Pan ner is the bread that is prepared in the collective ovens of the mountain villages in the Aosta Valley in the period from October to November
In the Aosta Valley there is a bread that is made only once a year. And the pan ner, which is consumed in various ways even in the following months, from aperitifs to desserts. It is usually prepared in the village's common oven on a Saturday in November, when the temperature is perfect for drying the loaves.
The preparation of the pan ner, a real ritual
Pan ner dates back to the times when no one in the mountain villages had an oven at home. So once a year we gathered in the collective oven, the one used by the families of the village or the valley, to prepare the pan ner. In fact, in every village, even if tiny, there was at least one large wood-burning oven available to the community, or to anyone who needed it. Sharing is the first law of the mountain people! Basically it is a wholemeal black bread, kneaded by hand with mother yeast (usually when there is a waning moon), with half rye is half wheat, often grown in their own fields. Once cooked, the pan ner rests in barns, in large cupboards where it dries on special wooden racks called ratelì. In this way it is kept for a whole year, also thanks to the cool, dry and windy climate. But as the days go by, of course, the pan becomes harder and harder, which is why a kind of guillotine is needed to cut it. copapàn. Over time, even if the ovens have arrived in the homes of some families (not all!), The tradition of preparing pan ner once a year in the shared oven continues, during a day that is sacred to all. Because it has now become a real ritual, from which the Aosta Valley people have no intention of separating, indeed; each town organizes a party in his honor, on different days depending on the area, but almost always between October and December, when the climate is ideal for all the rites of passage that the pan ner must perform.
The value of bread in the Aosta Valley
For the people of Aosta Valley, bread is linked to a piece of history, of their history of sharing and mutual help. For this reason, in the Aosta Valley, bread is closely linked to the sacred sphere and to ritual moments; for example, it is still given to children during baptism, who dedicated a poem to it for the occasion.
At the town hospital
I don't want white bread,
And the best gift they bring me is bread,
But … the bread of other times,
The bread that grandfather made;
The black bread, very hard, very thick,
The bread of my early years.
Hard, I like to eat it,
It tastes better than the biscuit!
Hard I like to watch it
Black bread is my friend!
(Marie Coudre, Our Dzen Patoué)
Just think that if for years in the rest of Italy they craved white and soft bread, here they have never stopped producing black and hard bread, also because over time it has become a precious and fundamental ingredient for many dishes in the kitchen. Even starting from its crumbs!
The pan ner in the kitchen: seupe and pan i crap
Pan ner looks like a very hard bread, usually cut into irregular pieces. It is almost always already on the table when you sit in a restaurant, so it can also be consumed alone as an aperitif. Alternatively, the sliced bread is perfect for the preparation of some seupe, which in the Aosta Valley are both first and single dish; in fact, they are a great classic of the Aosta Valley tradition, which in the absence of pasta, has always made its availability and differences a wealth in the kitchen. Thus the pan ner, almost always after being soaked in broth or milk, depending on the recipe, becomes the main ingredient of seupa de l’ano, that is, of the donkey; or of seupa of Cogne with stale black bread cut into small cubes, onion, butter, meat broth, fontina cheese and cinnamon; but also of a sweet seupe, like the seupa freida with red wine, sugar or honey; or, again, the more famous and delicious seupa à la vapelenentse, which takes its name from the valley of the same name. A similar version is found by Denise Marcoz at Lo Grand Baöu restaurant: and the seupa i plat, which has always been prepared in his family for parties or weddings. The ingredients are practically the same: bread, fontina cheese, broth, cabbage, cinnamon, with the difference that it is not baked in the oven, but on the stove for hours until the ingredients are perfectly blended and amalgamated. Finally, because nothing is thrown away: from the crumbs of pan ner the pan i crap, or crapt (depending on the dialect of patois spoken), a very popular dessert in the Aosta Valley, which perfectly reflects the spirit of recovery of mountain cuisine. The remaining crumbs of the bread are dipped in butter during clarification, ie during the preparation of the "beuro coulo“, And then covered with sugar. You can also add chestnuts, dried fruit, fennel seeds and candied fruit to the pan i crap: we will thus be faced with one of the best and most Aosta Valley mountain sweets there is.
As an accompaniment we recommend the red Saint'Ours dell 'Noussan Farm by Franco and Gabriella, in Saint Christophe, one of the best expressions of natural Aosta Valley wine, a growing sector to be discovered.
