Ribollita means “re-cooked.” Essentially a soup consisting of stale bread, vegetables, and beans, it fits into the category of classic “peasant” dishes. That’s the conventional story about ribollita anyway. The first real version I had was at Delfina, and “Ribollita ‘Da Delfina’” was not what one might expect if one expects soup. Ribollita ‘Da Delfina’ is a dense, dark brown cake; the bread, vegetables, and beans had virtually melted into one another, and left only their traces in color and texture: a sliver of orange carrot, a patch of cakiness from the bread. It was delicious, and also, I thought, an amazing vehicle for battuti, or mirepoix, or aromatics, however you want to say it.

Reading around recipes for ribollita mostly seem to refer to something more like a conventional soup. However, the two or three times I had ribollita in Tuscany, it was always in the dense, cakey style that Delfina used. When I decided to make ribollita for supper this weekend, I consulted recipes that I had in my library, but was so excited to find that Davina Cucina had printed Romeo Colzi’s Ribollita recipe, the “signature dish” and Trattoria Mario. I should say only briefly here that Trattoria Mario is one of my favorite places on this earth, and I not only begged Alli to go there for lunch every single day we were in Firenze, but likely weakened my case by never shutting up about Trattoria Mario. And we had had the ribollita at Trattoria Mario, and it was tremendous.

Ribollita takes at least two days to make. And part of the foundation is, of course, the bread. I decided that I wanted to try and use Tuscan-style bread for my ribollita. That might be against better judgment, because Tuscan bread is, uh, horrible (every place, even Tuscany, ought to be allowed one serious gastronomical disaster, no?). Again, this is not the moment to explore the myth and reality behind Tuscan bakers’ decision to make saltless bread. This is just the moment to reiterate that I enjoy bread with flavor, thanks, and Tuscan bread doesn’t have it.

But for ribollita, I thought it would be a fun experiment, so Friday night after work I made the dough for saltless bread. I combined 1 package active dry yeast with a little bit of lukewarm water until it looked foamy and smelled ready. To that I added 2 cups of warm water, mixed well, and added 5 cups of all purpose flour. I kneaded this dough by hand, and it only needed a little bit of extra flour for dusting, less than ¼ cup. I put this dough in a large bowl, covered with plastic wrap, in the refrigerator. Within an hour it had swelled, and by the next morning, despite my punching it down before bed, it was gigantic! It was as if salt had been a restraining force in all previous breads. I let the dough return to room temperature, and kneaded it a second time; then formed a (gigantic) loaf, put it on a sheet covered in parchment paper, and let it rise one last time, for an hour. I baked the loaf in a 395 degree oven for 30 minutes. It came out beautiful, and as it cooled on the rack it made a lot of noise!

The idea of the bread in ribollita is that it’s leftover and thus stale. So obviously it is a little weird to make fresh bread that one has no intention of eating at all; in that spirit I figured I must try at least one tiny slice of the inevitably disgusting flavorless loaf cooling in front of me. And, honestly? It was pretty good. It was way more flavorful than any bread I had in Tuscany. It was kind of an honest white sandwich bread, and hot out of the oven? No complaints. Anyway, it was doomed.

The second part of ribollita is to make the soup, also done the day before it’s reboiled. The soup is made by cooking 1 lb. of white beans until soft and saving the liquid. Then, sauté 2 finely chopped red onions in olive oil in a heavy-bottomed, large pot. When the onions are soft, after about 20 minutes, add a ladle of cooking water from the beans and let it stew for a minute or a two. Then add 1 thinly sliced head of cabbage (the recipe suggests whatever is seasonal—I went for a dark purple cabbage in homage to the hue at least of cavolo nero), 4 thinly sliced celery stalks, 4 thinly sliced carrots, ½ a cup of chopped parsley, and a bunch of basil, its leaves torn. This cooks for 20 minutes, covered. Then add half of the beans, and puree the other half. Add the puree, and leftover liquid from the beans. Stir. Add 2 tbsp. tomato paste, pinches of oregano, and season to taste with salt, pepper, and red pepper. At this point, the recipe calls for “water”. Since I knew I wanted my ribollita to end up very thick and dense, I added only enough water to cover the vegetables by ½ inch. I brought this to a boil and let it simmer for 90 minutes. Once it cooled, it too went into the refrigerator overnight.

Finally, yesterday, with the soup’s flavors mingled and the saltless bread stale, it was time to make ribollita. I reheated the soup very slowly over low-medium heat until periodic bubbles rose to the surface, and then added the bread, torn into chunks and placed in layers. I used almost that whole gigantic loaf of bread, and then as I brought the soup to a boil, stirred constantly until the bread broke apart and became what the recipe called a “cream.” The recipe also suggested that one could add more water or bean broth at this point, but I wanted this soup to cook down into the cakey texture I had loved so much at Delfina and Trattoria Mario.

After the soup had simmered for an hour or so, I poured it into a glass roasting pan, drizzled olive oil on the top, and browned it in a very hot oven for 10 minutes. The result? It was really, really good. The vegetables had disintegrated, except for, as I remembered, traces of orange carrot and black specks which were remnants of the cabbage. The texture was thick, and the flavor very deep.

Really the only downside to the entire experience was that it turned into summer for a weekend in San Francisco and, at 80 degrees outside and what felt like 120 inside, it was just far too hot to eat ribollita. But as a dish that’s entirely forgiving of variation and instincts on the part of whoever cooks it, it was totally pleasurable to make and eat. Which we’ll be doing for, you know, at least four days, so we’re lucky for that! And we do live in San Francisco, after all, so it could easily be wintry enough any minute, and the re-reboiled ribollita a perfect comforting accompaniment to a freezing day.