Straight From the Coalfields: the West Virginia pepperoni roll

My grandfather was a foreman in the West Virginia mines, and he was responsible for a large group of men, many of whom had immigrated to my home state at the beginning of the Twentieth Century in order to find steady work with then-booming King Coal. It’s estimated that during this time over 27 different nationalities were represented in the West Virginia mines with nearly half of that population originating from Southern Italy. In fact, there were so many Italians living and working in W.V. mines, that for a time, the Italian government was stationed throughout the state to oversee their interests.

As a culinary result, many native West Virginians were introduced to traditional Italian cooking for the first time in their lives, including my family. Homemade meatballs, peppers in tomato sauce and slow-cooked tomato “gravies” laden with beef, sausages and pork were commonplace at our dinner table and still are today. Yet, there’s one particular delicacy that defines the Italian melting pot that is contemporary West Virginia—the pepperoni roll.

The story goes like this. Italian miners, like most miners, needed something non-perishable and easily portable to pack into their lunch pails (or pants pockets) as they often worked very long hours, so lunch frequently consisted of a piece of bread and a couple of pieces of cured meat. It wasn’t long before an entrepreneurial miner in Fairmont, W.V., Frank Agiro, decided to experiment with baking a couple of bits of salumi inside a yeast roll and thus, the pepperoni roll was born. Not soon after, Agiro put down his pickax and opened the now famous Country Club Bakery, which is still in operation today.

Consisting of a couple of strips of spicy pepperoni enrobed in a slightly sweet dough, this convenient treat has a dizzying array of variations. My grandmother insists on chopping her pepperoni into tiny bits before baking them into her dough while my mother is a proponent is hand-slicing thicker chunks of pepperoni and then enrobing them in a dense, homemade potato roll. Other variations include stuffing the rolls with mozzarella cheese, onions, marinara and/or sweet peppers cooked in tomato sauce. 

However you choose to slice or dice your pepperoni roll, a few fundamentals remain. One, you must use a yeast-risen bread dough (not pizza dough since that’s a Stromboli). Two, you must be generous with the pepperoni. No chintzing. Finally, and most importantly, somewhere in each of your rolls there must be a decent ‘roni grease stain, although often this takes care of itself (see number two).

Get the rest of the story and recipe on Food Republic and keep an eye out for a photo essay, step-by-step how-to on making the goodies at home on Food Republic next week.



All photos and text ©2011 Fatback and Foie Gras. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission