This butternut squash bread, called pane di zucca in Italian, is a recipe I developed for my cookbook Flavors of Friuli. The dough is studded with raisins and walnuts and formed into braided loaves. It’s one of my favorite breads to bake, so I naturally wanted to recreate it in miniature.
Before starting on the loaves, I made a bunch of raisins and walnut pieces. For the raisins, I blended some leftover clay from two of my gelato projects: amarena cherries (Premo alizarin crimson, black, and translucent) and chocolate gelato (Premo burnt umber, black, and translucent). I shaped this into miniscule balls, which I then poked with a tiny ball tool (a.k.a. dotting tool) to created a raisin-like shape.
The walnuts are a mix of Premo ecru, Fimo vanilla, and translucent clay. Because I would be using walnut pieces rather than halves, there was no point in spending lots of time sculpting, so I just formed smallish lumpy shapes that could be cut down to the size I needed. Before baking, I shaded them with light and medium brown soft pastels.
For the bread dough, I used a color mix of Premo ecru, cadmium yellow, white, and translucent. To make each loaf, I rolled three ropes of clay and braided them, tucking the loose ends under. As before, I used a toothbrush, needle tool, and crumpled aluminum foil for texture. I then chopped the raisins and walnuts into smaller pieces to embed in the bread dough. Finally, I shaded the loaves with soft pastels for a golden-brown baked effect.
After baking, I sealed the bread with Helmar Crystal Kote Matte spray varnish, so that the pastels wouldn’t rub off. Here’s a closeup of one of the loaves.
The butternut squash loaves have been added to the shelves in the gastronomia.
