His caustic comments only a hint at how incensed he was by the white bread habits of his people, not to mention those bakers who used sea-water to save on salt in the baking of the bread. They had several kinds of bread with curious names – oyster bread (to be eaten with oysters), ‘artolaganus‘ (cake- bread), speusticus (in a hurry bread), oven bread, tin bread, Parthian bread and the dense, rich breads full of milk, eggs and butter made for the privileged few.  Athenaeus (a well known bread lover who lived in 300 AD) believed that the best bakers were from Phoenicia or Cappadocia. Chie hat pane, mai no morit – those that have bread will never die – is often heard in Sardinia to this day and is an old Sardinian proverb. In the tiny towns of Italy, bread was baked by the women in those days and it was a celebration – for each occasion there was something different and for feasts and festivals works of art, unsurpassed by any other country, emerged.

It is common cause that bread is the centre of Italian life and that Italians are as passionate about bread as they are about everything else. Like everything else in Italy, bread is regional.  In the North there are many fine breads but it serves no purpose to list the more than 350 types of bread commonly known if one has not actually eaten them. I do know the pan biscotto of Veneto, the grissini from Piemonte and the divinely delicious pan coi fichi of Lombardia though. Grissini were created in 1679 when Antonio Brunero baked them in his bakery on specific request from Duke Vittorio Amedeo di Savoia who was ill at the time.

In Umbria the pan nociato and the pizza di pasque are classics. The pizza di pasque is so special that I need to give you a recipe that works in an ordinary electric oven:

PIZZA DI PASQUE

Ingredients

• 350gr flour
• 180 gr sugar
• 4 huge eggs
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Aniseed liqueur and aniseeds
• 1 packet of yeast
• Butter as needed

Method

• Make a dough from the flour, 1 tablespoon of melted butter, 2 of the eggs well beaten, some oil and the liqueur to which you add the yeast.
• Knead it until you have a smooth and silky dough.
• Use two thirds of the dough to form a long shape (pagnotta) and roll the rest into a long, thin sausage strip.
• Put two raw, uncracked eggs in the middle of the dough, making sure there is dough on either side and take the other thin sausage shaped strips and cross it over the egg, so that it looks like a doll holding the eggs close to her body.
• Allow to rise, brush with a little beaten egg, place on a floured and buttered baking tray and bake on 200 C for 2 hours, depending always on your oven – until it is golden.

In Rome the rosette are legendary, the recipe not traded and nobody has ever managed to get it right anywhere – even if they had some reason to come by the recipe. If Romans have to leave, they spend their lives looking for, but not finding the exact thing. In Lazio the Pane di Genzano (image below) is legendary, in Sabaudia, Lazio the finest breads in all the world are born!

The breads of Sezze and Frosinone and Circeo and the bread from the wood ovens at Mezze Monte would keep anyone happy unto eternity. The pizza bianca (image right above) and the Roman ciriola and ciambelle are well known and the Southern Pizza is known and copied all over the world. The pane di castagne of Calabria,  pane birra of Sicily and Sardinia’s pane carasau (image below) or carta di musica – the fine round crispy layers are known around the world as it conserves with ease.

Flour contains a very high proportion of starches (complex carbohydrates called polysaccharides) and wheat and a few others contain proteins called gluten. When we knead the dough the gluten molecules become ‘cross-linked’ to form a complicated gluten network which makes the dough elastic. In other words the little gas bubbles are trapped in this way so that the bread is soft – and not a solid brick. In Italy flour is divided into two types – grano tenero and grano duro. The zero’s refer only to how much the flour was sifted. It is okay to use 00 for foccaccia, but I would use the 0 for bread. Grano tenero is neither very high or very low in either starch or gluten and you can use both sifts for making bread. Grano duro is not available at every supermarket, as I recall, and the other kinds of flour (of which there are plenty) are kept mainly in more specialised shops. Grano duro is used chiefly in the production of pasta.

Bread is expensive in Italy today. Pre-sliced, pre packed bread is still somewhat new in Italy and found mainly in the North and used for toast or sandwiches. There’is a shortage of professional bakers today and influence is being exerted on politicians to simplify the immigration procedures for talented bakers from North Africa to come and work as apprentices in Italian bakeries. Young Italians don’t like the hard work – starting in the early hours of the morning and working for very long hours, including Sundays, doesn’t tempt them anymore. Wheat prices have risen dramatically with many Italians having to bake bread at home again. One wonders why young qualified bakers couldn’t start their own businesses, especially since the Italian government has many initiatives for young people wanting to start up – especially in the South?