Pane Bread Recipe

I’ve talked a lot about salt here, both the crucial role it plays in cooking, and the fact that perfectly seasoned food doesn’t taste salty, yet you notice the moment it’s missing. I’ve written about that last part as if it’s a travesty. To some extent, that is quite true. But what about when salt is intentionally left out of a food? Such is the case with Tuscan bread.

While I’ve known about Pane Toscano for ages, making it at home was sort of a happy accident. I keep biga in my fridge (a firmer sourdough starter) to pull from during the week. This allows me to keep my base sourdough starter in the fridge where I can feed it weekly, instead of feeling tied to the daily routine of feeding it.

Still, I hadn’t connected the dots between the ease of making Tuscan bread, and the joy in eating it until I decided to pull a ball from my biga to make a quick pizza for lunch one day a few weeks ago.

Frittata Di Pane (bread Frittata)

Absentmindedly forgetting biga doesn’t contain salt, I went ahead with my pizza making. It was upon the first bite I noticed something was different, and that’s when I remembered the error of my ways, or was it? The lack of salt in my pizza dough allowed the toppings, in this case a simple tomato sauce, grated Pecorino, and fresh mozzarella, to take front and center stage.

This isn’t to say the crust was an afterthought. In fact, the crust, rather than playing a mere supporting character for the toppings, also had a more distinct flavor, allowing the sourdough taste to really break through.

Most articles highlight the possibility that salt was expensive during the Middle Ages, and since tradition is core to the foundation of Italian culture, the thought is Tuscan bakers kept to their routine even after salt became less cost prohibitive.

Pane Bianco With Sun Dried Tomatoes, Cheese, Garlic And Basil

It’s often inferred that Pane Toscano isn’t meant to be eaten on its own, and more of an accompaniment to a more flavorful dish—soups, stews, certainly a perfect bread for panzanella, another dish of Tuscan origin. Perhaps I’m weird, but I love eating just a slice of it slathered with salted butter. I guess that’s not really plain, after all but you know what I mean, right?

A lot of recipes online, and in cookbooks, are yeast-based. I’m a total convert, though, since using my starter, and I also think the sourdough lends a necessary tang to this bread. Maybe I wouldn’t be so enamored with Pane Toscano if it didn’t have that sourdough kick?

Uses a mix of starter and yeast. In fact, a lot of his recipes in that book call for a mix of both, which I find so counterintuitive to the philosophies behind sourdough in the first place. Lahey gives reasoning for this method, and it escapes my mind at the moment. If I can find the passage in his book again, I’ll make a note of it here.

Pane Integrale (whole Wheat Bread) Recipe

As mentioned earlier, this recipe is close to my biga, based on a 1:2:3 ratio of starter-water-flour. Not an exact ratio but close enough, and remember dough is very environment-driven. Heat and humidity mean it needs less water. Cold, dry air means the dough will be more thirsty. Unlike other breads I’ve made that require a long proof since sourdough takes more time than working with yeast, I find my Pane Toscano is ready to bake after just a few hours, 3 to 4, of rising in a warm spot, or in the oven with the light on (the oven itself is not turned on). This is due to the higher ratio of starter compared to other bread recipes.

Pull it out about three hours before you intend to bake, so it can shake off the chill thoroughly. Baking a cold, even faintly chilled loaf, results in a tighter, less springy crumb. I can actually taste the stress the cold dough underwent being forced into a blazing hot oven. Is it odd to be so connected to a humble mixture of water and flour? Perhaps, but normal is the last word I’d ever use to describe myself anyway.

I’ve yet to the tell the kids it’s a different bread than what I’ve been making, and they’ve yet to say anything about it. I think that’s ultimately a good thing, signaling they like it. These girls are quite vocal, and if they truly disliked this unsalted bread, I’d already know about it.in Italy or French bread, though this “French bread” is quite different in taste and texture from the actual French loaf which has a thinner crust and lighter crumb. But irrespective of all that, this is an ancient bread that is magnificent in both texture and taste and very easy to make.

Sourdough Easter Egg Bread (pane Di Pasqua)

I adapted this recipe from what I consider to be the definitive book on Italian Bread called “The Italian Baker” by the late Carol Fields. This is a GREAT book. Ms. Fields traveled throughout Italy to learn these recipes directly from local bakers in the regions she visited, so these are authentic.

As with most Italian loaves, this bread is started with a biga the day before, which is much like a poolish, using flour, water and a tiny amount of yeast, only stiffer. A poolish is 100% hydration where a biga can be anywhere from 60%-80% hydration. This recipe’s biga is 80% hydration. Let’s get started!

*I highly recommend using either Bob’s Red Mill or King Arthur, or any unbleached AP flour that has a protein content greater than 11%. Most generic brands are 10%. Gluten development is very difficult with those flours. Also, organic is better.

Tuscan Bread (pane Toscano)

I’m going to come clean and admit that I actually used my sourdough starter to make an 80% hydration levain. The Italians call this type of biga “Biga Naturale.” My levain was 100% whole wheat, so I didn’t use the whole wheat flour that’s listed in the final dough below.

Mix all the ingredients and let ferment for 12-16 hours at room temperature. As with any preferment, you want to make sure it’s nice and bubbly.

*You may see a recipe online that lists the salt as 16 grams. For this small amount of dough, 16 grams is WAY too much.

Pane Bianco With Sun Dried Tomatoes

According to Carol Fields, Italians predominantly use a mixer to mix up their dough. But you can mix by hand if you choose or if you don’t have a mixer. The process is pretty much the same.

I originally got “The Italian Baker” because I wanted to get a recipe for Pane Pugliese from a credible source. I made the Pane Pugliese from the book, and it turned out okay, but as I pored over the book, I saw this simple, straightforward recipe and knew I had to make it.

I think the romance of this recipe being ancient really got to me. In fact, my whole bread-making obsession has stemmed from the romanticism of making bread from recipes that are hundreds, maybe even thousands of years old. Granted, the flour of today is so much more refined than the flour of yesteryear, but to replicate bread from ages-old recipes and traditions… That’s just so FREAKIN’ cool to me!

Jim Lahey's No Knead Sourdough Bread

This is what keeps me exploring. I don’t know if this will turn into anything other than a hobby, but I do know one thing: I love continuing tradition!I am not a baker. Never have been. I have always found stove-top cooking fun and easy but baking is a very different art. Cooking lets you stir and taste and adjust as you go along to get things to come out just right. But with baking—once you close that oven door, your success is in the hands of fate.

But I’ve recently changed my mind, at least when it comes to homemade bread. I was forced into it, in a way, by the indifferent quality of the bread that I can find where I am now living. Even at the ‘fancy’ supermarkets around, and even at the few remaining bakeries in my area, the bread is almost always disappointing—the crust isn’t crusty enough, the crumb too soft and bland and too ‘tight’ as well. What I have been looking for is that bread that I remember appearing on Angelina’s table, large round loaves that she would hold close to her chest and cut with a large knife. That bread was crusty and chewy and delicious, with big holes that were perfect for catching sauce when wiping up sauce on your plate (‘facendo la scarpetta‘ as the they say in Italian). I rediscovered that kind of bread  when I moved to Italy, where it is variously called pane casereccio or pane di casa or (especially in and around Naples) pane cafone. It was cheap and good and ubiquitous, one of the small but wonderful pleasures of Italian life.

When I moved back to the States, I was desperate to find something comparable. After looking around for at least a year, I realized that I might as well be looking for unicorns. The obvious solution was

The Pain Of Pane Toscano, Tuscany's Saltless Bread