Presnitz it
Triestine treats
Welcome to 29.
Been buried in December business, plus having a disgusting cold (luckily not the super flu.) But, I got all my Christmas cakes done, and beautifully decorated with the help of the Leila’s team and they are now sold out. I am moving on to baking other Chrissie treats so quite a lot of biscuit action happening this week.
We do also have excellent panettone. Years ago Leila stumbled upon this bakery, Ulcigrai in Trieste and we get through A LOT of their Panettone every year. I got to visit them this year, to check everything was all on track and tasting as it should.
Trieste, is perhaps one of the most un-Italian towns I’ve visited. It’s tucked in tight between the sea and the Slovenian boarder and the Austrian and Croatian influences are easy to see. For example in the baked goods there’s a lot of strudel, Linzer torte and sacher torte.
I was fortunate enough to have Damiana, a friend of Leila’s and a proud Triestrian, driving me about making sure I soaked up the whole experience.
Almost as soon as I arrived she scooped me up and took me up into the mountains to an osmiza. These are farms/producers where wine, meats and cheeses are produced originally by peasants. In 1784 they were permitted to open up their premises and sell directly from there tax free but only for an 8 day period.
Today osmizes can open whenever they wish throughout the year. You can find out which ones are open either by checking the internet or, more interestingly, because they hang a bundle of tree branches outside their premises. We had a selection of cured meats and cheeses, boiled eggs, bread and a carafe of their wine. All very charming.
The next day I headed to the bakery where we were warmly welcomed. They were not yet quite in full panettone production chaos, but there was some to taste. Panettone is a magical enriched dough that amazes me, it’s full of butter and eggs, candied peel and yet so light. This lightness is achieved by days of proving and after baking hanging it upside down, absolute craziness! It is a mystery how it manages to last so well. It makes a great contrast to our, much heavier, Christmas cakes.
Right around the corner from the bakery is a sponge shop I was eager to visit. Not cake sponges: washing sponges! They have natural sea sponges in all shapes and sizes from many different seas and oceans, it was wondrous. These are living marine organisms, that are trimmed to give us sponges, imagine an underwater box hedge having a haircut.
In the afternoon we wondered around Trieste and I was able to visit some bakeries to see what traditional sweet treats were on offer. As I mentioned a lot of Austrian bakes but also some new ones unique to Trieste. Including Putizza, Pinza and Presnitz.
I chose to recreate the Presnitz: a pastry encasing lots of dried fruits, nuts, spices and booze. It screamed Christmas to me, although they have this all year round. It’s said that the Presnitz was originally created in the early 19th Century to impress an Austrian Princess, known as “Preis Prinzessin”the Princess Pride. The shape is often a coil or ring, which means “if one travels around the world, one comes back here.”
