Guide to Italian Bakeries
nj.com
nj.com
Being Italian, it's always a bit funny to see Italian food being described from outside. The article is missing some important points about Italian bakery. In Italy you can find "panifici", which sell both savoury and sweet baked products, from pizza to bread to biscotti and other sweet non-refrigerated cakes. You can also find "pasticcerie", which sell only sweet products, both baked, frozen and semifrozen, from cakes to pastries to meringata. Finally you can find "gelaterie" which sell mostly ice-cream based product, but also other frozen and semi-frozen products. The selection given, thus, is misleading because it's leaving out a huge selection of similar products which are majorly important in Italian cuisine, starting with gelato based treats.
Furthermore, Italian cuisine is strongly regional. Bakery in Naples is completely different from bakery in Genoa or Venice. The article presents a subset of items from some of these regions, but is in no way a complete or realistic description of what one can find in Italian bakeries. Some examples here (this is really a tiny subset!): http://www.dissapore.com/grande-notizia/i-migliori-pani-ital...
I understand the article doesn't claim completeness, but they are presenting a glass of water and calling it a sea.
but of course, the cuisine you understand the most personally is the one that is most persecuted, right? the one that everyone gets wrong, because it's so nuanced and special, more special than anyone else's cuisine, because don't you see, italians invented civilized cuisine, you heathen?
welcome to how the world interprets regional/national cuisine. it's all wrong. none of it is correct, because it is a foreign understanding. italy is not special in this regard.
Italy is particularly interesting for being regional and so is India, for example. Chinese cuisine I would not even call regional so far apart are the different cooking styles.
French cuisine is also regional but way more uniform than Italian cooking.
Keep in mind that Italy has not been a united country for long at all, and for example people from different regions speak different languages (there are 4 official languages in Italy, but probably at least a dozen spoken recognized languages such as Friulano, Sardo, etc.). Many of our grandparents (if not parents) did not speak Italian as a first language, that came about starting from the 50's with national television and internal migration.
So you can imagine that traditions and cooking are completely different from place to place. For the same reason there are hundreds of types of pasta for example.
There is only one "official" language (Italian) since 1861.
Each region has its own dialect, that may (or may not) be either very similar to italian or very different from it, that makes more than 12.
You are right that until the '50's and even later, the whole 60's for a large part of the population Italian was a "second language", television started broadcasting in 1954 but it was a "luxury" item and had some diffusion only in the second half of the 60's
Officially recognized languages can be taught in schools for example, along with Italian. Co-official languages enjoy equal status with Italian, all road signs are bilingual, all official state material is bilinugal, etc.
Besides there are many other dozens beyond the official languages, to get an idea of how crazy this is Italy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Italy
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy#Languages, http://www.parlamento.it/parlam/leggi/99482l.htm
There is only one official language, Italian and 12 minorities which cultures and languages are officially "protected" or "safeguarded". That is the essence of the Law 482/99 you cited.
In two border regions (namely Trentino Alto Adige for German and Val d'Aosta for French) the population speaking the "other" language is so vast that there are special provisions that make those regions "bilingual", but in Friuli Slovenian is spoken by a minority and has much less relevance.
Albanian, Catalan, Greek, etc. are spoken by very small commmunities (still coming from the original country where the language is spoken) that "immigrated" in Italy centuries ago, and often they diverge from the "original".
Sardinian is instead a "self-standing dialect", a local historical language of the island, that is "protected", but nothing more (you don't have official state documents written in Sardinian, nor official signs, etc.).
The "tower of babel" (that was a problem in the past) did not came however from those "foreign" languages, after all Italy has century old tradition of trading with France, Germany, etc., but rather from the dialects, and from the lack of schooling/education.
Dialects are local and independent from other European languages (though of course they may well have been influenced from them (take the dialects of Sicily as an example) you can find in it words that clearly come from Spanish or French (or even Arabic).
The people that immigrated to the US obviously largely came from the poorest (and most isolated) regions and the dialect they spoke had very little in common with Italian, a large number of those people couldn't read or write (at least not properly) in Italian and for tens of years, they had no or little contacts with Italy, it is only too normal that words changed in the meantime.
The Law you linked to is clear enough, at least in the first three articles, even a google translate is enough to understand the ideas behind it.
This separation of cuisines is absolutely true for India as well. Some of the same ingredients are used due to geography with very different spices and preparations.
I'm a fourth-generation Italian-American myself, and I've recently been learning Italian and gotten interested in geneology and tracing the cultural roots of my family. It's really interesting to see how true Italian culture is similar to what I grew up with, but also very different.
Calling anything "Italian" would be equally parochial, as Naples, Milan, Sicily, etc have broad differences in cuisine and culture.
Along the same lines, when I tell my friends that I'm going to a Chinese restaurant, they know exactly what I mean. And no, it doesn't mean I'm taking the next flight out to Shanghai to eat.
It may come as a shock to you, but there are also Italian restaurants in other countries - not just Italy and America.
People should pick up on the context a bit.
'Italian' is generally useful (and hence used) when it distinguishes between bakeries and the common context for 'Italian bakery' is in places like New Jersey where it is likely to clarify what a person is talking about.
Perhaps there's an analogy in that 'Italian American' is often useful and 'Italian Italian' probably less so. Or perhaps not.
> Does anyone make better cookies, pastries and desserts overall than the Italians? We don't think so! And bread? Please.
Yes: the French make better bread, cookies, pastries and desserts. French bakeries are just so good.
I am not a self hating Italian: Italian cuisine is vastly superior to French cuisine (really overrated!); Italian wine is on par (if not better) than French wine. But French bread, pastry and desserts just win. Like: hands down. They are just so much better.
I am in Paris since 2012, and I am not yet tired of buying bread every morning: the smell of fresh bread in the morning is like heaven... Nothing is quite like a good French croissant, or croissant aux amandes, or...
The quality of Italians bakeries and pastries is not even half of the French ones. I ignore why Italians totally lack of a "culture" of bread... we can do so much better.
On theory is that it's often eaten with other highly salted foods so things balance out.
But on its own... no thank you.
I'm not sure it's because of eating with salty stuff, cause bread with marmalade, hard chocolate, or chocolate spreads is absolutely common throughout italy, both where bread is salty and where it isn't. It's probably true that bread in Italy is not designed as something you eat alone, which is why it's very plain compared to, say, Polish or German recipes.
Man does not live on bread alone. :)
But the beer was better, so I was happy.
Bread in Switzerland is rarely sweet and non-white bread is very common.
I guess the benefit of (what I guess is the kind of bread you are talking about) is that it can be stored quite easily and last for a month or two in room temperature.
But really.. I think this all comes down to the fact that there are a lot of different ways to make bread around the world. In a way I think it's good that not every taste/texture combination is readily available everywhere - it makes travelling so much more interesting.
e: Also I think where you said "ignore" you meant "don't know," because in English "ignore" can only mean "to not pay attention to" but the alternate meaning of the French word "ignorer" fits better with your sentence.
Otherwise Italian bread is one of the best of the world and has nothing to fear from the French one.
source: an Italian from Rome that lived in most of the north of Italy and cried every night for their terrible, almost inedible, bread.
Source: Italian, Milan born & raised.
Things have been slowly improving in the past couple of years, new bakeries are opening, EXPO had its effects, but we're still talking about small niches and not the typical Italian bread, it's more all grain, cereal, black, whatever is popular abroad.
For example in Milan it is impossible to find good (not even great, just good) michette (that we call rosette in Rome) even if they were invented in Lombardy.
Southern Italian bread is good, provided you like the 2-3 types made your area, which usually means some variation of casereccio. Oh and also choose the right bakery. If you want something with more cereals, maybe dark bread you're basically fucked.
In France 80% of bakeries are decent, it's really like coffee for us. In Italy you can eat good bread, but we don't hold bakeries to the standards we expect from cafés.
Yep, if you want non-Italian bread in Italy you're fucked, that's right.
It's like eating sushi at the all you can eat restaurant run by Chinese.
Anyway, I don't want to defend Italian bread more than necessary, but we basically don't eat bread, we use bread like asians use rice, to eat something together with bread.
There are plenty of options if you don't want bread, from pizza to focaccia, from farinata to roll pastry etc. etc. etc.
> which usually means some variation of casereccio
This is an exaggeration. It's true that most of Italy is made by small cities if not villages, where variety is minimal, but put them together and you made one of the most diverse food ecosystem in existence.
Pane di segale is common up north, pane di Coimo is just one of the several types of dark bread we have in Italy anywhere cold.
Best regards, Triggered Polentone
people defending their own cuisine are usually people who haven't traveled enough to compare
i am also always amazed for instance by popularity of Thai cuisine while personally I find Malay cuisine superior if I had to decide what to eat for rest of my life and consider Georgetown food capital of world (though I haven't visited that many destinations, so take this with grain of salt)
For example, a lot of bread (French, Italian, Turkish), while tasty enough, is very dainty compared to the rough, rustic, whole-grain stuff we eat in Scandinavia:
In Norway, where I'm from, supermarkets carry a couple of types of white bread (refined, processed wheat), which is no longer popular. And even in the tiniest grocery stores, almost all breads were made fresh the same day.
This comes from tradition, but also from government guidelines that have always held whole-grain flour to be healthier than the more refined kinds, as is other kinds of wholesome, unrefined, down-to-earth stuff.
Meanwhile, in NYC, where I live, it's difficult to find fresh bread that isn't just white bread. The shelves are bulging with dozens of types of plastic-wrapped, pre-sliced, mass-produced, mind-numbingly boring bread with long shelf lives and containing preservatives and even sugar (!) or high-fructose corn syrup (!).
In Oslo, one of my favourite places is this:
http://i.imgur.com/CeOUqoE.jpg
Notice the "coarseness" chart on the right, showing the percentage of whole-grain flour in each product.
I live a kilometer away from a Danish bakery that does a decent rustic loaf, but it's still frustrating.
IMO both countries have excellent bread. Its just an opinion, but I think that Tiramisu is not only the best dessert, but also the best food on the planet.
This is a big call. From someone who has lived in both countries, French cuisine is so much more varied.
Having spent this past autumn in Italy (Rome and Florence) I can say that the average Italian bakery has a lot of the cookies/pastries in the first picture and little to none of the more exotic (read: absolutely delicious looking) desserts presented here. They also tend to double as pizza shops. Basically, less refined, the pictured desserts seem more restaurant quality.
I wasn't spending much time in the chique areas, however, so maybe (high end) Italian bakeries do in fact deliver such mouth watering delicacies ;-)
Have cut way down on sugar the last month or so, there's a feeling to eat the photographs...
Indeed, these are not not places where you go for breads they are Italian- American Pasticcerias(they tend to be in the Northeast of the US - NJ, NYC, Boston etc.) You go to these for a coffee, some cheesecake and conversation or for a box of takeout pastries. Most of them don't even sell regular bread just sweets. You could probably write a separate article on Italian bakeries in the Northeastern US though.
one night we closed the bars and were walking home past santa croce in firenze
it was nearly 5am and we suddenly could smell sweet pastries in the air
literally following our noses we wound through labyrinthine alleyways until we came across an halfway open garage door
looking in, the garage was full of industrial ovens and wheeled racks full of newly baked pastries prepped to fill the glass counters of every bakery and coffee shop around the city
we got an employees attention and politely asked to buy one of those fresh, warm, straight out the oven pastries
the bakers were happy to sell us any of the pastries all for one euro each
the first time was a magical experience and now i'm always sure to take a night to walk the streets of any italian city at 5am looking for a secret bakery baking the fresh pastries before they are sent out into the city
the secret is more about the unpublished locations and less about the idea of it.. would you prefer the use of 'silent bakery'?
though one such 'secret bakery' may produce the pastries listed in the article i think this open door discovery is more closely tied to the culture of italy, you may be hard pressed to walk through residential areas of nj and find a silent bakery but give it a try and report back if you find some secret spot to get these pastries straight from the ovens
the anecdote is just a fun thing this article reminded me of
Now we can start the big debate for deciding whether the true one is panettone with just raisins or panettone with raisins and "canditi".
Boy, do we love to talk about food... and we're generally quite picky about it although I agree with other commenters: we need to learn from other countries the pleasures of brown bread.
The other thing which is weird is how a lot of these specialities are very regional: I wouldn't know a place that makes good panettone also makes good sfogliatelle or cannoli.
Chicken parm is one too many ingredients slammed together. You have chicken cutlets there for sure. It would usually (but not always) be eaten more simply than with sauce and cheese on it, and not served over or next to pasta like here.
A lot of that is also more distant generation Italian-American. My parents, who are from different regions of Italy, and my grandparents, one of whom grew up in Italian Africa, didn't really make this stuff. Not to say it isn't good, I just think it's been changed to fit the US in two big ways - first, that meat (and food generally) is cheaper here, so we eat a lot more meat; and second, everything on one plate, since IMHO Americans want to eat faster than Italians would.
Did you know that Quebecois French is closer to old French than proper French French? Can you safely say it isn't us who have evolved and Italo-Americans who have stayed the same?
Any article about italian food is doomed to attract hordes of Italians complaining about what is written aha
(STOP THE NO CANDITI BLASPHEMY)
Its also vitally important that the candied fruit you use be at least 20 years old, since its sold in absurd quantities (relatively to how much you use in a recipe) and the only thing we use it in is panettone and wheat pie (which, actually, my mother is in the other room making for easter).
Now, what goes into the wheat pie... That's gonna start up an argument here.
Tiramisù is also simple to make - no baking required! Homemade is infinitely better than anything you get almost anywhere, including some restaurants (and during my travels throughout Italy I made a point of trying every tiramisù [and Carbonara] I crossed paths with). PROTIP: leave in the fridge for at least 24 hours before consuming. The flavours mix and the dessert becomes twice as delicious.
His recipe seems to indicate it has less fat than traditional or something like that I couldn't find the official website but I see this website has it: http://dendritics.com/scales/biscotti.asp
They turned out well really hard so hard you can't eat them by biting them you have to dunk them.
Tip you need a food processor the batter is so thick your arm will be sore even the food processor struggles.
This recipe I'm now sharing with you has been lovingly passed from nonna to nipotina, generation after generation... until I found it on some random website.
* 250g plain flour
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 180g caster sugar
* 1 pinch salt
* 25g butter, melted and cooled
* 2 eggs
* 175g almonds, coarsely chopped
1) Mix the flour with baking powder, then add sugar, vanilla sugar and salt. Form into a mound with a hollow in the middle.
2) Pour the butter and eggs into it and knead to a dough. Knead in the chopped almonds. Form the dough to a ball, adding more flour if necessary. Cover and chill for 30 minutes.
3) Line a baking tray with baking parchment and preheat oven to 200 C / Gas 6.
4) Cut dough into 6 pieces and shape each into a 25cm log. Arrange logs on a baking tray, leaving enough space for them to spread whilst cooking. Bake in preheated oven for 10-15 minutes.
5) Allow them to cool a little, then cut into 1cm slices. Lay on a baking tray and bake for another 8-10 minutes at 200 C / Gas 6 until golden-brown.
---
Here are some pictures: https://www.facebook.com/gabriel.gambetta/posts/104917363189...
That's one of my first attempts. Note that the dough has been rolled and flattened before the first bake - I don't do that anymore, which makes the biscotti fluffier. Here's a more recent batch: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=212037919144199&set=...
To be strict, the "Biscotti di Prato" are the most famous "type" of "cantucci", for which there are several slightly different recipes.
Of course they are typical of Tuscany and you won't find them everywhere in Italy, in Lazio there are the similar "tozzetti".
... oh, and usually they are eaten only after the meal, dipped in either Vin Santo or Aleatico or similar sweet wines.
* cantucci NOT biscotti
* salame NOT salami or pepperoni
* zucchine NOT zucchini
* melanzane alla parmigiana, NOT parmigiana
etc. etc. etc.
Everyone does the best with the words they know. Help a tourist out, they'd do the same for you in their home.
Gracefully accepting corrections when your language is incorrect are part of receiving help.
If I were to write these posts in broken Itanglish do you really think native speakers would not correct me? Would it be acceptable to call them "narrow minded"?
I'm all for helping but please stop assuming that a US-centric point of view and language are the default for everything. For most people on the internet, neither assumptions hold.
"Yes, people are not really aware how ignorant and arrogant they look when they use the wrong Italian words to describe Italian food "
Italian Wikipedia on the aubergine dish: "La parmigiana di melanzane, anche melanzane alla parmigiana o semplicemente parmigiana..."
And biscotti encompass cantucci. So I don't know what the big deal is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
Its an extension of this, "your Italian food isn't real Italian food".
Combine with nit-picking the language people use to delegitimize their positions.
I'm just glad we have a very wide variety of different things. I love tracking down/cooking both things that are very, very traditional Italian dishes (my family is all from Italy originally) and I also enjoy lots of American bastardizations of those dishes and there's nothing wrong with liking both. I absolutely love cooking dishes from recipes that are from the era in my family where they immigrated to the USA (great-grandmother, pre-WWI), they have a mix of traditional Italian with practical realities of the fact that they were now in the USA, which resulted in them having less access to traditional ingredients (and being dirt poor for a good while).
The only role of the gelatin in the panna cotta is as a thickening agent. But this is not the only way to make this delicious dessert.
If you want to experience a less chemical taste, the gelatin can be effectively replaced with egg whites (which on the contrary also contribute to the flavor).
To thicken the mixture of milk, cream and sugar, flavored with vanilla seeds/pod, you might add the egg whites to it. Cooking does not change.
The result is a softer cream, with a wide-ranging taste.
Probably not.
> And bread?
Please... Just visit Poland or Ukraine. You'll know how good a bread can be.
The title seems like it would have people bringing up different regions for comparison in the comment section.
I am definitely in the pandoro camp. Preferably filled with chocolate creme or covered in chocolate, but standard sugar is still better than panetone.
This gets linked every once in a while, and is worth it every time: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-capicola-became-gab...