The Elusive Dolomites

There are dolomites hiding behind the clouds.

Like all of my fellow travelers, I was eager to see the Dolomites. We hoped the day we departed from Trento would be the day when we caught at least a glimpse of the famous mountains that are found exclusively in northeastern Italy, just south of the Alps. On more than one occasion, our tour leader had reminded us of some of the differences between Alps and the Dolomites. It wasn’t a matter of location but was related to the type of rock. The Dolomites are a unique geological formation made of a sedimentary rock called dolomite that resembles a pale limestone but is somewhat harder. Dolomite rock was formed from ancient coral reefs when this whole area was covered by oceans. The characteristics of Italy’s Dolomites include vertical walls, sheer cliffs, jagged tower shapes, and a pinkish glow at sunset. They occur not as a mountain range but in clusters. And now we were headed to Dolomite country. 

 

Leaving Trento, we took the highway north. This is the landscape near the dividing line between the province of Trentino and the province of Alto Adige/Südtirol (aka Bolzano or South Tyrol), as seen from our bus. 

Once we were officially in South Tyrol, the road signs appeared in both German and Italian. Soon we left the highway and transferred to a smaller vehicle that could handle the very narrow winding road we had to take to reach the village of Santa Maddalena in the Val di Funes (Villnöss Valley).

 

The green hillsides dotted with small settlements and farms got progressively steeper as we neared Santa Maddalena. The village attracts hikers and photographers who are drawn to its scenic views of the Dolomites. I’m sure it looks stunningly beautiful on a sunny day, but when we reached our destination, the sun was struggling to break through the thick cloud cover and all the colors were muted. 

 

Our local guide, named Sam, met us in the village. He works as a ski instructor in the winter and as a hiking guide during other times of year. Despite the chilly weather and the threat of rain, he was wearing the traditional lederhosen(leather shorts). Before we set out on a hike up to Santa Maddelena’s well-known church, I donned a rain jacket over several layers of clothing.

 

As we climbed, I tried to will the clouds away while listening to Sam tell us about this valley where he was born and raised. He told us that the highest surrounding peaks reached 3000 meters (9842 feet), and that small villages and towns are scattered throughout the valley, which runs east-west. 

I noticed that we were surrounded on all sides by mountain pastures dotted with bright yellow flowers that turned out to be dandelions. In the summer, Sam told us, farmers bring their livestock to these pastures to graze. 

 

The people who live here rely on agriculture and tourism. We saw many new houses under construction. The large houses would be used for multi-generational families and for short-term rentals to tourists. Nearly all the farms are family-owned and run. Most farmers raise dairy cattle (usually 10-15 per farm), and some also raise sheep, goats, and pigs. One farmer obviously had some different ideas – see below.

 

The hike wasn’t especially difficult and I was enjoying the views of the countryside while still holding out hope that the Dolomites would magically make an appearance. 

About half an hour after we began our hike, we reached Santa Maddalena church. The tiny church was built in the late 15^th century in the Gothic style. Most of the interior is Baroque. The church’s cemetery is still in use.

I felt the first rain drops when we came out of the church. I tried to ignore them, focusing instead on the snack of crispy cracker-like schüttelbrot and speck (spiced, dried, and smoked boneless pork) that Sam was handing out. He explained that the name of the bread literally means shaking bread. It got this name because the baker would shake the bread pan before baking the dough so that the unyeasted bread wouldn’t be totally flat. 

It was obvious that the Dolomites weren’t going to reveal themselves today. Disappointed, we headed back down to the village in a light but steady rain. A hearty Alpine lunch brought some consolation. After a creamy carrot ginger soup, there was sausage and potato salad, followed by an unusual and delicious buckwheat cake with tart cranberry jam between the layers. This gluten-free cake is typical of the South Tyrol.

After lunch, we continued on to the city of Bressanone/Brixen (everything is in two languages), where we’d spend the next three nights. The décor of the Hotel Krone made it clear that this part of Italy had a unique identity. The stag skull motif appeared on multiple items, such as the heavy felted wool curtains and pillow covers. 

From my window, I could look out at the mountains and the (still) cloudy skies. I could even see the spires and bell tower of the city’s cathedral. In spite of the less than ideal conditions, I was eager to get out and explore our new temporary home.

Umbrella in hand, I set out to walk around the charming old town. Many people were riding bicycles, seemingly undeterred by the weather.  

In addition to the many upscale clothing shops, one establishment offered the traditional Alpine look. 

On the Piazza di Duomo, I walked past the parish church and the cathedral and took a few moments to peer into the cathedral's courtyard. I'd leave the interiors for another day. 

  

Also on the piazza, I noticed the distinctive tile work, similar to what we’d seen in Trento, on the municipal building that faced the square. 

The old town stretches to the Eisack River. Since it started raining when I reached this point, I ducked into a nearby fast food restaurant run by Bangladeshi immigrants for a quick bite to eat before heading back to the hotel.

I went to bed that first night in Bressanone/Brixen feeling somewhat confused and disoriented. I’d been in Italy for over two weeks and I was now automatically saying buon giorno and grazie. Suddenly, although we were still in Italy, I felt like I was in another country. Everything seemed German. The architecture was different; the food was different; the weather was different. I always try to speak a little of the local language when I travel, but I knew very few words of German. Would I offend anyone if I spoke Italian? 

 

It certainly was an interesting situation and I was very curious as to what the next couple of days would bring.  

In and Around Trento

I saw more of Trento the next morning on a guided walk with our local guide, Martin. He led us from the hotel past the Piazza Dante and through a series of nearby streets in the historic section of the city on our way to the Castello del Buonconsiglio. 

The castle served as the seat of government from 1255 to 1803. Unlike most places in Italy, Trento was ruled not by a family but by a bishop-prince, a single individual who had both religious and secular authority. Several additions were made to the castle in the 15^th century.

 

Martin pointed out a distinctive green tiled spire across the street from the castle. It belongs to a church used by the city's Romanian community. 

This distinctive style of overlapping tile work also decorates the spire of the bell tower of the nearby Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. The 15^thchurch has a neo-Gothic marble façade that was added in the 19^th century. 

To see a completely different architectural style, all we had to do was turn around. The Galleria Legionari Trentini is located directly opposite the entrance to the church. Martin explained that this pedestrian arcade was built by Mussolini to celebrate the victory of Fascism after Italy took control of the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. The mosaic, created in 1937, originally depicted the women of Fascism. After World War 2, Mussolini’s name and Fascist symbols were removed from the façade. 

 

As we continued our walking tour, Martin called our attention to some 16^th century painting that had recently been uncovered on a façade of a building. He explained that about 40 or 50 wealthy residents decorated their houses with fresco paintings in preparation for the Council of Trent. Some of the paintings are still being discovered.

 

In the Piazza del Duomo, we examined the large curved building whose fresco paintings had impressed me the previous day. Martin pointed out that the paintings contained no religious content. Rather, the subject is a book of morals, illustrating how the law punishes those who make mistakes. 

Today there was time to go inside Trento’s Romanesque Cathedral of San Vigilio. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is where the Council of Trent took place. Responding to the spread of the Protestant Reformation, the 250 attendees from across Europe held discussions that determined the official doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. Part of the Counter-Reformation’s response to the austerity of Protestantism was to create religious interiors lavishly decorated with gold and marble. This can be seen in the cathedral’s Baroque main altar.

 

Some of the earliest art works in the church are the 14^th century frescoes.

The design of the cathedral’s rose window is known as the Wheel of Fortune. 

The Chapel of the Crucifix, also in the Baroque style, dates back to 1682.

At this point, we all had worked up quite an appetite. It was definitely time to stop for a snack. Fortunately, the historic center is filled with cafés and it wasn’t hard to find one with outside tables. I sipped an espresso and devoured a decadently delicious pistachio croissant – not only were there chopped nuts on top but the flaky croissant was also filled with pistachio cream. 

Food was obviously on my mind. Now that our guided walk was finished, I checked out a nearby supermarket. I was looking for the schüttelbrot that Martin had told us about. These are disks of hard bread that can last forever. The crunchy flatbread is made from 100 percent rye flour with no yeast. Spices can be added. They’re baked three times a year up in the mountains. They’re still eaten nowadays with cheese and cold cuts, such as speck. I saw one in a bakery and I also found packaged schüttelbrot in the well-stocked Coop supermarket across from the café. I didn’t purchase any, however. 

Half an hour later, I sat down for lunch with Marilynne at Forst, a brewery and restaurant known for its typical Alpine cuisine. The bread basket contained an assortment of delicious baked items, including a big chewy pretzel that we shared. 

For my main course, I ordered a regional specialty called canederli in Italian. These are dumplings made of stale bread to which ingredients such as cheese, herbs, meat, and seasonings are often added. The canederli are usually served in broth. The version served at Forst was quite a bit more elegant than a simple peasant dish based on stale bread I was expecting. I was presented with four different versions: (1) with speck, fresh lucanica sausage, and mortadella in vegetable broth; (2) with spinach on a sauce of Casolet – a sweet creamy local cheese; (3) with cheese on a sauce of mixed seasonal mushrooms; and (4) made of polenta with cheese, salsiccia sausage, and speck on a butter and sage cream. 

 

All the varieties were superb and it was impossible for me to decide on a favorite. While I was enjoying the dish, it occurred to me that the concept of canederli was quite familiar. They were basically big, heavy, well-seasoned matzah balls, known as kneidlach in Yiddish. This staple of Alpine cuisine is, in fact, known as knödel in German. 

 

Food continued to be the theme of the day. In the mid-afternoon, I traveled to Levico Terme, a nearby spa town, for a cooking lesson. Levico Terme is located in the mountains, about half an hour southeast of Trento. Seeing the mountains as we drove through the Valsugana countryside, we asked if these were the Dolomites. Gabriele shook his head. No, we were still in the Alps, and we wouldn’t see Dolomites until tomorrow, when we reached the neighboring province of Alto Adige/Südtirol.

Even if the mountains weren’t Dolomites, the vistas from the Terme di Levico Park were beautiful.  

The large public park, which dates back to the early 20^th century, was originally designed for the town’s exclusive spa retreat frequented by the nobility from Germany and Austria. The park features wide walking paths, picnic areas, meadows, and a variety of imposing trees such as Douglas firs, giant sequoias, cedars, and evergreen magnolias along with local species such as beeches. 

European beech, or Fagus sylvatica
 

Atlas cedar

Spruce

European silver fir

From Gabriele, we learned that wood from the native beech tree (in the photo below) can be turned into flour that has culinary and specialized industrial applications. The gluten-free high-fiber flour can be used as an additive in baking. Pulverized beech wood is considered an ideal substrate for mushroom cultivation. It can be used for smoking and grilling as well. In the industrial sector, beech tree flour is used as a natural filler in the production of wood-plastic composites.

The town of Levico Terme was quite compact and charming. 

Our cooking lesson took place in a restaurant called Boivin. (The name of the restaurant means a place where wine was fermented.) The building dates back to the 1600s when it belonged to a bishop. The Bosco family purchased the property and established a restaurant in 1870 when the area was still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The current restaurant has been in existence since 1993. The restaurant occupies the lower floors of the building while the upper floors are the residence of the multi-generational family.  

 

Before we got to work, we sat down with the chef on the restaurant’s back terrace. Since it was Monday, the restaurant was closed. While we chatted, we enjoyed glasses of sparkling white wine and breadsticks, various cold cuts (salami, speck) and puzzone (literally, “big stinker”), a locally produced strong-smelling cheese made from raw cows’ milk. I actually liked the cheese a lot. The chef told us that he and his father are devoted to the slow food movement and the concept of farm to table. He had even worked with Alice Waters at her restaurant in California. 

The first dish we learned to make in the restaurant kitchen was apple strudel. First, the chef demonstrated how to make the dough using high protein type 00 bread flour. This allows for a stretchy dough. The method looked fairly straightforward. 

However, when we tried, working in pairs, we discovered that it wasn’t so easy to keep the dough from tearing as we attempted to roll it out to the desired thinness. Fortunately, the chef was willing to provide some expert assistance.  

 

Once the dough was sufficiently thin, we brushed it with plenty of melted butter and placed a mixture of sliced tart apples, sugar, cinnamon, raisins, pine nuts, and lemon peel at one of the shorter ends. He showed us how to use the cloth under the dough to roll up the strudel and place it on a baking sheet. The final step was to brush more melted butter on the top before popping it into the oven. In the photo below, our unbaked strudels are hiding under a cloth to keep them from drying out prior to baking. 

 

While the strudel was baking, we started working on the recipe for gnocchi. The chef had already steamed (not boiled) some small old (yes, old is better) potatoes and while they were still hot, he riced them with a kitchen tool called – no surprise – a ricer. (Note to self: get one of these before next Thanksgiving.)

 

He then mixed olive oil, nutmeg, egg yolk, cornstarch, “00” flour, and salt and pepper into the hot riced potatoes to make a dough. It’s also possible to add cheese to the dough, if desired. Next, the chef took a little of the dough, rolled it into a log, and cut it on the bias into pieces a couple of centimeters long. The gnocchi require only a few minutes of cooking in boiling water before they are ready to be served with the sauce of your choice. 

Finally, we sat down to dinner in the restaurant to sample the fruits of our labors along with glasses of Marzemino, a red wine from Trentino province. Following a delicious appetizer of onion quiche (which we didn’t prepare), we enjoyed the gnocchi with a light goat ragù. Of course, the strudel was a perfect ending to the meal. 

It took a little time to make the adjustment, but I was actually enjoying this German- and Austrian-influenced version of Italian cuisine. I was curious about what culinary discoveries awaited us in the Alto Adige/Südtirol province where we were headed the next day.