Easy Italian Recipes

Shapes of bread differ from region to region and there are far too many to mention, however the most popular are as follows:

Panino - common roll used to make filled snacks or light lunches.

Rosetta - crusty white roll Michetta - crispy light roll from Milan.

Pagnotta - large loaf, popular all over Italy, made to last the week. Typical are the sourdough durum wheat breads made in Altamura in Puglia which are full of holes and can weigh up to 2kg, or those made in the Dolomites that at one time were made to last for up to a year and had to be cut with a special knife. These big loaves are hard to bake at home, requiring a stone base to allow them to bake from underneath.

Filone - long loaf, like a fat baguette.

Ciabatta - the slipper loaf that is now so popular outside Italy.

Pane senza lievito - across Italy you will find unleavened bread such as piadina from Romagna, testo bread from Umbria, pane carasau from Sardinia and pitta from Calabria, which is served filled and re-heated or as an accompaniment to salumi and cheese.

Pane integrale - wholemeal bread

Pane carre - a sliced white loaf used for mozzarella in carozza or tramezzini, the crustless sandwiches found in bars and cafés.

Never waste bread

Traditionally, bread is never thrown away in Italy. In various regions it is seen as bad luck to discard bread, however stale. Old bread, known as pane raffermo (bread that has become firm or hard) is used in recipes all over Italy.

Stale bread can be used to pad out soups such as Ribollita or Acquacotta, or soaked in vinegar and squeezed out to reconstitute for adding to the Tuscan salad Panzanella, In the Veneto, sliced dry bread is imbibed with flavoured stock and served as a soup.
Breadcrumbs, too, are a staple of the kitchen. Semi-stale crumbs are mixed with meat for stuffing or for use in the soup known as passatelli. Very dry crumbs are used to coat veal in the Milanese fashion.
Often they will impanare a piece of meat, which means dipping it in flour, egg and then bread- crumbs before frying.

Soft breadcrumbs
Italians call the soft white breadcrumbs from inside a loaf mollica. They use these in meatballs and meatloaf. Slightly stale bread from a white loaf is often soaked in milk and then used. However this only works in the UK when you have a properly made country loaf with a crumb that is quite solid and full of holes. Most commercial British white bread simply turns to putty when soaked and doesn't bounce back to life like an Italian country loaf. So I prefer to whizz soft bread into breadcrumbs using a food processor and then add a couple of spoons of milk to the recipe if it feels a little dry. If you are doing this with a recipe that includes herbs or garlic, whizz them at the same time and the flavour will be wonderful. If you don't have a food processor, use a grater instead.

Medium-soft breadcrumbs
If you are making something with a crust, such as Oven-baked Salmon with Pistachio and Honey Crust, use medium-dry breadcrumbs or fresh breadcrumbs, and don't sieve them: the crunch is better if the breadcrumbs are not too fine.

Dry breadcrumbs
You can make hard breadcrumbs from very stale bread. Italian mammas could give you a thousand recipes for ways to use these, but here, you'll find them in Veal Milanese, Summer Sunday Chicken and Peperonata. When coating veal, first sieve the breadcrumbs so that you are only left with the smallest crumbs.

Freezing breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs can be frozen, so stick a small bag or two in the freezer. But don't freeze massive quantities; you won't be able to use them up quickly enough.