Free A Thousand Days in Tuscany by Marlena de Blasi Page A

wanted to be her. I wanted to be that woman on the beach. I wanted her skirts and her scarves, her shawls, her silver flask. I wanted to make a potato taste better than a chocolate pie. As much as anyone ever has, she let me see myself. Sometimes I think the Potato Lady must have been a dream or a red-wrapped specter come to pass on the great secret that living in the moment and being content with one’s portion makes for the best of all lives. But she was real, Florì. And as I think abouther now, she likely had her miseries. It was how she seemed to stand apart from misery, though, how she pulled the beauty out of that afternoon as skillfully as she pulled the flask from her pocket. That was her gift to me. She made happiness seem like a choice.”
    “Do you think it’s true? Is happiness a choice?”
    “Most times I think it is. At least much more often than many of us understand or believe it is.”
    The village bells ring midnight and, Cinderella-like, we scurry about, packing up our things, pulling on our boots. Laughing all the way, we climb the slippery hillside, tugging each other up the steep. We find the men sitting on the terrace floor, facing each other, the duke giving an astronomy lesson to a sleeping Fernando.
    “I see all’s well here, so I’m going up the hill to bed.” Florì laughs her little girl’s laugh while the duke unscrambles the length of him to follow her, their buona notte, notte ragazzi, notte tesori chiming through the blackness and the breeze. Arms crossed over my chest, hands trying to rub warmth into my shoulders, I stand there thinking about how much alike human hungers are, about camping along the Mississippi and splashing in Etruscan pools and bacon frying and the perfume that can come from a potato and a weed set together over the smoke of a fire, about the smell of a wild sea and the hoarse moaning of water rasping on stone, of the waves as they push farther and farther onto the sand, searching for the end of the earth. A place to rest. And how we do, too.
    Schiacciata Toscana
Tuscan Flatbread (or “Squashed” Breads)
Two 15-inch flatbreads
1 tablespoon active dry yeast or 1½ small cakes of fresh yeast
1 scant teaspoon of dark brown sugar
2¾ cups tepid water
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
3 teaspoons fine sea salt
6½ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup finely ground yellow cornmeal
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves, minced to a powder
coarse sea salt (optional)
additional extra virgin olive oil for baking pans, drizzling, and final glossing
    In a large bowl, mix the yeast and the sugar into the tepid water, stirring until the grains of sugar are dissolved. Cover with plastic wrap and let the yeast activate for 10 minutes. Stir the oil and salt together and pour it into the yeast mixture. Begin adding the flour, a cup at a time, stirring well after each dose. Add the cornmeal all at once and mix to form a soft, dry dough. Add additional flour—a tablespoonat a time—if the dough feels sticky. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead it for 10 minutes. Place the dough into a clean, lightly oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let the dough rise for an hour, or until its mass doubles.
    Release the air in the dough with a firm punch, divide the dough in two, and stretch each piece onto the surface of a lightly oiled 12-inch baking pan sprinkled with cornmeal. The dough will fight a bit, but don’t be tempted to use a rolling pin. Using your fingertips, push the dough to the edges of the tin and let it rest. Go back to it in a few minutes and stretch it to the edges once again. The dough will have relaxed sufficiently by this time and should behave quite nicely under your hands. Cover the prepared schiacciate with clean kitchen towels and let them rise for half an hour. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 450°.
    After the second rise, press your fists, knuckles down, all over the breads, “squashing” them and creating indentations. Drizzle the tops of the