Born in Ancient Rome but back in vogue in the last years thanks to the recovery of ancient peasant recipes from the countryside around Rome, water, grains, salt and aromatic herbs are kneaded together to make a low oval focaccia that is cooked on hot coals, and taken as a gift to the priests.
The grains used were mostly millet, barley and oats, and spelt only later.
The pinsa is to all effects the ancestor of pizza. Virgil in the Aeneid describes the actions of a peasant who grinds grains of wheat, sifts the flour obtained, kneads it with water, aromatic herbs and salt and obtains a delicious thin focaccia which he bakes over the heat of the ashes on a stone. It was one of the first things Aeneas bit into as soon as he landed in Lavinio, according to Virgil.
It is also presumable that the term pizza comes from “pinsa”, from the past participle pinsum (or pistum) from the Latin verb pinsere, meaning crush, grind, mash.
The pinsa of the Third Millennium is still more digestible than its famous ancestor, because the mixture of spelt and Egyptian Kamut (Khorasan wheat) was substituted with flour of soft wheat, soya bean and rice, all of them strictly not GMO.
Furthermore, the leavening of an inverted biga (pre-fermentation in bread baking) gave life to a successful product in the pinserie from Lazio: the goodness of the pasta competes with the quality of the condiments. The lightness and digestibility have no rivals from the dietetic point of view.
Ingredients for 6 Roman pinse:
1 Kg of a mix of soft wheat, rice and soya bean:
* 800 grams of soft wheat flour
* 150 grams of rice flour
* 50 grams of soya bean flour
1/2 packet of dried yeast
20 grams of salt
10 grams of extra virgin olive oil
1 litre of cold water from the fridge