Festa Italiana

I attended a local Italian street festival on a hot, sunny Sunday. It was not unlike many street festivals with music, performers, food, arts & crafts. This being an Italian festival, there were also high-end sports cars and bicycles.

There was so much to enjoy – porchetta, sausages and peppers, cannoli, raffles, Italian culture booths, you name it.

Many things caught my eye, like this troop of Medieval reenactors who performed some great moves with banners.

They started with a procession, then began to toss the flags and do tricks. Considering the windy conditions, they performed admirably.

And let’s not forget the cars….

But really, at heart, I am a culinary geek and at one end of the festival was a most unique sight. It was a portable wood fired oven.

I had never seen this at a street fair. Oh I have seen restaurants, and caterers and everyday people serving pre-made food or grilling foods, but freshly baked food? Not very often. Mind you this wasn’t meant to be a display or attraction, but it was for me. My love of bread caused this fascination when others were more taken with the standard displays. This group also was making fresh pasta, using an industrial roller and cutter and boiling it over an open fire, serving up Molise style tomato sauce as Molise was the region highlighted at the festival.

The rig looked hand made but quite sturdy. The smoke and heat could be felt close by, particularly on a hot day. The baker was pumping out Italian style breads to be served with the pasta, but you could also purchase a whole loaf, which of course I did. As you see below, there some loaves were more charred than others, but I am sure with a small rig like this the temperature is difficult to control, particularly on a 93F degree day. I only wish the baker had been doing pizzas as well, but it was all he could do to keep up with the bread demands.

There is nothing like smoky, hot bread to catch my nose and draw me close like a siren’s call. As we rode the Metro home, I knew my fellow passengers could smell the camp fire smoke of my bread loaf.

Oh…how did the bread taste you ask? It tasted just as you imagine it would.

———————————————————————————————————
Affiliate Partner