Darn, but I love stale bread at the bottom of or crumbled into a great soup. One of the most precious things I've learned from what I've experienced of Italian cuisine (as grand-daughter of an Italian monkey grinder emigrated to Wales, as a child in Italy for months at a time as a child and teenager, and revivified in near dotage by the powers of St. Mario Batali) is how to use the common or even less than common well. Extremely well. I know that this is not relevant to Steve P's gist but I jest not that just this is very relevant to me.