Rustic Bread

On Saturdays in late fall, at the end of a long day in Stefano’s family’s olive groves, we brought our sacks of olives to the frantoio, where the oil was cold-pressed from the fruit’s pit. With dirt under our fingernails, we toasted slices of rustic bread on the frantoio’s open fire and drizzled the freshly pressed virgin oil on top.  The warm toasted bread with fragrant new oil on top was a worthy end to the hard work of harvesting olives.