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Italian food is phenomenal on every level. The food is always simple. The secret is to not “kill” the flavor, but rather to create incredible taste using simple ingredients.
A topic that is very important to me is bread. Bread is a primordial element which has very deep symbolic and religious importance.
Along with pasta and pizza, bread is another of the Italian specialties. From the North to the South and from island to island, just like the food, the bread also changes shape, flavor and even name.
Simple ingredients: flour, yeast, water and salt.
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-The flour is usually from grain, but we also use flour from corn, soy, rice, barley, etc.
-The yeast can be natural, fresh or dry.
-The water has to be without chlorite, preferably mineral water and at room temperature.
-The salt has to be sea salt.
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A short history of bread.
We have proof that since the early times, the Etruscans already mixed nut “dust” with some water. Everything was cooked on very hot stones and the result was very hard flat bread. Within years, instead of nut flour, they started to use cereals flour. The Egyptians also gave their input into the history of bread. They found a way to make soft bread. They left the mix sitting for one day and one night. The Greeks made a big difference in the method of mixing the flours. They didn’t just add more ingredients like milk, cheese and spices, but they were the first ones to establish public ovens to bake bread. The noble symbol representing bread “food for everybody,” (“companaticum” in Latin) comes from the ancient Roman Empire. At that time, there was a written law requiring bread for all, so the price of flour was affordable for everyone.
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With the end of the Roman Empire, the culture of the bread was also forgotten. In the Middle Ages, only the lords and landowners were able to eat bread made from cereal flour. The poor weren’t able to purchase flour so they went back to eating bread of made of segale, barley and other “poor” flours. It is in the Rennaisance that the bread once again became the glorious food that has lasted to this day. This was due to the discovery of new yeast, and purer ways to ground flour. It is interesting to note that the flours called “poor flours” were actually discovered to be healthier. Today multigrain or wholegrain bread are most requested. |
Curiosities:
In Italy, Puglia is the region where people waste less bread and where housewives still get together to prepare bread following the old techniques, sharing their traditions with others.
In big cities, like Milano, 1400 kilograms of bread is wasted every day.
Genzano di Roma (a small town near Rome) is the only town to have obtained the D.O.P. (Denominazione d'Origine Protetta) for bread, for its use of wood ovens.
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