Ingredient: Ancient grains — the quiet architecture of Tuscan taste

There are foods that make noise — steak cracking on a grill, Chianti sloshing into a glass, wild boar announcing itself long before it reaches the table.
And then there are the foods that speak softly, almost shyly, and yet shape an entire cuisine from the shadows. Tuscany’s ancient grains belong to the second category.

Verna, Gentil Rosso, Inalettabile, Frassineto — names that sound less like ingredients and more like characters from forgotten folk tales.
These grains don’t sparkle. They don’t perform. They don’t have PR campaigns.
They simply exist with the calm confidence of things that have survived wars, droughts, plagues, industrialization, and every economic upheaval the region has thrown at them.

Ancient grains in Tuscany lived whole histories before modern wheat even existed. They were planted when fields were ploughed by oxen, harvested when families worked in lines from dawn to dusk, milled on stones turned by rivers, and baked in ovens that doubled as community news centres. They survived because they were trusted. And they were trusted because they behaved.

The story of ancient grains is not a story of nostalgia — it’s a story of continuity.
Of crops that stayed loyal when others drifted toward higher yields and bigger profits.
Of flavours that refused to disappear, even when industrial agriculture tried to bulldoze everything into one anonymous, high-performing, flavourless grain.

And nowhere is their legacy more beautiful, more intact, or more quietly profound than in the ancient, borderline-mysterious pasta of the Lunigiana: testaroli.
A dish that looks simple, tastes simple, and yet carries centuries inside its soft, porous folds.

A landscape shaped by survival, not by spectacle

The Lunigiana lies on the northern edge of Tuscany, where the region begins to fray into mountains, forests, rivers, and small stone villages that seem sculpted out of mist.
This isn’t postcard Tuscany — no golden hills, no gentle vineyards, no sunflowers politely turning their heads.
This is the rough edge, the old borderland, where Liguria brushes against Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany becomes something wild, humid, and ancient.

Ancient grains thrive here because they understand hardship.
They know cold nights and hot days.
They know the sting of northern winds and the weight of coastal humidity.
They know how to anchor themselves into rocky soil, how to grow slowly, deliberately, without fuss.

These grains aren’t in a hurry.
And that pace becomes part of their flavour.

Verna — the monk’s wheat

Verna was cultivated by monks before the Renaissance. It’s tall, elegant, and slow-growing, with roots that plunge deep into the soil as if searching for moral clarity.
Its flavour is unmistakably Tuscan: clean, nutty, slightly sweet, with a softness that works beautifully in dough.

Verna is gentle. It doesn’t push. It collaborates.

Gentil Rosso — the redheaded extrovert

With long golden stalks and reddish amber kernels, Gentil Rosso looks like wheat painted by an artist who preferred romance over realism.
It’s spicy, aromatic, floral, almost perfumed — a grain that carries the scent of summer fields inside its hull.

It gives pasta a richness that feels old-fashioned in the best possible way.

Frassineto and the others — the practical philosophers

Then there are the ancient grains that quietly rebuilt Tuscany after centuries of difficulty:
Frassineto, Inalettabile, Andriolo — grains that don’t ask for recognition but get the job done with clarity and grace.
They give pasta strength without toughness, flavour without showiness, warmth without heaviness.

Their personality is simple:
“Here, take what you need. I’ll handle the rest.”

Why ancient grains matter for testaroli

Testaroli is one of Italy’s oldest pastas — if not the oldest.
It predates medieval banquets, predates Renaissance feasts, possibly predates the idea of pasta as a category.
Made by pouring a loose batter onto a heated terracotta or cast-iron testo, testaroli is closer to a crepe than to the pasta most people imagine. Once cooked, it’s cut into diamonds and plunged into hot water, then dressed simply with olive oil, pecorino, or sage butter.

And ancient grains are the reason testaroli tastes like history rather than novelty.

Testaroli made with modern flour is just… fine.
Testaroli made with Verna or Gentil Rosso is something else entirely — porous, aromatic, deeply comforting, with a flavour that feels both humble and wise.

Ancient grains don’t just hold the sauce.
They hold memory.

The flavour — warm, nutty, and quietly emotional

Ancient Tuscan flours have a depth that industrial wheat can’t fake.
They carry hints of hazelnut, straw, hay, rosemary fields, warm stone, and late-summer air.
They make dough that smells alive before it even hits heat.

Taste them and you’ll notice things modern flour has forgotten:

flavour with edges, not neutrality
aromas that remind you of forests and farms
a softness that feels natural, not engineered
a sweetness shaped by sunlight, not refinement

These grains don’t shout.
They settle into your palate like a memory returning.

Why modern chefs returned to ancient grains

It wasn’t nostalgia — it was necessity.

Chefs realised the industrial wheat that dominated shelves was:

• too weak
• too bland
• too predictable
• too compliant
• too empty

Ancient grains gave them back:

• texture
• colour
• aroma
• character
• and most importantly — identity

Testaroli, focaccia, breads, fresh pastas — everything tastes more Tuscan with ancient grains, because the flavour is literally grown in Tuscan soil that hasn’t forgotten how to speak.

The nonna perspective — a truth delivered with zero diplomacy

Ask a grandmother in the Lunigiana why ancient grains are better and she’ll wave her hand like you asked the most obvious question in the world.

She’ll say something like:
“Because they taste like something. And because they fill you without making you sleepy. And because this is what we always used. And because the new flours are too perfect — that’s not normal.”

Nonne are not interested in grain marketing.
They are interested in what behaves in a pan, what rises properly, what digests gently, what keeps children full, and what never embarrasses them at the table.

Ancient grains check every box.

Fun facts

• Ancient Tuscan wheat varieties grow so tall that they sway like grasslands — industrial wheat, by comparison, looks like a crew cut.
• Verna was once grown almost exclusively in monastery fields; monks kept seeds the way others keep heirlooms.
• Gentil Rosso’s colour deepens in colder seasons, giving millers subtle clues about the harvest’s character.
• In some mountain villages, flour was once evaluated by smell alone; if it didn’t smell like grass and sun, it was considered “city flour,” meaning untrustworthy.
• Traditional millers still prefer stone mills, not for romance but because stones grind slowly and keep the flour cool, preserving aroma.
• Testaroli was often eaten by shepherds who carried slabs of cooked batter in their pouches, softening them with river water at lunchtime.
• Some farmers still insist ancient wheat is sensitive to the moon — they swear the best sowing days are tied to lunar phases. No one argues; it works.