Italian bread

[albiston]

Cara Faith,

your mention of pane Ferrarese in your reply to Igles and Pia brought back a discussion we had on the Italy forum some time ago about Italian bread and its poosr quality.

As a Southerner I always have the feeling this is more a Northern Italian problem: during my last visit to Italy, last summer, I had delicious bread almost anywhere in Salento and Naples.

Still if I look at what most people around me were buying I had the feeling that their choices often went for slighlty underbaked bread (una pagnotta bella chiara!) and bread types that go stale pretty quickly. Not to mention the sad breads on sale at supermarkets.

Living in Italy, do you have the feeling Italians are loosing touch with their baking tradition?

Grazie mille per essere stata qui con noi e spero magari di rileggerti su eGullet,

Alberto

[Faith Willinger]

Ciao Alberto

Italians are loosing their great bread traditions. The bread in the south is better than it is in the north. Wood-burning ovens are illegal in many areas--and you certainly can't build new ones. My favorite bread is from the village of Orsara di Puglia, made in 5 kilo wheels, all natural levain. I sometimes get a terrific bread from Lariano, outside Rome, also all natural levain. Most bakeries use yeast, faster than natural yeast, but it doesn't produce a great bread. I'm always looking for fantastic bread--got any suggestions?

a presto

Faith

Cara Faith,

your mention of pane Ferrarese in your reply to Igles and Pia brought back a discussion we had on the Italy forum some time ago about Italian bread and its poosr quality.

As a Southerner I always have the feeling this is more a Northern Italian problem: during my last visit to Italy, last summer, I had delicious bread almost anywhere in Salento and Naples.

Still if I look at what most people around me were buying I had the feeling that their choices often went for slighlty underbaked bread (una pagnotta bella chiara!) and bread types that go stale pretty quickly. Not to mention the sad breads on sale at supermarkets.

Living in Italy, do you have the feeling Italians are loosing touch with their baking tradition?

Grazie mille per essere stata qui con noi e spero magari di rileggerti su eGullet,

Alberto

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[albiston]

Ciao Alberto

Italians are loosing their great bread traditions. The bread in the south is better than it is in the north.  Wood-burning ovens are illegal in many areas--and you certainly can't build new ones.  My favorite bread is from the village of Orsara di Puglia, made in 5 kilo wheels, all natural levain.  I sometimes get a terrific bread from Lariano, outside Rome, also all natural levain.  Most bakeries use yeast, faster than natural yeast, but it doesn't produce a great bread.  I'm always looking for fantastic bread--got any suggestions?

a presto

Faith

←

Ciao Fath,

I usually go a bit by nose when looking for bread in Southern Italy, trying first of all to find places that still have wood burning ovens. There's still a lot to be discovered in Southern Italy which is completely off the beaten track: often these artisans (bakers, cheese makers, salumieri) don't even know what treasure they have in their hands. So it's a bit of a luck thing, sometimes the bread is just OK, sometimes great. The nice bread from Puglia I mentioned in my previous post came from one of these extremely simple bakeries in Patu' (close to S.Maria di Leuca), called, surprise surprise, nothing more than "Forno a legna" (on Via Giovanni XXIII, shuold you pass through this little town). The one kilo breads looked and tasted like they could have kept fresh for days but we never found out .

I know that in Naples there still are a few bakeries that use levain to make pane cafone, one not too far away from Museo Nazionale (If you'd like I'll look for the exact address), but most bakers use, as you said yeast (which could be OK if used properly) and fast rises. And there's Leopoldo's fantastic taralli, but you probably know about them.

I think Slow Food's L'Italia del Pane is a good book for any bread lover who travels to Italy and wants to sample the local specialities. Have you had a chance to look at the book?