Bread Gnocchi with Sausage
This bread gnocchi with sausage is a seriously good, hearty traditional dish from Umbria. Its rich and flavorful sauce pairs excellently with gnocchi and the recipe can be made in under an hour with homemade bread gnocchi or in under 30 minutes with store-bought potato gnocchi.
- 6 oz Italian '00' soft wheat flour (or all purpose flour)
- 4 oz breadcrumbs (homemade from stale bread or store bought)
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ cup warm water
- 7 oz borlotti beans (7oz) (precooked or canned)
- 3.5 oz guanciale (3.5oz) (or pancetta. Cut into cubes.)
- 7 oz tomato passata (3.5oz) (or peeled and chopped fresh tomatoes)
- 2 Italian pork sausages (Casing removed and meat crumbled)
- ½ onion (peeled and finely chopped)
- 1 stalk celery (finely chopped)
- 2 carrots (finely chopped)
- 1 garlic clove (peeled and finely chopped)
- 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- salt (for gnocchi and to taste)
- Mix the breadcrumbs, flour and a tsp of salt together in a bowl. Slowly add the warm water while using your hands to work the ingredients into a dough. Note: You may not need all the water or you may need to add a bit more. The dough has to be soft and slightly tacky but not wet.
- Turn the dough out onto a pastry board and knead a little. Not a lot as otherwise your gnocchi will be too dense. Cover the dough with clingfilm (plastic wrap) and let it rest for 30-60 minutes.
- After letting the dough rest, make the gnocchi by rolling pieces of dough into ‘snakes’ about 1.5 cm (0.5ins) thick and then cutting the snakes into small 1-2 cm (0.5-0.75 ins) pieces.
- Put the ready gnocchi onto a tray or tea towel that’s been dusted with flour while you make the rest and the sauce. Tip: I find semolina flour is the best for dusting.
- In a Dutch oven or large pot, sauté onion, garlic, celery, and carrots in olive oil over low heat. Increase the heat to medium-high, then add guanciale and sausage mince. Brown the guanciale and sausage mince this should take about 5-7 minutes.
- After browning the meat, mix in the tomato passata and cook for an additional 15 minutes.
- Adjust with salt, add beans, and let simmer for another 10 minutes.
- Just before you are ready to serve, boil the breadcrumb gnocchi in salted water. As they float to the surface, move them with a slotted spoon to the sauce. Make sure to do a taste test before adding the gnocchi to the sausage sauce.
- Mix thoroughly and serve garnished with grated pecorino.
History
Known as gnocchetti collescipolani or gnocchi alla collescipolana, this Umbrian bread gnocchi recipe actually comes from the small hilltop village of Collescipoli, just outside the city of Terni in South-Eastern Umbria.
Both Collescipoli and Terni are very ancient settlements dating back to pre-Roman times and located on a large plain at the confluence of the Serra and Nera rivers.
The cuisine in this part of Italy is very rustic and based on what Italians call ‘la cucina povera’ (the peasant kitchen). Pulses and legumes are staples for the locals and the most popular meat is pork and pork products, game birds, poultry and lamb.
They also have a lot of traditional dishes with black truffles, particularly those from Norcia further up the Nera River.
I first came across this recipe in one of my favourite cookbooks, La Cucina: The Reginal Cooking of Italy. This book was published in English by the Italian Academy of Cuisine (L’Accademia Italiana della Cucina). It’s a treasure trove of traditional Italian recipes, not just pasta of course.
Recipe Variations
Like many other Italian recipes, there are different versions of gnocchetti collescipolani. However, the differences are quite small.
I’ve come across a few recipes for the sauce made with pancetta instead of guanciale. However, most Italian recipes have guanciale. There are also Italian versions with cannellini beans instead of borlotti, with red wine and with peperoncino. Traditionalists and the people of Collescipoli would probably disagree with using those ingredients!
In Piacenza, Emilia-Romagna, they make a dish called ‘ pisarei e fasò’ which has very similar bread gnocchi served in a bean and lardo (cured pork back fat not lard) or pancetta sauce.
Actually, the sauce is almost the same as this recipe. Pisarei isn’t exactly like these Umbrian bread gnocchi because they are slightly different in shape. They look more like orecchiette. On my to make list!
