More Tuscany
Recent sightings, and a culinary observation:
Ever since I tasted my first piece of bread here, I wondered: why? Why no salt?
Bread without salt doesn’t taste very good at all. Tuscany is really into food, and good food, so what’s up with the bland, saltless bread? Especially when, in the summer, you lose quite a bit of salt sweating?
So, time to look it up. And the answer is—drum roll, please—nobody knows, but they’ve been doing it that way for centuries. There’s no dearth of theories; follow the link to learn them.
A few years ago we shared a table with an Italian couple while on a cruise. The wife kept salting her bread. Which I thought was pretty strange. They were from Venice. Don’t know if unsalted bread is the norm there, but if so, that may explain her habit.
Thanks for the travelogue Neo…
I pray you and yours are having the first of many more such wonderful experiences.
Perhaps you need to get closer to Siena. My recollection is their heavy use of salt is one of the things that distinguishes their food from that of Florence. You could also could pour some olive oil into a shallow dish and add salt, then dip the bread. 😉
That is strange though.
Eh, you get used to it, much like switching to unsalted butter, which makes the salt pig that much more dear.
Salt in a small dish of olive oil. Dippity do.Do it.
Sorry to see in your sighting that Tuscan has been depopulated. Must be the heat wave.
I noticed that too. Where are all the people?
Naturally I tried the salt-in-olive-oil thing as soon as I discovered the saltless bread. It’s a natural solution. Only problem is it’s not a solution. It tastes nothing like normal bread. What it tastes like is olive oil with particles of salt in it, coating tasteless salt-free bread. Not good at all.
One person is in the second photo leaning against the wall partially obscured by the tree.
You are much more a connoisseur of bread than I.
Love the trees.
I’m going with the theory that the unsalted bread-baking started because salt was so expensive in the ancient days.
http://www.saltassociation.co.uk/education/salt-history/roman-times/
“Roman soldiers were partly paid in salt. It is said to be from this that we get the word soldier – ‘sal dare’, meaning to give salt. From the same source we get the word salary, ‘salarium’.
Salt was a scarce and expensive commodity and its value was legendary. To sit above or below the salt identified precedence in the seating arrangements at a feast, according to one’s rank. Not to be worth one’s salt was a great insult. The Bible compliments some men as being ‘the salt of the earth’.”
It looks like a beautiful area. I can almost feel the sun on my skin.
AesopFan’s theory makes sense. How many things do we all do because ‘that’s how Mom did it’?
Phillipa – do you know the story about cutting off the ends of the ham?
A young married man wonders why his bride cuts off the ends of the ham before putting it in their brand-new baking pan, as there doesn’t seem to be any apparent reason. She snaps back to his question, “That’s the way my Mother did it.” Being a sane male, he quits while he is ahead.
However, at the next family dinner, he observed his mother-in-law and her ham, and gently inquires why she cuts off the ends.
“That’s the way my Mother did it,” she explained.
At Thanksgiving, hosted by his bride’s grandmother, he is intrigued enough to brave the question again.
“Sonny,” the old lady replied forthrightly, “back in the depression, I only had one pan. I had to cut the ends off so the ham would fit inside.”
I used to bake bread, before my low carb diet. The recipes called for a specific amount of salt that would serve to stop the yeast from being to exuberant and making so much CO2 that the bread would be full of large bubbles. The lack of salt probably means the local cooking method differs from the usual so the yeast actuvity is limited by heat, or less sugar to feed it. Bread is complex.