1 September Thursday

A friend of mine comes to water the plants when I´m out of town. When I came home yesterday there was not only a beautiful decorative cutting board of the State of Ohio with the all the cities (Tiffin!), but a lovely pepperoni cracker plate from him to celebrate my return. Momma mia, that´s a lot of pepperoni!! As I infrequently experience the intersection of taking a road trip tomorrow and coming into a large quantity of pepperoni, I decided to put it to use by making pepperoni bread as a bad breath treat for the car ride. I remember this snack from childhood, but had no idea where its come from.

It seems to be the official food of West Virginia, what do you think about that? More, Fairmont, West Virginia was the home of Giuseppe Argiro who combined two favorite foods into a portable meal for coal miners. I can imagine that it was among the profession´s very few perks. There´s a plaque in town for the sandwich, but not for poor Joe. I´ve never made the bread myself till today. I like it, but it´s always had one problem for me.

The original pepperoni bread does not have cheese in it, and the one I am making today will not have cheese in it. When the bread cools down, the cheese becomes a very stiff, dry disc around the pepperoni. Also, the slices of pepperoni can adhere to one another unhappily even if the cheese has been omitted. So, I´ve found another recipe which instructs us to leave out the cheese and finely chop the pepperoni and mix it into the dough. Now before you shout Vafancul!! , let´s give it a chance. The dough is rising now.

Judith Jones was not only the famous editor of Julia Child´s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, later in her career she wrote a few cookbooks of her own. One that she wrote with her husband Evan is The L. L. Bean Book of New New England Cookery. Their recipe for Pepperoni Bread I used as the basis for my own, though I did make some changes. Now, there is some irony, a book of New England food having a recipe for this and one that is so very very different than Signore Argiro´s. I can not find anything in my research to suggest that ever was there a variant of pepperoni bread in the original thirteen colonies, but if there were, I´d bet ten bucks it came from Rhode Island. Lots of Italians lived and worked there. But not as coal miners. They mostly worked at sea which is a terrible place for soft bread.

The distinctive feature of this recipe, as I said before, is that the pepperoni is diced and added to the dough. I didn´t tell you that it is also sautéed in olive oil for a couple of minutes, then left to cool. This is key because when you toss the pepperoni and its infused oil into the dough, it imparts the smoky spicy flavor into the dough itself. Yummy yummy yummy. The little pinch I took tasted strong of fennel.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. This bread hit every spot exactly. The bread was dense spongy, light airy, the pepperoni was really a nice little spicy note, the meaty equal to raisins and apricots in sweet spiced loaves. The bread was not greasy or heavy, I really can´t believe how delicious this bread is. As I said, I made a few adaptations, I substituted sugar with equivalent honey, and lessened the salt by .5 tsp. The real credit in the ingenuity of this recipe goes to the Jones however.

I´ve put the completely cooled bread into plastic bags. I´m going to pick up some sparkling water and fig jam to spread on the pepperoni bread tomorrow. There are a few dishes to do. I please advise, even if you had a glass or two or wine, do the dishes and put them away every night. A clean kitchen in the morning is a good way to lift your spirits first thing. Coffee helps.