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Comment by kome | Hacker News Reader

I am Italian, and I live in France.

> 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.

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Meanwhile, as a Norwegian, the notion that Italians or the French make 'good' bread is hard to swallow. That's probably what most of us miss when we go further abroad than North Europe - decent non-white bread to eat for breakfast. (citation needed). However, this is probably mostly due to the differences in what we expect good bread to be..

When I was living in Switzerland, my biggest woe was that all of the bread seemed to be white, or sweet. I could find no good simple grainy brown bread, like at home in Ireland.

But the beer was better, so I was happy.

Are you sure you were living in Switzerland?

Bread in Switzerland is rarely sweet and non-white bread is very common.

I am quite sure! Maybe I was looking in the wrong places, but all the bread was too sweet for me.

As a Swede I'm quite confused about what you're trying to say.

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.

I am talking about what is here in general referred to as 'grovbrød' as opposed to what is here in general referred to as 'loff'. Loff can be good, but to many it feels substance-less, especially for breakfast.

Ah. Not sure what name that has in Sweden (I think just: "Fullkornsbröd"), but having worked at a Norwegian company (or three) I did experience that kind of bread in their Oslo-based company canteen many times over the years (during my 40 visits or so). It's really good with Nutella. :)

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.

Agreed. Also it makes you appreciate more the good things about your home country as well!

you can find dark/black bread (not that white American/English sweet sponge) in most of continental Europe, especially in countries influenced by German and Russian cuisine

One of my joys of moving to Norway is the selection of good, fresh bread available. I've been here a few years and still find the in-store bread slicers odd. Some of it took some getting used to with my American palette - I suppose I could get the fluffy stuff, but I refuse. Weirdly, however, I rarely buy the stuff as I developed a habit of simply making bread daily.

As an American who once visited Norway, I can confirm for my fellow Americans your statement that Norwegian bread is indeed superior.

It's interesting to note the relationships different nations/cultures have to bread.

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:

http://imgur.com/a/OD8Jt

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.

you probably are from northern Italy, where bread just plain sucks.

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.

Yep, I am from northern Italy.

There was no other possible explanation.

In Milano bread is not that bad c'mon.

Source: Italian, Milan born & raised.

No, trust me: it's pretty bad. You are just used to.

I'm sorry, but it is.

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.

I am from Rome, I lived in France for more than 5 years and now I'm back in Italy.

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.

> If you want something with more cereals, maybe dark bread you're basically fucked.

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.

All I'm saying is that if you think about it. If somebody asks you where to buy good bread, you probably have an opinion. If somebody asks you where to have a good espresso or a simple pasta dish, you probably know one place where where it's excellent, but expect it to be good everywhere. With bread it's different.

> If you want something with more cereals, maybe dark bread you're basically fucked.

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.

As an Italian-American, who lived both in the US and in Northern Italy, please do not try the bread in the US. It is not even comparable to northern Italian bread. And the author is from the east coast, which has more of a European presence. The bread on the west coast (California), is even worse.

I grew up on the East Coast. Berkeley Bowl has decent bread from a few bakeries.

One of the biggest shocks for me when I moved from the east coast to the west was the decline in quality of bread in supermarkets. Strangely, a lot of people, even other east coasters who moved west, don't seem to believe me when I say this, or don't have the same complaint.

I've been struggling to find a good loaf of bread ever since the Chinese bakery in San Jose we used to go to shut down...

You should have done better research, bread is just as good up north and there are excellent dark wheat delicacies you won't find south of Milan.

Best regards, Triggered Polentone

Americans always used to have the highest regard for French cuisine (hence its popularity with celebrity chefs like James Beard and Julia Child, and in famous fine dining establishments like NYC's Waldorf and Ritz-Carlton hotels), until roughly the release of The Godfather in 1972, which caused a boom in interest in Italian-American culture, including Italian cuisine, which is nowadays by far the most popular here.

If French cuisine is known as the best cuisine it's because of its gastronomy and its high-end restaurants! However when going to "regular" restaurants, Italy is simply the best.

Well... it's a matter of opinion, I guess, but give me biscotti regina and pizzelle any day.

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.

Tuscan style bread has one fatal flaw and that is the lack of salt in it.

On theory is that it's often eaten with other highly salted foods so things balance out.

But on its own... no thank you.

Which is exactly why I like it :) De gustibus non disputandum est...

De Gustibus, I prefer unsalted bread thick crusted, wood fired.

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.

> 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. :)

Well, you know, it's a matter of taste :) For cakes I personally would always rather go to Vienna than Paris.

Which breads, pastries, and desserts do you think make good examples of French superiority? I'd like to give some of them a try.

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.

i am from continental Europe and by my memory best bread I ate was in Turkey, while I have great memories about Filipino cakes available from small bakeries on every corner almost for free, was seriously addicted to them when traveling in Philippines

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)

> Italian cuisine is vastly superior to French cuisine (really overrated!);

This is a big call. From someone who has lived in both countries, French cuisine is so much more varied.

I agree! In Italy now and too much white fluffy bread. But We had some with maybe cornmeal in it that was nice.

The irony is that traditionally made ciabatta or france baguett is not white. If you put in just a little yeast, put it in a coldplace, and let it slowly grow over night- then and only then you get the real thing. Anything you can order on the same day is just not the real thing. A good baker needs a day for this and will tell you.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/handbook/ciabatta-poolish

The recipe you posted uses 100% white flour.

Frankly German bread is also often excellent in termsof both variety and consistency.

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