Casa Robino

The flyer says it all. Drawing by Gabi. Jeeeeeeeeee :)

Making of Pasta Madre, with a bit of Nordic flavour

I finally got sick enough of the miserable bread situation of this country to start making my own. You can ask any Finn how bread should be like - most definitely not the white fluffy toasterslices, the only thing the poor Dutchies have available. So, off to natuurwinkel for some rye flour and to Casa to learn about Pasta Madre it was.

Recipe is a new content type on the site, to facilitate sharing food - more on that (plus making it all look pretty) a bit later... read further to find out how to make Pasta Madre!

Two crazy persons from South of Italy went around Europe in 2009 with their pastamadre, a sourdough that is used to make traditional bread, which can be passed around so that everyone is able to make this bread. A video-camera went along with them, and the trailer of the movie is now available.

With images of familiar faces, the casa, other houses, traveling bread, a traveling oven and damoclash festival.

To support the making of the movie, a crowd-sourcing page is made available.

It's almost spring, so time for some events! This Sunday and for the upcoming months: every 2nd and 4rd Sunday of the months casa will be open all afternoon for tea, bread-making & soup. Come early enough in the afternoon to learn how to make bread (based on sourdough), or at any other time to enjoy tea, a sunny balcony and great conversations.

Bring along your sense of humor, organic wheat flour or soja-flour, (ingredients for) bread-spreads and or veggies to cook soup with. Tea, bread-making skills, good company and space provided by the house. Bring along friends and people you think we should meet.

Hi all, to find a better balance I decided that I need some more solitude, which means that the casa will have a winter-sleep. I am closing down the host-requests until at least the 21st of March (beginning of spring), and will only open the house for people with whom I made or will make personal agreements (which will be limited).

So, yesterday I made my first loaf of bread, using our wonderful pasta madre, but it did not come out as good as I hoped. The bread appeared to have not risen enough, and came out very dense. Has this happened to anyone else? Any suggestions?

Today we found a new skip :
Two HUGE bags of croissants, Moroccan flat bread, pain au chocolates et cetera et cetera.
Combined with our almost daily hauls at a new bakery haul point with incredible bread, we're now finding ourselves a little..flooded in bread.
So, in particular for the moroccan bread & croissants, if anyone wants to come by and pick up bread..please please feel free. There's no way we can eat all of it..and, our stomachs may give out on us from so much bread as of late.

A night at the east side casa. Dear lord, our last bunch of green beans..no..wait..we'll find others later..but Robin's super spicy reactionary concoction again dissipates our 16th or 70th box of beans from the skip plunging from the week previous. Buckets of tea.
Miss Brown has no brakes, turning out onto the main road. A bakery to the left.
STOP STOP STOP!
Miss Brown doesn't stop.
Swing out to a skid.
I spotted it on the way here.
Come come come!
A skip full of bread. Turkish flat bread! Bread bread bread!
A bicycle basket full of bread!

I got some pasta madre from Robin in Vicenza. It has now spent a week in my pannier, without refrigeration, in a bath of olive oil in a jar, several times. I revived it in Casale, I revived it in Lyon, and I revived it in Barcelona. It seems as long as it stays wet it can live! It is always a difficult time, waiting to see if it will grow, but it always does! Hooray!
I love making bread, I even love having bread dough mixed with the other dirt on my clothing.
I love feeding people fresh home-made bread, it's one of the best gifts in the world.

Through some e-mail conversations I learned that there is yet no pasta madre in the house. This is a sad thing, especially since it is not so hard to keep it alive. But I also understand myself better than before how to do this.

We used to keep it relatively liquid, and we tried to refresh it every other day. This is not necessary. Having traveled with pastamadre from the house for 7 weeks now, I discovered many new things.