gonna give it that extra sort of fresh punch, that contrast with the rich, savory base we created.

And then it's nice to gild the lily, a little drizzle of olive oil to help it have the right texture, sort of a silkiness at the end.

Now we're ready to plate up, and that's when we add the parmesan.

If you serve this with a nice bitter salad, something simple like some arugula or radicchio with a lemon vinaigrette, you're gonna be in heaven.

This really is spinning gold from straw.

These gnocchi have that pillowy sort of soft, bouncy texture.

They're not dense at all.

We have a sauce that has so much flavor from a handful of very common ingredients.

This is gnocchi di farina with pancetta and garlic sauce.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes in this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

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- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - Introducing Hestan ProBond, crafted from the resilience of cold-forged stainless steel.

We collaborate with top chefs to redefine cookware and the kitchen experience.

Italian craftsmanship meets innovation with Hestan ProBond.