It seems more a well researched article on whatever Italian bakery is available abroad, but certainly not a realistic description of Italian food variety.
Being Italian, it's always a bit funny to see Italian food being described from outside. The article is missing some important points about Italian bakery. In Italy you can find "panifici", which sell both savoury and sweet baked products, from pizza to bread to biscotti and other sweet non-refrigerated cakes. You can also find "pasticcerie", which sell only sweet products, both baked, frozen and semifrozen, from cakes to pastries to meringata. Finally you can find "gelaterie" which sell mostly ice-cream based product, but also other frozen and semi-frozen products. The selection given, thus, is misleading because it's leaving out a huge selection of similar products which are majorly important in Italian cuisine, starting with gelato based treats.
Furthermore, Italian cuisine is strongly regional. Bakery in Naples is completely different from bakery in Genoa or Venice. The article presents a subset of items from some of these regions, but is in no way a complete or realistic description of what one can find in Italian bakeries. Some examples here (this is really a tiny subset!): http://www.dissapore.com/grande-notizia/i-migliori-pani-ital...
I understand the article doesn't claim completeness, but they are presenting a glass of water and calling it a sea.
For what it's worth, this article is probably better titled "the Italian-American Bakery Explained"; over the last century and a half Italian-American culture has evolved in to something with roots in, but distinct and different from, the culture of Italy itself. It's largely based on the culture of Sicily and the South, since that's where so many Italian immigrants came from, but years and years in America have shifted it in to a sort of separate culture. It's especially telling that this is from a New Jersey-focused website, since NJ is one of the epicenters of Italian-American culture in the US.
I'm a fourth-generation Italian-American myself, and I've recently been learning Italian and gotten interested in geneology and tracing the cultural roots of my family. It's really interesting to see how true Italian culture is similar to what I grew up with, but also very different.
Thanks for an interesting read about Italian bakeries! I do feel compelled to point out, though, that an "Italian bakery" is a very specific, regional thing easily recognized by the readers of this local newspaper. If the term were a little more honest it would be called an "Italian American" bakery, and as a visitor and native Italian you would find quite a bit more to take issue with than the selection! What is undeniable though, is how delicious and truly special the cookies are at a good Italian bakery. Some of the best things I've ever eaten are from Gencarelli's Bakery in Bloomfield NJ.
I think it's important to keep in mind that this is NJ.com (I used to work there!) and their audience (people in New Jersey) is very well defined. Their audience knows exactly what the article is talking about. Every once in a while they have a breakout article like this. They're closely associated with Newark and the Star-Ledger, and I wouldn't be shocked to learn out that the article was tailored to spur discussion over the merits of Italian vs. Portuguese bakeries Since Newark has a large, and more recent, Portuguese-American population.
I think when they say "Italian" "Italian-American" is implied. After all, the author describes himself as "Italian" and these are all the foods I'd expect to see in an "Italian bakery" in the United States.
Ha, this, and not just this but what Italian bakery are you likely to find gelatto and tiramisu in? I think maybe the author has only been to Battale's Eataly in NYC, which is more like "open floor Italian-ish gourmet market" than a bakery.
replace 'italian' in your post with chinese, french, american bbq, new californian, brazilian, arab, mexican, etc, etc, etc.
but of course, the cuisine you understand the most personally is the one that is most persecuted, right? the one that everyone gets wrong, because it's so nuanced and special, more special than anyone else's cuisine, because don't you see, italians invented civilized cuisine, you heathen?
welcome to how the world interprets regional/national cuisine. it's all wrong. none of it is correct, because it is a foreign understanding. italy is not special in this regard.
> Does anyone make better cookies, pastries and desserts overall than the Italians? We don't think so! And bread? Please.
Yes: the French make better bread, cookies, pastries and desserts. French bakeries are just so good.
I am not a self hating Italian: Italian cuisine is vastly superior to French cuisine (really overrated!); Italian wine is on par (if not better) than French wine. But French bread, pastry and desserts just win. Like: hands down. They are just so much better.
I am in Paris since 2012, and I am not yet tired of buying bread every morning: the smell of fresh bread in the morning is like heaven... Nothing is quite like a good French croissant, or croissant aux amandes, or...
The quality of Italians bakeries and pastries is not even half of the French ones. I ignore why Italians totally lack of a "culture" of bread... we can do so much better.
Meanwhile, as a Norwegian, the notion that Italians or the French make 'good' bread is hard to swallow. That's probably what most of us miss when we go further abroad than North Europe - decent non-white bread to eat for breakfast. (citation needed). However, this is probably mostly due to the differences in what we expect good bread to be..
It's interesting to note the relationships different nations/cultures have to bread.
For example, a lot of bread (French, Italian, Turkish), while tasty enough, is very dainty compared to the rough, rustic, whole-grain stuff we eat in Scandinavia:
In Norway, where I'm from, supermarkets carry a couple of types of white bread (refined, processed wheat), which is no longer popular. And even in the tiniest grocery stores, almost all breads were made fresh the same day.
This comes from tradition, but also from government guidelines that have always held whole-grain flour to be healthier than the more refined kinds, as is other kinds of wholesome, unrefined, down-to-earth stuff.
Meanwhile, in NYC, where I live, it's difficult to find fresh bread that isn't just white bread. The shelves are bulging with dozens of types of plastic-wrapped, pre-sliced, mass-produced, mind-numbingly boring bread with long shelf lives and containing preservatives and even sugar (!) or high-fructose corn syrup (!).
Americans always used to have the highest regard for French cuisine (hence its popularity with celebrity chefs like James Beard and Julia Child, and in famous fine dining establishments like NYC's Waldorf and Ritz-Carlton hotels), until roughly the release of The Godfather in 1972, which caused a boom in interest in Italian-American culture, including Italian cuisine, which is nowadays by far the most popular here.
If French cuisine is known as the best cuisine it's because of its gastronomy and its high-end restaurants!
However when going to "regular" restaurants, Italy is simply the best.
Well... it's a matter of opinion, I guess, but give me biscotti regina and pizzelle any day.
e: Also I think where you said "ignore" you meant "don't know," because in English "ignore" can only mean "to not pay attention to" but the alternate meaning of the French word "ignorer" fits better with your sentence.
Which breads, pastries, and desserts do you think make good examples of French superiority? I'd like to give some of them a try.
IMO both countries have excellent bread. Its just an opinion, but I think that Tiramisu is not only the best dessert, but also the best food on the planet.
i am from continental Europe and by my memory best bread I ate was in Turkey, while I have great memories about Filipino cakes available from small bakeries on every corner almost for free, was seriously addicted to them when traveling in Philippines
people defending their own cuisine are usually people who haven't traveled enough to compare
i am also always amazed for instance by popularity of Thai cuisine while personally I find Malay cuisine superior if I had to decide what to eat for rest of my life and consider Georgetown food capital of world (though I haven't visited that many destinations, so take this with grain of salt)
Note that these are Italian bakeries in New Jersey, not bakeries in Italy.
Having spent this past autumn in Italy (Rome and Florence) I can say that the average Italian bakery has a lot of the cookies/pastries in the first picture and little to none of the more exotic (read: absolutely delicious looking) desserts presented here. They also tend to double as pizza shops. Basically, less refined, the pictured desserts seem more restaurant quality.
I wasn't spending much time in the chique areas, however, so maybe (high end) Italian bakeries do in fact deliver such mouth watering delicacies ;-)
Have cut way down on sugar the last month or so, there's a feeling to eat the photographs...
>"Note that these are Italian bakeries in New Jersey, not bakeries in Italy."
Indeed, these are not not places where you go for breads they are Italian- American Pasticcerias(they tend to be in the Northeast of the US - NJ, NYC, Boston etc.) You go to these for a coffee, some cheesecake and conversation or for a box of takeout pastries. Most of them don't even sell regular bread just sweets. You could probably write a separate article on Italian bakeries in the Northeastern US though.
when I lived in Italy I would always scour a new city for what my friends and I referred to as secret bakeries
one night we closed the bars and were walking home past santa croce in firenze
it was nearly 5am and we suddenly could smell sweet pastries in the air
literally following our noses we wound through labyrinthine alleyways until we came across an halfway open garage door
looking in, the garage was full of industrial ovens and wheeled racks full of newly baked pastries prepped to fill the glass counters of every bakery and coffee shop around the city
we got an employees attention and politely asked to buy one of those fresh, warm, straight out the oven pastries
the bakers were happy to sell us any of the pastries all for one euro each
the first time was a magical experience and now i'm always sure to take a night to walk the streets of any italian city at 5am looking for a secret bakery baking the fresh pastries before they are sent out into the city
I won't argue with the other names (although some sound quite wrong to my northern-italian ear), but I'm 100% positive that no Italian would call it "pannetone": it's "panettone", ("giant bread" or something like that).
Now we can start the big debate for deciding whether the true one is panettone with just raisins or panettone with raisins and "canditi".
Boy, do we love to talk about food... and we're generally quite picky about it although I agree with other commenters: we need to learn from other countries the pleasures of brown bread.
Just start considering NJ the 21st Italian region. Spaghetti with meatballs and chicken parm are certainly things you never see in Italy, but are considered a staple of Italian cuisine in the US.
The other thing which is weird is how a lot of these specialities are very regional: I wouldn't know a place that makes good panettone also makes good sfogliatelle or cannoli.
Panettone isn't panettone in my house without the candied fruit.
Its also vitally important that the candied fruit you use be at least 20 years old, since its sold in absurd quantities (relatively to how much you use in a recipe) and the only thing we use it in is panettone and wheat pie (which, actually, my mother is in the other room making for easter).
Now, what goes into the wheat pie... That's gonna start up an argument here.
Yes, panettone. Pannetone is not a thing, only a spelling mistake no Italian would do. No hard feelings, I keep making spelling mistakes no native English speaker would do.
Almond biscotti are my go-to bake. The recipe is so simple I never managed to get it wrong, not even on my first try. I make a big batch once a month or so, keep a handful for myself, and take the rest to the office. I'm convinced this is one of the reasons I have a job :P PROTIP: do dunk them in coffee. They are supposed to be hard and dry.
Tiramisù is also simple to make - no baking required! Homemade is infinitely better than anything you get almost anywhere, including some restaurants (and during my travels throughout Italy I made a point of trying every tiramisù [and Carbonara] I crossed paths with). PROTIP: leave in the fridge for at least 24 hours before consuming. The flavours mix and the dessert becomes twice as delicious.
Just for the record, "biscotti" is the "generic name" for any kind of biscuit, if you want the "Cantucci" you need to ask for either "cantucci" (better "cantuccini") or for "Biscotti di Prato" .
To be strict, the "Biscotti di Prato" are the most famous "type" of "cantucci", for which there are several slightly different recipes.
Of course they are typical of Tuscany and you won't find them everywhere in Italy, in Lazio there are the similar "tozzetti".
... oh, and usually they are eaten only after the meal, dipped in either Vin Santo or Aleatico or similar sweet wines.
The only role of the gelatin in the panna cotta is as a thickening agent. But this is not the only way to make this delicious dessert.
If you want to experience a less chemical taste, the gelatin can be effectively replaced with egg whites (which on the contrary also contribute to the flavor).
To thicken the mixture of milk, cream and sugar, flavored with vanilla seeds/pod, you might add the egg whites to it. Cooking does not change.
The result is a softer cream, with a wide-ranging taste.
The timing on this, the day before Easter is great: if you live in the US and have an Italian bakery anywhere near you, go in and get yourself a 'pizza rustica'. It's an Italian-American pie made of sausages, cheeses, and eggs in a crust, and it is wonderful. It's pretty much only available around Easter (my family has had one for Easter brunch basically as long as I can remember), so now's your chance to go try one.
Given the content, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was not a 50-page "slideshow". I'm glad to see that websites are starting to abandon that terrible format.
I felt like this took a long time to get to the point, which was: Italian Americans are generally descended from speakers of Southern Italian languages that differ from modern standard Italian, and those languages are notable for having terminal vowel deletion, converting "o" into "oo," and voicing unvoiced consonants, leading to them sounding distinct from modern standard Italian speakers.
[+] [-] sklivvz1971|9 years ago|reply
Being Italian, it's always a bit funny to see Italian food being described from outside. The article is missing some important points about Italian bakery. In Italy you can find "panifici", which sell both savoury and sweet baked products, from pizza to bread to biscotti and other sweet non-refrigerated cakes. You can also find "pasticcerie", which sell only sweet products, both baked, frozen and semifrozen, from cakes to pastries to meringata. Finally you can find "gelaterie" which sell mostly ice-cream based product, but also other frozen and semi-frozen products. The selection given, thus, is misleading because it's leaving out a huge selection of similar products which are majorly important in Italian cuisine, starting with gelato based treats.
Furthermore, Italian cuisine is strongly regional. Bakery in Naples is completely different from bakery in Genoa or Venice. The article presents a subset of items from some of these regions, but is in no way a complete or realistic description of what one can find in Italian bakeries. Some examples here (this is really a tiny subset!): http://www.dissapore.com/grande-notizia/i-migliori-pani-ital...
I understand the article doesn't claim completeness, but they are presenting a glass of water and calling it a sea.
[+] [-] Itaxpica|9 years ago|reply
I'm a fourth-generation Italian-American myself, and I've recently been learning Italian and gotten interested in geneology and tracing the cultural roots of my family. It's really interesting to see how true Italian culture is similar to what I grew up with, but also very different.
[+] [-] rashkov|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freshyill|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emodendroket|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markbnj|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cholantesh|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamacynic|9 years ago|reply
but of course, the cuisine you understand the most personally is the one that is most persecuted, right? the one that everyone gets wrong, because it's so nuanced and special, more special than anyone else's cuisine, because don't you see, italians invented civilized cuisine, you heathen?
welcome to how the world interprets regional/national cuisine. it's all wrong. none of it is correct, because it is a foreign understanding. italy is not special in this regard.
[+] [-] kome|9 years ago|reply
> Does anyone make better cookies, pastries and desserts overall than the Italians? We don't think so! And bread? Please.
Yes: the French make better bread, cookies, pastries and desserts. French bakeries are just so good.
I am not a self hating Italian: Italian cuisine is vastly superior to French cuisine (really overrated!); Italian wine is on par (if not better) than French wine. But French bread, pastry and desserts just win. Like: hands down. They are just so much better.
I am in Paris since 2012, and I am not yet tired of buying bread every morning: the smell of fresh bread in the morning is like heaven... Nothing is quite like a good French croissant, or croissant aux amandes, or...
The quality of Italians bakeries and pastries is not even half of the French ones. I ignore why Italians totally lack of a "culture" of bread... we can do so much better.
[+] [-] egjerlow|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lobster_johnson|9 years ago|reply
For example, a lot of bread (French, Italian, Turkish), while tasty enough, is very dainty compared to the rough, rustic, whole-grain stuff we eat in Scandinavia:
http://imgur.com/a/OD8Jt
In Norway, where I'm from, supermarkets carry a couple of types of white bread (refined, processed wheat), which is no longer popular. And even in the tiniest grocery stores, almost all breads were made fresh the same day.
This comes from tradition, but also from government guidelines that have always held whole-grain flour to be healthier than the more refined kinds, as is other kinds of wholesome, unrefined, down-to-earth stuff.
Meanwhile, in NYC, where I live, it's difficult to find fresh bread that isn't just white bread. The shelves are bulging with dozens of types of plastic-wrapped, pre-sliced, mass-produced, mind-numbingly boring bread with long shelf lives and containing preservatives and even sugar (!) or high-fructose corn syrup (!).
In Oslo, one of my favourite places is this:
http://i.imgur.com/CeOUqoE.jpg
Notice the "coarseness" chart on the right, showing the percentage of whole-grain flour in each product.
I live a kilometer away from a Danish bakery that does a decent rustic loaf, but it's still frustrating.
[+] [-] walterstucco|9 years ago|reply
Otherwise Italian bread is one of the best of the world and has nothing to fear from the French one.
source: an Italian from Rome that lived in most of the north of Italy and cried every night for their terrible, almost inedible, bread.
[+] [-] smitherfield|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajpkco|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] emodendroket|9 years ago|reply
e: Also I think where you said "ignore" you meant "don't know," because in English "ignore" can only mean "to not pay attention to" but the alternate meaning of the French word "ignorer" fits better with your sentence.
[+] [-] insaneirish|9 years ago|reply
On theory is that it's often eaten with other highly salted foods so things balance out.
But on its own... no thank you.
[+] [-] ivanhoe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phaus|9 years ago|reply
IMO both countries have excellent bread. Its just an opinion, but I think that Tiramisu is not only the best dessert, but also the best food on the planet.
[+] [-] Markoff|9 years ago|reply
people defending their own cuisine are usually people who haven't traveled enough to compare
i am also always amazed for instance by popularity of Thai cuisine while personally I find Malay cuisine superior if I had to decide what to eat for rest of my life and consider Georgetown food capital of world (though I haven't visited that many destinations, so take this with grain of salt)
[+] [-] megablast|9 years ago|reply
This is a big call. From someone who has lived in both countries, French cuisine is so much more varied.
[+] [-] codecamper|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carlob|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] virtualwhys|9 years ago|reply
Having spent this past autumn in Italy (Rome and Florence) I can say that the average Italian bakery has a lot of the cookies/pastries in the first picture and little to none of the more exotic (read: absolutely delicious looking) desserts presented here. They also tend to double as pizza shops. Basically, less refined, the pictured desserts seem more restaurant quality.
I wasn't spending much time in the chique areas, however, so maybe (high end) Italian bakeries do in fact deliver such mouth watering delicacies ;-)
Have cut way down on sugar the last month or so, there's a feeling to eat the photographs...
[+] [-] bogomipz|9 years ago|reply
Indeed, these are not not places where you go for breads they are Italian- American Pasticcerias(they tend to be in the Northeast of the US - NJ, NYC, Boston etc.) You go to these for a coffee, some cheesecake and conversation or for a box of takeout pastries. Most of them don't even sell regular bread just sweets. You could probably write a separate article on Italian bakeries in the Northeastern US though.
[+] [-] danmaz74|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justifier|9 years ago|reply
one night we closed the bars and were walking home past santa croce in firenze
it was nearly 5am and we suddenly could smell sweet pastries in the air
literally following our noses we wound through labyrinthine alleyways until we came across an halfway open garage door
looking in, the garage was full of industrial ovens and wheeled racks full of newly baked pastries prepped to fill the glass counters of every bakery and coffee shop around the city
we got an employees attention and politely asked to buy one of those fresh, warm, straight out the oven pastries
the bakers were happy to sell us any of the pastries all for one euro each
the first time was a magical experience and now i'm always sure to take a night to walk the streets of any italian city at 5am looking for a secret bakery baking the fresh pastries before they are sent out into the city
[+] [-] Markoff|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gattilorenz|9 years ago|reply
Now we can start the big debate for deciding whether the true one is panettone with just raisins or panettone with raisins and "canditi".
Boy, do we love to talk about food... and we're generally quite picky about it although I agree with other commenters: we need to learn from other countries the pleasures of brown bread.
[+] [-] carlob|9 years ago|reply
The other thing which is weird is how a lot of these specialities are very regional: I wouldn't know a place that makes good panettone also makes good sfogliatelle or cannoli.
[+] [-] tomcooks|9 years ago|reply
Any article about italian food is doomed to attract hordes of Italians complaining about what is written aha
(STOP THE NO CANDITI BLASPHEMY)
[+] [-] AdamJacobMuller|9 years ago|reply
Its also vitally important that the candied fruit you use be at least 20 years old, since its sold in absurd quantities (relatively to how much you use in a recipe) and the only thing we use it in is panettone and wheat pie (which, actually, my mother is in the other room making for easter).
Now, what goes into the wheat pie... That's gonna start up an argument here.
[+] [-] pmontra|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SmellTheGlove|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ggambetta|9 years ago|reply
Tiramisù is also simple to make - no baking required! Homemade is infinitely better than anything you get almost anywhere, including some restaurants (and during my travels throughout Italy I made a point of trying every tiramisù [and Carbonara] I crossed paths with). PROTIP: leave in the fridge for at least 24 hours before consuming. The flavours mix and the dessert becomes twice as delicious.
[+] [-] jaclaz|9 years ago|reply
To be strict, the "Biscotti di Prato" are the most famous "type" of "cantucci", for which there are several slightly different recipes.
Of course they are typical of Tuscany and you won't find them everywhere in Italy, in Lazio there are the similar "tozzetti".
... oh, and usually they are eaten only after the meal, dipped in either Vin Santo or Aleatico or similar sweet wines.
[+] [-] sklivvz1971|9 years ago|reply
* cantucci NOT biscotti
* salame NOT salami or pepperoni
* zucchine NOT zucchini
* melanzane alla parmigiana, NOT parmigiana
etc. etc. etc.
[+] [-] tgragnato|9 years ago|reply
The only role of the gelatin in the panna cotta is as a thickening agent. But this is not the only way to make this delicious dessert.
If you want to experience a less chemical taste, the gelatin can be effectively replaced with egg whites (which on the contrary also contribute to the flavor).
To thicken the mixture of milk, cream and sugar, flavored with vanilla seeds/pod, you might add the egg whites to it. Cooking does not change.
The result is a softer cream, with a wide-ranging taste.
[+] [-] Itaxpica|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hdhdhdbdbhdh|9 years ago|reply
Probably not.
> And bread?
Please... Just visit Poland or Ukraine. You'll know how good a bread can be.
[+] [-] donretag|9 years ago|reply
I am definitely in the pandoro camp. Preferably filled with chocolate creme or covered in chocolate, but standard sugar is still better than panetone.
[+] [-] doppioandante|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laGrenouille|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microdrum|9 years ago|reply
This gets linked every once in a while, and is worth it every time: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-capicola-became-gab...
[+] [-] emodendroket|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dannylandau|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andreapaiola|9 years ago|reply