When an American chef went searching for a special bread that would stand up to his meat-centric menu, he didn’t know it would take him four years and include schlepping heavy iron molds in his suitcase across Italy.

“I was told: ‘It’s impossible,’” recalls chef Nathan Anda, the brains and the brawn behind Red Apron Butcher and The Partisan in the Penn Quarter neighborhood of Washington, D.C. That’s because he was looking for a way to recreate a traditional peasant bread from Modena he found on the Internet called tigelle (tih-GEL-ay.) And at the time, very few people in the U.S. had any idea what he was talking about.

Before we talk about the trip, let’s talk about what makes