Market Stall · Chestnut Cake
Castagnaccio
Photo: Winedharma / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
It's made with zero added sugar — chestnut flour is naturally sweet enough on its own, so the cake relies only on nuts, olive oil, and dried fruit for flavor.
Castagnaccio is a thin, dense cake of chestnut flour, water, olive oil, pine nuts, raisins, and rosemary, baked until the top cracks. Market and bakery stalls in Tuscany's mountain towns sell it in autumn and winter, cut into rustic squares.
Why it's made this way: Chestnuts, not wheat, were the staple carbohydrate in Tuscany's poorer hill regions for centuries, so chestnut flour became the base for everyday baking.
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