The importance of bread in daily life

Bread is one of the basic foods in our Mediterranean diet and cuisine. There are people who prefer the crust and who prefers the crumb, but everybody loves this typical product of our tradition.

Even if in the last year the price of bread has continuously increased, a lot of families did not want to renounce to have bread every day on their table. This food sector, in fact, is one of the fundamental sectors for our nutrition; bread is a food rich in carbohydrates, in balanced diet carbohydrates should provide about 50-55% of the whole calories. Bread, as all food taken one by one, is not a complete food; it is rich in fibers, particularly the integral one. So some people have decided to learn how to make bread at home, of course they do not use the usual bakery machines, but they satisfy themselves with smaller and less refined appliances. And sometimes results are not exactly how expected but leave a lot to be desired.

In a modern bakery, there are a lot of machines used every day, according to every moment of the production there is a precise machine, as the mixer or divider, or doser and blender, but also the different types of ovens that can be used. And the same applies to pastry machines, so it is obviously not possible to improvise a bakery or a pastry. The pastry is an art that belongs specifically to the European culinary traditions and to the ones generated from it, such as American or Creole. High Middle Age represents an essential step towards the concept of bakery as it is intended today, thanks to the flourishing trade that brought several key ingredients to the courts of nobles. Among these can sugar, cinnamon, ginger, rice, sesame seeds, nutmeg and clove. From the half of 16 century a real taste revolution had started, from here Europeans brought a lot of completely new ingredient, including cocoa, destined to find a place of absolute importance in modern bakery, but also coffee, sugar and vanilla. It is from here that also the art of pastry had assisted to a real huge expansion, defining its autonomy from the gastronomy as globally intended.

In Italy every region has its own bakery tradition. There are, in fact, a lot of types of bread typical of some specific Italy region, as for example the "michetta or "rosetta", a round shape bread, with a flat base and the typical star shape incision, it is empty in the inside due to the prolonged leavening of the dough. It is original from Lombardy. Or the "biova", originally from Piedmont, which is produced by a long-leavened dough, but with less water. The crumb is usually very soft. Or even the rye bread, the most widespread in South Tyrol, flavored with cumin seeds.

Then also the "ciriola", of Roman tradition, has an elongated shape and a very soft crumb inside, while the "coppia", from Ferrara, has a particular shape with four points and is made of hard dough. It has almost no crumb.

We also have to refer to the "carasau" or "paper music", the ancient Sardinian tradition, it appears as a thin disk of light color, crisp and crumbly, and it is obtained with semolina and very little leavening. Often now these regional breads can also be found in other regions, but if you do not find them but you want to taste them, you will surely find some in the numerous bread fairs.

By Martina Meneghetti with support from consorzio agroalimentare for any information, please visit attrezzatura per pizzeria