Bread in Italy: spoilt for choice
In this section of the Tigellae blog (Know your dough – Natural yeast and wheat intolerance) we’ve already mentioned Italy’s love for good bread. Italians have developed a wide range of breads over the centuries and many ancient types are still produced – in most cases on a local or regional basis. The selection nationwide ranges from extremely large loaves, once intended to keep a household supplied for a full week, to small rolls and crackers. Most of them are leavened but many are not, like the Sardinian carta da musica (thin as sheets of music paper) or carasau. From focaccia to grissino (breadstick), ciabatta to piadina, some of these regional specialities have already made it into British supermarkets and are widely known to the international public, at least for their ‘commercial variation’. There are over 350 bread types officially recognized in Italy of which around 250 readily available in bakeries, restaurants and supermarkets across the country. Let me introduce you to the history behind three of them.
Altamura bread – Puglia
Altamura bread has been baked in the area near Bari since Roman times; even the poet Horatio knew of it and described it once as “the world’s most delicious bread”. This bread is traditionally made from durum wheat (the same wheat still used to make pasta) and in very large loaves. In ancient times it was customary to knead the dough at home and then take it to public ovens to be baked. In order to distinguish the loaves, the bakers would stamp them with a mark from the family that owned the dough before placing them in their ovens.
Altamura bread is very crisp and fragrant. Its crumb, the soft part of the bread, is bright yellow in colour and soft to the touch. It keeps for a very long time, an essential quality that allowed peasants and shepherds to consume it even after more than a week from baking, dipped briefly in boiling water and dressed with olive oil and salt.
A particular variation of this kind of bread – the Altamura Filone – is what we use to make our delicious panini on the Vanstaurant (they soon also be available for our new delivery service). Our filone is made with Mother Yeast, reground durum wheat flour and a slow, long and natural leavening. We hope you’ll love it as much as we – and Horatio, of course – do!
Grissino – Piemonte
I find the origins of this speciality from Turin quite fascinating. The grissino was invented in the 17th Century by the Turinese Crown’s doctor as a result of the little prince’s frequent indigestions and frail health! Doctor Pecchio, suspecting a case of food poisoning, asked to see the kitchens of the royal palace and found them dirty and in poor hygienic conditions. After a deep clean, he ordered the Court’s master baker to bake all bread served to the Prince twice, making it as thin as possible. The grissino was born! Vittorio Amedeo II, miraculously healed by the grissino, grew to become the first Savoy king. His dynasty laid the foundation for the Italian Risorgimento and the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. Greatly appreciated by Napoleon – who called it “Le petit bâton de Turin” – is no wonder why the grissino is also known as The Bread of Kings and King of Breads!
Piadina – Romagna
The genuine and homemade Romagna piadina has lost its legendary roots in the mists of time. One of these legends has it that it was none other than Aeneas, the hero in Virgil’s poem, who on landing on Italian coasts after escaping from Troy had to eat unleavened biscuits that the sailors used for plates. According to other sources, the recipe was handed down to the ancient Romans by the Etruscans, who prepared an unleavened bread using flour and water, cooking it on scalding hot tiles. Closer to the present day, the debate as to who can boast paternity of the piadina is still disputed amongst the villages and towns of Romagna. Those from Rimini, who prepare a version that is thin and low in fats, are those most convinced that it was of their own invention. But each area of Romagna has a local variation: small, thick and soft near Ravenna, large and thin elsewhere.
In any case, it is unleavened bread without yeast and its name would seem to derive from the Greek plakous, which means flat bread and bring us back to the days of the Byzantine domination of Romagna. It is a specialty made of a disk of pasta that can be substituted for bread. It can be eaten with a soft cheese (squaquarone, a delicacy of Romagna similar to stracchino, is probably the most common in Italy) or with prosciutto – either cotto or crudo. It is best served warm, and must be cooked on the proper flat iron pan called a testo, on a lively flame.
Keep following our blog for more adventures, recipes, Italian words and stories from Tigellae! Buon appetito!
Giordano