Città di Torino

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The Grissino

Its history and production cycle...

Turin's breadstick ambassador to the world is the industrially produced Grissino Stirato, together with the other grissino rubatà, pressed and integral varieties.
For it to be successful, an industrial product was needed as close as possible to the original hand-made artisan one and its taste qualities had to be kept unchanged for it to be always attractive and ready to be eaten on any table, anywhere.
Sophisticated industrial technology was needed to reach these results based on artisan origin techniques. Breadstick production equipment manufacturers therefore had to be expert bakers in their own merit to translate manual ironing into a mechanical operation as such. In other words, the machine had to adapt to the breadstick dough and not vice versa.
Another indispensable premise was research, selection and constant analysis of raw materials to be used for the dough: from water to flour, from edible fats to all the other ingredients.
Modern technology gave a definitive contribution with:

• constant controlled temperature and humidity leavening chambers
• constant controlled humidity and high temperature ovens
• suitable materials and machinery for wrapping, preservation and final product packaging

The Grissino Stirato and Rubatà Its history

Vittorio Amedeo II Duke of Savoy was born at Turin in 1666 and was crowned the first Savoy King in 1713.
As a child Vittorio Amedeo was frail and sickly so his mother, the second Madama Reale, worried by the state of his health called to court a famous physician of the time, Don Baldo Pecchio from Lanzo Torinese. The doctor immediately had a stroke of genius and diagnosed food poisoning - gastro-enteritis in modern parlance -caused by the ingestion of bread polluted with intestinal pathogenic germs. Those days, bread - the so-called ghëssa or grissia - was produced rather improperly from the hygienic standpoint and was generally cooked badly, indeed not nearly enough.
So Don Baldo, remembering certain small grissias his mother was wont to bake for him when he suffered from a similar intestinal form as a child, ordered Court master baker Antonio Brunero to prepare a very thin and well cooked bread, indeed cooked twice, to destroy any micro-organism present in the dough with perfect baking. The end result was the grissino, hygienically perfect and un-polluted by any germ whatsoever. The story goes that the Duke's physician fed and cured the noble scion with this bread.
The ghëssa led to the ghërsin or small ghëssa, italianised into grissino.
So the first grissino was born and Turin also won the nickname of Grissinopoli.
As we said, Vittorio Amedeo II, miraculously healed by the grissino, grew to become the first Savoy king. There followed the rapid rise of the Savoy dynasty, that privileged Piedmont, laid the foundations of the Italian Risorgimento and the subsequent creation of the Kingdom of Italy. It follows that we might well say today that: After the Grissino was born, so was the Italian Risorgimento!
The success of this celebrated Turin bread (greatly appreciated by Napoleon who called it Le petit bâton de Turin) grew rapidly and conquered the whole world and became the Bread of Kings and the King of Breads.

The recipes of the Grissino stirato

• Prepare a dough with flour, water, leavening and salt
• Knead the dough into long thin rolls and lay them on the table for raising
• Cut the rolls into 25 centimetre long, 3 centimetre wide sections
• Iron that is, lengthen the rolls by holding them at either end with your fingers and keeping them suspended in the air with your arms stretched wide open and simultaneous extension and vibration (a real and proper work of art)
• Introduce the ironed grissini into the oven and bake them at 248 degrees.
• Remove from the oven after 10 minutes; the grissini which will now be well-done and golden hued; break them into three parts.

Note:

For producing grissini stirati, only use soft wheat flour with very elastic gluten, to allow lengthening or ironing of the dough while suspended in the air.
Organoleptic properties of the grissino stirato
Fragrant aroma, delicate and exclusive taste. Light golden hue. Maximum friability and crunchiness. Irregular cylindrical shape due to manual lengthening.

The Grissino rubatà of Chieri

All the same as for the grissino stirato, except for ironing. This type of grissino in fact requires the roll being lengthened by rolling it manually on the work table (only up to some 40 centimetres or so). The dough will therefore carry the imprints of the grissino maker's fingers; also they are not broken into separate pieces after baking.
The flour can be the same type as used for common bread, since ironing is by simple finger pressure.
Organoleptic properties of the grissino rubatà
Fragrant aroma, taste closer to bread's. Light golden hue. Lesser friability and crunchiness. Stick shape with typical humps caused by finger pressure.