For Larry Lagattuta, Pittsburgh’s biscotti baron and owner of Enrico Biscotti and Cafe in the Strip District, baking bread is a ritual that has served him and his family well through good times and bad.
“I can’t remember ever not doing it. In my family, it ties us to the past and reminds us that the future will be good again, something that we all need as this pandemic seems to never end,” Lagattuta says.
On selected Sunday mornings at the cafe, Lagattuta preaches about bread baking just as an evangelist will tout the power of prayer. For years, he has led small classes of aspiring bread makers through the steps of mixing the dough and shaping the loaves, a practice that has not changed since the beginning of time.
“It’s meditative. It’s peaceful time. You’re just making bread, not thinking about covid or anything else,” he says. “And we bake the loaves in a brick oven, a technology that has been around for 12,000 years. What can be steadier than that?”
Lagattuta knows that while bread may not be everyone’s thing, some type of food is at the center of many family rituals, and he does what he can to help families recreate that favorite dish or pastry.
Grandma might have left one ingredient out for fear that the recipe would fall into the wrong hands and the family secret would be disclosed, but Lagattuta usually figures it out. He mixes and bakes that family heirloom over and over until he gets it just as they remember it. And if it’s a keeper, it can make it into the glass cases inside the tiny biscotti shop for the rest of us to try.
Sometimes, when the family ritual is no more than a distant memory, the stories about how it tasted and why it played such an important role in people’s lives are all that are left. Lagattuta became a food detective when he was asked to help a matriarch in her mid-90s and her 70-something children recreate a meal that she hadn’t made for decades.
Mom was a World War II Italian war bride when she moved in with her new in-laws and became the family cook. Her budget was 6 cents per day, and she made it work. Once money became less of a problem, she stopped making that favorite dish, but her kids remembered it well. It is often that way with cucina povera, or poor people’s food.
So they gathered around Lagattuta’s table and eventually found the right mix of olive oil, garlic, parsley, eggs, salt, pepper and cooked oatmeal. They rolled them into balls and cooked them in red sauce. Now that their ritual has been revived, mama’s meatless meatballs continue to bring them peace.
If you are looking for the steadiness of a family ritual, Larry Lagattuta says you should start baking bread. Nothing else touches all the senses like a warm, freshly baked loaf of bread — the smell, the taste and the crunch of the crust.
This ritual has always been a mix of flour, water, yeast and salt. And paying attention, real attention to life.
