Bread as the foundation of the Italian meal

Bread in Italy rests on a long cultivation of wheat (Triticum aestivum and Triticum durum) across a peninsula of very different climates, and Carol Field's The Italian Baker treats it region by region rather than as a single national loaf. The book shows that each area developed its own breads from the grain, the fuel and the oven available to it, so that the bread of a place reflects its land as plainly as its wine or its cheese.

In The Italian Baker, Carol Field presents bread as the constant of the Italian table, the element against which the rest of the meal is arranged. It is set beside the plate rather than served as an afterthought, and it is used to carry sauces, to wipe the dish clean and to temper strong flavours of cured meat, cheese and olive oil. The meal is conceived with bread in mind, and a table without it is understood to be incomplete. Field's central observation is that Italian bread is not one bread but many, shaped by locality. The loaves differ in flour, in crumb, in crust and in the leaven used, and these differences follow the regions. The north and the south, the hills and the coast, the wheat country and the places where other grains or little fuel dictated a different loaf, all produce their own forms. The reader of her book learns the country through its breads as much as through its dishes. The character of a loaf is also tied to how it is eaten. Some breads are made to be sliced and served with the meal, others are flat and used as a vessel or a wrapper for fillings, and others are intended to keep for days and to be softened again in soups and cooked dishes. This habit of reusing bread belongs to the same attitude: the loaf is valued as a staple, and its remains are put to work in the kitchen rather than discarded. Field also places bread within the rhythm of the year and of the household. Certain loaves are made for feasts and for particular saints' days or seasons, while the plain daily loaf serves ordinary meals. In this way bread marks both the everyday and the festive, and the same grain is shaped into very different forms according to the occasion. Taken together, her account shows why bread is the foundation of the Italian meal. It supplies sustenance, it gives the other dishes a ground to rest upon, and it carries the particular identity of each region into the daily act of eating. To understand Italian cooking as a whole, the cook begins with the loaf on the table.