An Entangled Life Folded into Dough: My Nonna Rosina’s Pizza

June 24, 2020

My nonna Rosina had magic in her hands. You could see it. And, you could feel it, each time she held the flour dough in her large, confident hands. For my maternal grandmother, the flour dough would fold, bend, ply, and turn with conviction, at her hands’ request. With self-assurance and speed, she would turn flour, water, and yeast into a festival of airy, perfectly crunchy pizza smothered with her freshly-made tomato sauce and sprinkled with grated mozzarella cheese and basil leaves, picked from the plants on her balcony. The tomato sauce was her own. Every September since her return to Montreal from her native town of San Giovanni in Galdo in the southern province of Campobasso, she continued the tradition of making il sugo al pomodoro [fresh tomato sauce] with a few cloves of garlic steeped inside and a large leaf or two of basil, topped with a film of olive oil for safe preservation in jars. This time, she had returned to Montreal for good. With her husband now dead, she wanted to be near her children and their families. This was her second husband, whom she married by proxy in 1951, joining him in Montreal in 1952. Before marrying Biase Daniele, she was a young widow living amidst la miseria [poverty] in a post-world war’s forgotten landscape. It was 1945, and my grandfather, Domenico Lemmo, had been taken prisoner in a Nazi prison camp. He never returned home. My grandmother, barely 23 years old, was left on her own to care for their five-year old daughter, my mother.

It was my nonna Rosina’s birthday, that 1st day of October 2005. For the occasion, she called all her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to celebrate with her. My family and I were the first to arrive, and as I entered the kitchen, a white-walled room at the end of a long, narrow corridor, varieties of freshly made red-tomato pizzas lay on the kitchen table as she embraced me and my children with her warm, hearty smile—the same smile I could sense greeting me every time I telephoned her to ask her if she wanted anything from Jean-Talon market; that incandescent smile she gifted me every time I dropped by, sometimes with bread from Milano’s grocery store, other times with flowers from the market. I have always felt a special connection with my nonna Rosina. I am the eldest grand-daughter, the one she also felt very close to. When I would hear the sadness in her voice, triggered from that perennial loneliness many of us suffer from time to time, I yearned to make things better for her. In one way or another I tried, and in turn, through words and actions, her love shone through. We were all there on that day, her children, their spouses, their children, their spouses, and her great-grandchildren, all eager to celebrate nonna Rosina’s birthday.

I often remember my nonna Rosina, the life she had, and the life she might have had, if poverty, a great depression, a world war, and widowhood had not interceded on her life, a life deeply immersed in southern Italy’s agrarian precarity, a sedentary life that morphed into a migrant’s transnational life. Still, the memories of my nonna are indelible, and they remain etched in my mind’s eye along with the hypnotic colours and flavours she prepared with her knowing hands, the hands of hardships and joys, commingling with the flavours and tastes of home I replicate, wherever I am.

It’s been nearly fourteen years since my nonna Rosina left this world, yet the magic in her hands returns as I watch my mother magically fold, bend, ply, and turn the flour dough into that all familiar pizza dough. In that moment, the hands of my nonna and my mamma become one. And, once again, the children and grandchildren cheer and gather to feast. They crowd around my mamma, their nonna, and they marvel, once again, at that airy, perfectly crunchy pizza al pomodoro with mozzarella and basilico.

Ingredients:
4-5 tbsp Olive oil
2-3 Crushed garlic cloves
Tomato sauce (homemade sauce in a jar or crushed peeled tomatoes in a can)
2-3 Basil leaves
Salt, to taste

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in a pot and allow to simmer at medium heat for 15-20 minutes on the stove. And, voilà, it’s done!

Ingredients:
1 kg flour (and extra flour on the side)
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
600 ml lukewarm water
1 pinch of sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil

Directions:

1. Mix all dry ingredients together (flour and salt).

2. Mix yeast, water, sugar and olive oil together in a cup.

3. Place flour mixture on a surface and create a small pit in the centre. Once the yeast mixture has bubbled fully to the surface, pour yeast mixture into the flour mixture’s pit.

4. Knead together slowly all ingredients, adding a little bit of water from time to time. Knead together the dough until it fully absorbs the water. While kneading the dough into a ball, fold the dough with hands, adding dustings of flour on the surface with your hands as you go along. Continue kneading the dough until hands and surface have picked up all the moist particles of the dough.

5. Roll the dough into a soft ball.

6. Place the dough into a large bowl, cover with cellophane, and a kitchen towel. Allow the dough to rest for a few hours until it has doubled in size. Hint: Leave the dough in a non-ventilated area. A good place is the microwave or oven in the “off” position.

7. Once the dough has doubled in size, lightly divide it into 2-3 individual dough balls. Stretch the individual doughs into lightly oiled pans. Let the dough rest in the pans for 10 mins, and stretch the dough a little more across the pan.

8. While the dough is resting heat oven to 250^oC or 400^oF.

9. Spread the tomato sauce evenly onto the stretched pizza doughs and add basil leaves to it. Add a drizzle of oil over the tomato sauce. Place in the oven.

10. Add mozzarella after the dough has been in the oven for 15 minutes. Once the mozzarella has melted (in about 5 minutes’ time), take the pizza out of the oven. The pizza is ready!

Sonia Cancian is a migration historian whose research focuses on letters that migrants and their families wrote in the 20th century. Food, family, and migration are never far from her mind.