By Jess Pitocco
On my first day in Florence, I sat down at a restaurant in the shadow of the Duomo hungry from my flight. I had unpacked and was looking forward to food like a dog looks forward to playing fetch. So when I was brought the bread basket, I devoured each piece and noticed something strange. It was hearty but extremely bland and tasteless. I realized there was no salt! Salt, a seemingly essential ingredient, wasn’t in my first taste of Italian food whatsoever. I didn’t know at the time you should wait to mop up your meal with the bread, an Italian custom I had forgotten in my desperation to get food in my belly. So, after realizing this, I had to find out why the bread was saltless and sciapo (Italian for “bland”).
Chef Pietro Di Marco says the legends of saltless bread vary, and that if asked, every Florentine will give you a different story as to how it happened. A chef his whole life, teaching at Apicius since January, I trust his version of the salt-legend:
Throughout the centuries, the legends have been told. Nothing is on paper, but we all know about the bad blood between (the city of) Pisa and Florence. Pisa, long ago, was the only Tuscan city with access to the sea. Therefore, they were responsible for the distribution, packaging, and taxation of salt for Florence. Florence didn’t want to pay to bake their bread, plus the rivalry and battles between them didn’t help the situation. From there, the evolution of Florentine cuisine began.
The most common dishes involving Tuscan bread (pane toscano), and the most important dishes according to Chef Di Marco, are pappa al pomodoro and ribollita. Pappa al pomodoro is a bread-based tomato soup with herbs and spices, a rich and filling dish invented by Florentine farmers. Ribollita translated means “twice boiled,” and it is another soup reboiled with vegetables (like local white and black cabbage) and poured over bread. Chef Di Marco says it is easy to tell when dishes are made with old-school recipes or new-school recipes: the thickness of the soup, and the ingredients like olive oil, give it away. He says that every chef in Florence knows how to make these dishes, and that without them Florentine cuisine wouldn’t be Florentine cuisine.
Pane toscano can be made in about three hours time and takes a while to rise. This ensures its freshness for days, lasting longer than most bread you get at the supermarket. Its origin is from the province of Lucca, in the town of Altopascio, which still claims its fame to the crunchiest crust and the softest insides of all bread in Italy.
To learn about Tuscan bread, stop by Apicius, the hospitality department at FUA, and get a taste of it where it’s served daily at Ganzo, the Apicius restaurant. And while having a breakfast pastry or dessert at Fedora, the Apicius pastry shop, ask the baking experts there for tips and tidbits about it!
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