About Italian bread

Although eating only bread as a meal in Italy – as people often do in Northern Europe – does not count as a meal in itself, bread is important to the Italians.

Everything with bread

Bread is the Italian word for bread. It is normally served with every meal. The basket of bread that you get on the table in a restaurant is not intended to satisfy the first hunger, but to appetizer and the according to to eat and, if necessary, to make the sauce from the first to lick out of your plate (is not a very nice thing to do, but it is allowed and is a great honor for the cook of course).

Bread you don't normally buy sliced ​​in Italy. You keep it in a paper bag, in a cloth bag or a wooden box. That way you can keep it for a long time and it will – normally – not go mouldy. You cut some bread for dinner and if you have leftover bread that is getting too dry to eat, make one Panzanella from. Or another dish of stale bread (see later in this article).

Saltless bread

As with almost everything in culinary Italy, each region has its own breads. The differences are huge and I won't list them all, because this is not an encyclopedia after all! One important feature to report in advance is that in a number of regions in central Italy the local bread is made without salt.

Once you get used to it, this is delicious (if the bread of good quality is), but most Northern Europeans are not used to it and find it tasteless. There is a quick and easy solution to this. Cut a slice of bread, sprinkle some salt on it and you won't notice it anymore!

Types of bread

If you want brown bread, you often have to be there early! Most bakers make a limited amount of brown and, strangely enough, it is always used up quickly. However, it is no longer baked. Brown bread hot whole grain bread and there are several types.

In central Italy, whole grain bread usually without salt, but there are also varieties with salt. If you would like brown bread with salt, you can ask for 'pane integral con sale'. You sometimes see spelled bread (a kind of spelled), pane multi-cereal (multigrain), Rye bread (with rye).

A number of breads are traditionally used with sourdough and that method is starting to catch on again, so you're seeing it more and more. Sourdough is sometimes natural leavening called or also sour dough of mother pasta.

Bread made with sourdough often rises much longer and is easier to digest. It almost always has more flavor and if you keep it for a long time, it can also become a bit more sour. 

Some well-known types of Italian breads are:

Pane pugliese – Pane di Altamura

Off the heel of the boot, Puglia. Made of hard grain (durum wheat) with a light yellow color and salted. You can also buy the bread in many other parts of Italy. It is white bread, but because it is made with hard grain it is healthier than normal white bread, it has a lot of flavor and is elastic. Originally it comes from Altamura, a town in Puglia near Bari and the DOP variant has yet to come from there. 

Carasau bread

It's more like a really big thin cracker than a loaf of bread, but it's used as bread. Pane Carasau comes from Sardinia and has been made for thousands of years. It has a long shelf life and is light because it is completely dry, so it is easy to take along for the shepherds, among others. It is eaten as is, so as a cracker, but it is soaked in broth for a very short time in some dishes.

Genzano bread

This is one of the famous breads from Lazio. It is made with white flour and the crust has bran. Normally it is very dark on the outside and white inside, with large holes.

Rosetta

A rosetta is a small round bread roll that is sandwich is used, so as a sandwich. The crust is slightly hard and inside the bun is empty. The most famous combination is a rosetta with some slices of mortadella. It is made of white flour and it has salt in it.

Tramezzino

A tramezzino is another sandwich that you can buy in many bars. Thin slices of salted white bread with everything in between.

Each region has its own specialties and if you are looking for something special you can always choose a 'DOP' bread (Protected Designation of Origin). These are the breads that are still made in the traditional way. 

What to do with stale Italian bread?

As mentioned, you buy bread as a whole and cut off the slices you think you need. If it gets too old and dry to eat like this, you can make delicious dishes with it.

panzanella

The most famous is the Panzanella, a salad of bread and (usually) summer vegetables. There are several ways to Panzanella to prepare. The most classic is that you soak the old bread in water and then mix it with tomato, cucumber, fresh onion (better if you put it in slices for XNUMX minutes in some vinegar) and basil.

Pour some olive oil over it and you're done! An alternative is to put the bread in tomato sauce (tomato puree) or canned tomatoes and then add the other ingredients. You can really use any veggies you like, so if you don't like fresh onion, you can use celery, for example.

Minestra di pane – zuppa di pane

A dish that is very different in central Italy than in Veneto, for example, but the name is the same. In Tuscany is bread soup very well known and a typical winter dish. You basically make a soup of vegetables (onion, carrot, celery, cabbage black (a kind of kale) and possibly potatoes and/or kidney beans.

Put the dry bread in the soup so that it absorbs all the moisture and then serve it with some fresh olive oil. The varieties of vegetables are endless. You can make a summer version with zucchini instead of cabbage and you can make a version with tomato.

A typical Tuscan recipe is tomato soup: make a vegetable stock (can also use old pieces of vegetables). Saute some garlic in olive oil and add tomatoes. Let it simmer for a while and then add the old bread and some stock (so that the bread soaks well and falls apart). Serve with some fresh basil and good quality olive oil.

Other names for Italian bread soup are cooked water (literally 'boiled water') and ribollita (cooked again). The original recipes are all slightly different, but the idea is always the same.

The simplest variant of bread soup is the one from Veneto. You put slices of dry bread in a deep plate, put Parmesan cheese over it and pour stock over it.

dumplings

A specialty from Tyrol. They are a kind of balls (dumplings) of dried bread, milk and egg (and all kinds of ingredients to give it flavour, such as bacon or vegetables and herbs). The dry bread is soaked in milk and egg until you have the consistency of a firm dough. Here you make balls that you cook in stock.

This is the basic idea. You can vary the theme by, for example, mixing the dry bread with grated courgettes and herbs and some egg and form burgers that you fry in some olive oil. You can add small cubes of cheese or onion and either cook (as balls) or fry (as burgers).  

Breadcrumbs – breadcrumbs

Another way to use stale bread is to make panel flour or breadcrumbs from it. You can also put some breadcrumbs or dry bread in a pasta sauce that has become too thin, for example. Breadcrumbs are also used to make, for example, a aglio oil peperoncino (oil, garlic and red pepper) to stick better to the pasta.

In short, you have good bread in Italy that has become stale… don't throw it away but make it into a real Italian dish!