Italian bread. was Re: MacDonalds
in [Europe]
|
From: oconnell@slr.orl.lmco.com on 19 Sep 2006 13:45 Frank F. Matthews wrote: > Iceman wrote: > > > Cathy L wrote: > > > >>We were so looking forward to having Italian bread in Italy. How > >>dissapointed we were to find how tasteless it was. The breads in > >>France and Germany were superb! > > > > > > Next time try the bread at an actual neighborhood Italian bakery > > instead of a tourist trap restaurant where they bring bus tours. > > > > Actually I would say that bread is the weak point of Italian cooking. > Some is decent but the overall quality is fairly weak. As compared to what? Many of the basis of comparisons of the people around here might make it "amongst" the best varieties they've had.
From: B Vaughan on 19 Sep 2006 17:22 On 19 Sep 2006 10:45:56 -0700, "oconnell(a)slr.orl.lmco.com" <oconnell(a)slr.orl.lmco.com> wrote: >Frank F. Matthews wrote: >> Iceman wrote: >> Actually I would say that bread is the weak point of Italian cooking. >> Some is decent but the overall quality is fairly weak. > > As compared to what? Many of the basis of comparisons of the >people around here might make it "amongst" the best varieties >they've had. I agree that bread is not a strong point of Italian cuisine. To start with, it's almost all made with bleached white flour. I make almost all of my own bread, because I'm tired of the bread I can find in my town. -- Barbara Vaughan My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup
From: Giovanni Drogo on 20 Sep 2006 04:45 > > > Next time try the bread at an actual neighborhood Italian bakery > > > instead of a tourist trap restaurant where they bring bus tours. > > > > Actually I would say that bread is the weak point of Italian cooking. > > Some is decent but the overall quality is fairly weak. It is probably a matter of taste and local customs. As a native italian (and in particular milanese) I seldom find bread abroad up to my taste. But I also find excellent bread difficult to find in my country. Bread is (or was in the peasant culture of the past) a very important part of the meal. Real italians cannot eat a "second course' (meat or fish) without bread. I remember my uncles, who were masons, once went to Switzerland for a work. They brought salame with them, but hoped to buy bread there. They did not find any, and so did not eat anything. There is an italian word, "companatico", which in the past was used to indicate any food (meat, fish or vegetables) which you ate with bread (pane). The word means "what goes along with bread". In fact bread was the main component of meals for peasants (except in some areas where it was replaced by polenta). I was talking of local customs. There is a verse in Dante's Comedy, where one of his ancestors in Paradise prophetises about Dante's exile, and says that he will taste "si' come sa di sale lo pane altrui" i.e. "how salty is somebody other's bread". Here the pun is that it might both mean "how morally difficult is to beg for hospitality in a foreign place" and how really salty is bread outside of Tuscany, where they bake saltless bread. So non-Tuscans often do not like Tuscan bread. Old milanese would like "michette" (which I rank the best bread ever) and won't like their poor imitation of romans "rosette", and maybe won't like pugliese bread, while a pugliese will like only that. A venetian would be surprised to find that michette are empty inside. There are many variants of bread, some traditional like e.g. michette, biove, ferraresi or the big pugliese loafs, some other commercial like "pasta dura", "pane all'olio", "ciabatte". Good bread is found at a "fornaio" or "panettiere" ("prestinaio" in Milan) shop, i.e. baker. Fornaio comes from "forno" i.e. oven. But there are nowadays not many shops with the oven, and the baker waking up early in the night to bake "our daily bread". Most "panettieri" are just "rivendite" (resellers). They sell bread baked by a fornaio (best), a larger, but still craftsmanlike, oven (acceptable) or an industrial bakery (worse). The bottom of the scale are supermarkets with industrial bread, or even half cooked bread to be heaten up in a microwave oven. This is about the bread one eats in one's own house. If one is not perverted, one should buy bread daily. And even so it is not enough. Some of the bread done nowadays, specially in humid seasons like summer, tend to be like rubber in the evening. The old michette did not do that, but they tend to get stale soon. The best is to eat a michetta within a few hours since it was baked. When I was a child and we had a baker under our house, we could by freshly baked bread twice a day. Now if one comes to the bread served in restaurants or hotels the quality may vary. Rarely one finds good bread (expensive restaurants, typical restaurants or maybe just bars which prepare "panini"), more often not (average restaurant, fast food, station bars). In particularly rarely in the average hotel at breakfast one finds the assortment of bread one can find e.g. in Germany or Austria. On the other hand my experience with bread abroad is not much different. French bread is renowned but the situation does not like to me that different from Italy (maybe it is easier to find freshly baked bread on Sundays ... which in Italy is gone since ages). In Germany one can find a good assortment of bread at a baker's shop, but the average italian will wonder why it is not available in the typical restaurant. According to German custom some dishes are served with white bread, some other with brown bread (which usually tastes acid to an Italian), some other with potatoes, some other with something else or nothing at all. I tend to get used to it, but other Italians will complain. I remember once in Regensburg we ate at a little Wuerstkuche grill along the Danube, and there were baskets of bread on the table, so we ate them all. Later the waiter came for the bill and asked "Wieviele ?" (how many). We looked puzzled and replied "Alle !". I am sorry to say that I rank UK as the worst for bread. The best I could find when I lived there was integral sliced loaves of the sort used for toasts (what we in Italy call "pan carre'"). Maybe nice at breakfast, but really not what one expects to eat in a meal. Also it was almost impossible to find a real baker, and specially one open early in the morning or late in the afternoon (so one could buy bread going to work or coming home, like I used to do in Germany), so I had to fall back on weekly shopping at a supermarket. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nospam(a)mi.iasf.cnr.it is a newsreading account used by more persons to avoid unwanted spam. Any mail returning to this address will be rejected. Users can disclose their e-mail address in the article if they wish so.
From: Miss L. Toe on 20 Sep 2006 05:09 > > I am sorry to say that I rank UK as the worst for bread. The ciabatta that sainsburys sell is great !
From: Giovanni Drogo on 20 Sep 2006 07:38
On Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Miss L. Toe wrote: > > I am sorry to say that I rank UK as the worst for bread. > > The ciabatta that sainsburys sell is great ! Thank you for not quoting my entire message as some other posters did. There were no ciabatte in the UK nor in Italy 20 years ago when I lived there. Ciabatta, like tartaruga, is one of the new "fashion" sorts of bread introduced recently. I do not quite like them, usually not crusty enough. What they call here "pane arabo" ("arab bread", but I guess Arabs will recognise it as Russians will recognise a "russian salad", or English an "english soup" [from italian "zuppa inglese", trifle]) is even worse, looks raw to me. In lack of michette, who almost nobody bakes nowadays, I prefer "francesini" or "bocconcini". -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nospam(a)mi.iasf.cnr.it is a newsreading account used by more persons to avoid unwanted spam. Any mail returning to this address will be rejected. Users can disclose their e-mail address in the article if they wish so. |