
Guide to Italian Bakeries - brudgers
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2017/04/the_ultimate_guide_to_italian_cookies_pastries.html
======
sklivvz1971
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...](http://www.dissapore.com/grande-
notizia/i-migliori-pani-italiani-regione-per-regione/)

I understand the article doesn't claim completeness, but they are presenting a
glass of water and calling it a sea.

~~~
iamacynic
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.

~~~
sklivvz1971
I never spoke about persecution, and having lived half my life abroad (France,
Singapore, Portugal and UK) I know pretty well multiple cuisines and I do
appreciate them. I did not post the above lacking understanding of how
different cuisines have different stories to tell. However I do feel that your
comment is just a dismissal based on a partial understanding of my previous
post.

Italy _is_ particularly interesting for being regional and so is India, for
example. Chinese cuisine I would not even call regional so far apart are the
different cooking styles.

French cuisine is also regional but way more uniform than Italian cooking.

Keep in mind that Italy has not been a united country for long at all, and for
example people from different regions speak different languages (there are 4
official languages in Italy, but probably at least a dozen spoken recognized
languages such as Friulano, Sardo, etc.). Many of our grandparents (if not
parents) did not speak Italian as a first language, that came about starting
from the 50's with national television and internal migration.

So you can imagine that traditions and cooking are completely different from
place to place. For the same reason there are hundreds of types of pasta for
example.

~~~
jaclaz
>(there are 4 official languages in Italy, but probably at least a dozen
spoken recognized languages such as Friulano, Sardo, etc.)

There is only one "official" language (Italian) since 1861.

Each region has its own dialect, that may (or may not) be either very similar
to italian or very different from it, that makes more than 12.

You are right that until the '50's and even later, the whole 60's for a large
part of the population Italian was a "second language", television started
broadcasting in 1954 but it was a "luxury" item and had some diffusion only in
the second half of the 60's

~~~
danmaz74
German, French and Slovenian are "official" languages in the sense that there
are areas where these languages are used by local governments together with
Italian. Eg in the Bolzano/Bozen province you can deal with most institutions
in German.

~~~
sklivvz1971
Besides Italian, there are 12 officially recognized languages (Albanian,
Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian,
Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian), four of which are co-official languages (French
in Val d'Aosta, Ladin and German in South Tyrol and Slovene in Friuli).

Officially recognized languages can be taught in schools for example, along
with Italian. Co-official languages enjoy equal status with Italian, all road
signs are bilingual, all official state material is bilinugal, etc.

Besides there are many other dozens beyond the official languages, to get an
idea of how crazy this is Italy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Italy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Italy)

Sources:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy#Languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy#Languages),
[http://www.parlamento.it/parlam/leggi/99482l.htm](http://www.parlamento.it/parlam/leggi/99482l.htm)

~~~
jaclaz
Not really-really.

There is only one official language, Italian and 12 minorities which cultures
and languages are officially "protected" or "safeguarded". That is the essence
of the Law 482/99 you cited.

In two border regions (namely Trentino Alto Adige for German and Val d'Aosta
for French) the population speaking the "other" language is so vast that there
are special provisions that make those regions "bilingual", but in Friuli
Slovenian is spoken by a minority and has much less relevance.

Albanian, Catalan, Greek, etc. are spoken by very small commmunities (still
coming from the original country where the language is spoken) that
"immigrated" in Italy centuries ago, and often they diverge from the
"original".

Sardinian is instead a "self-standing dialect", a local historical language of
the island, that is "protected", but nothing more (you don't have official
state documents written in Sardinian, nor official signs, etc.).

The "tower of babel" (that was a problem in the past) did not came however
from those "foreign" languages, after all Italy has century old tradition of
trading with France, Germany, etc., but rather from the dialects, and from the
lack of schooling/education.

Dialects are local and independent from other European languages (though of
course they may well have been influenced from them (take the dialects of
Sicily as an example) you can find in it words that clearly come from Spanish
or French (or even Arabic).

The people that immigrated to the US obviously largely came from the poorest
(and most isolated) regions and the dialect they spoke had very little in
common with Italian, a large number of those people couldn't read or write (at
least not properly) in Italian and for tens of years, they had no or little
contacts with Italy, it is only too normal that words changed in the meantime.

~~~
sklivvz1971
I've literally copied half my post from Wikipedia, and the rest from the
actual law I linked.

~~~
jaclaz
Sure, and it is the other half that is not entirely accurate.

The Law you linked to is clear enough, at least in the first three articles,
even a google translate is enough to understand the ideas behind it.

------
kome
I am Italian, and I live in France.

> 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
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..

~~~
johansch
As a Swede I'm quite confused about what you're trying to say.

I guess the benefit of (what I guess is the kind of bread you are talking
about) is that it can be stored quite easily and last for a month or two in
room temperature.

~~~
egjerlow
I am talking about what is here in general referred to as 'grovbrød' as
opposed to what is here in general referred to as 'loff'. Loff can be good,
but to many it feels substance-less, especially for breakfast.

~~~
johansch
Ah. Not sure what name that has in Sweden (I think just: "Fullkornsbröd"), but
having worked at a Norwegian company (or three) I did experience that kind of
bread in their Oslo-based company canteen many times over the years (during my
40 visits or so). It's really good with Nutella. :)

But really.. I think this all comes down to the fact that there are a lot of
different ways to make bread around the world. In a way I think it's good that
not every taste/texture combination is readily available everywhere - it makes
travelling so much more interesting.

~~~
egjerlow
Agreed. Also it makes you appreciate more the good things about your home
country as well!

------
virtualwhys
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...

~~~
danmaz74
In Italy you'll find fancy desserts in a "pasticceria", not a bakery ;)

~~~
smacktoward
My understanding is that it's the same in France -- for bread you go to a
_boulangerie_ , for pastries and desserts a _pâtisserie_.

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justifier
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

~~~
Markoff
why secret? sounds like ordinary B2B/wholesale bakery to me

~~~
justifier
it was a fun moniker my friends and i gave these garage bakeries

the secret is more about the unpublished locations and less about the idea of
it.. would you prefer the use of 'silent bakery'?

though one such 'secret bakery' may produce the pastries listed in the article
i think this open door discovery is more closely tied to the culture of italy,
you may be hard pressed to walk through residential areas of nj and find a
silent bakery but give it a try and report back if you find some secret spot
to get these pastries straight from the ovens

the anecdote is just a fun thing this article reminded me of

------
gattilorenz
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.

~~~
carlob
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.

~~~
SmellTheGlove
It's not that those foods aren't found in Italy, they're mostly just not found
served like they are here. Spaghetti with meatballs exists, it's just that
you'd have spaghetti usually first. Meatballs here are simplistically polpette
al sugo there, and would be eaten as a meat course after the pasta.

Chicken parm is one too many ingredients slammed together. You have chicken
cutlets there for sure. It would usually (but not always) be eaten more simply
than with sauce and cheese on it, and not served over or next to pasta like
here.

A lot of that is also more distant generation Italian-American. My parents,
who are from different regions of Italy, and my grandparents, one of whom grew
up in Italian Africa, didn't really make this stuff. Not to say it isn't good,
I just think it's been changed to fit the US in two big ways - first, that
meat (and food generally) is cheaper here, so we eat a lot more meat; and
second, everything on one plate, since IMHO Americans want to eat faster than
Italians would.

~~~
carlob
Not true, spaghetti con le polpettine is a thing, just not very common
nowadays, and not spread throughout the country.

~~~
SmellTheGlove
Polpettine are different than the Italian-American meatballs that you'll find
over here. Much smaller, and one bite in with the pasta. American polpette are
more like polpette Napoletane (and for good reason, that's who brought them
here) and quite often even larger than that. You have to cut them to eat them,
even if it's just with a fork. Too big, in my opinion, to eat with pasta. I
serve them as secondo.

~~~
carlob
You are also assuming that Italian cuisine didn't evolve in the past century.
Even the most famous Italian dish: pizza margherita is not 150 years old.
There are very common dishes nowadays, for example carpaccio, that pare post-
ww2 inventions.

Did you know that Quebecois French is closer to old French than proper French
French? Can you safely say it isn't us who have evolved and Italo-Americans
who have stayed the same?

~~~
SmellTheGlove
No, I think that both Italian and Italian-American cooking have evolved over
that time. Italian-American cooking isn't a snapshot of early century southern
Italy, and neither is a given Italian region a snapshot of its past. Both have
moved forward independently. Both have changed a bit in my lifetime.

------
ggambetta
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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
OT: Um, what's the recipe for almond biscotti? (Seems so wrong to ask that on
HN).

~~~
ggambetta
There's no wrong place to ask for an almond biscotti recipe.

This recipe I'm now sharing with you has been lovingly passed from nonna to
nipotina, generation after generation... until I found it on some random
website.

* 250g plain flour

* 1 teaspoon baking powder

* 180g caster sugar

* 1 pinch salt

* 25g butter, melted and cooled

* 2 eggs

* 175g almonds, coarsely chopped

1) Mix the flour with baking powder, then add sugar, vanilla sugar and salt.
Form into a mound with a hollow in the middle.

2) Pour the butter and eggs into it and knead to a dough. Knead in the chopped
almonds. Form the dough to a ball, adding more flour if necessary. Cover and
chill for 30 minutes.

3) Line a baking tray with baking parchment and preheat oven to 200 C / Gas 6.

4) Cut dough into 6 pieces and shape each into a 25cm log. Arrange logs on a
baking tray, leaving enough space for them to spread whilst cooking. Bake in
preheated oven for 10-15 minutes.

5) Allow them to cool a little, then cut into 1cm slices. Lay on a baking tray
and bake for another 8-10 minutes at 200 C / Gas 6 until golden-brown.

\---

Here are some pictures:
[https://www.facebook.com/gabriel.gambetta/posts/104917363189...](https://www.facebook.com/gabriel.gambetta/posts/104917363189589)

That's one of my first attempts. Note that the dough has been rolled and
flattened before the first bake - I don't do that anymore, which makes the
biscotti fluffier. Here's a more recent batch:
[https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=212037919144199&set=...](https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=212037919144199&set=a.212037892477535.1073741836.100010139762839&type=3&theater)

------
jaclaz
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.

~~~
sklivvz1971
Yes, people are not really aware how ignorant and arrogant they look when they
use the wrong Italian words to describe Italian food :-)

* cantucci NOT biscotti

* salame NOT salami or pepperoni

* zucchine NOT zucchini

* melanzane alla parmigiana, NOT parmigiana

etc. etc. etc.

~~~
komali2
I mean with all do respect WTF am I supposed to do lol, get a PhD in Italian
language and cuisine before touring Italy?

~~~
jaclaz
Naah, it is not necessary at all, you just enter a bakery (or other similar
eating shop) and point your finger on something in the showcase, the natives
will understand that you want that product ;) and almost invariably it will
taste good. Do not go to the restaurant and try ordering spaghetti with
meatballs, however.

~~~
komali2
Or I suppose fettuccine Alfredo :P

------
tgragnato
A hint ...

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
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.

------
hdhdhdbdbhdh
> Does anyone make better cookies, pastries and desserts overall than the
> Italians?

Probably not.

> And bread?

Please... Just visit Poland or Ukraine. You'll know how good a bread can be.

~~~
tyingq
I'm surprised most of the suggestions were Western centric. I'd rather eat
naan, challah or something else that has less in common with typical bread.

~~~
vinay427
To be fair, we would need several more articles to debate the origins and
characteristics of every other region's bread-like products. I would be glad
to read them, but it probably isn't realistic to compare all of them in the
same article. This submission from a few months ago mentions a slew of breads
that are found in various parts of India, though of course not all are Indian
in origin:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13119986](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13119986)

~~~
tyingq
Oh, I meant I expected to see more variety in these comments, not the article.

The title seems like it would have people bringing up different regions for
comparison in the comment section.

------
donretag
"Many Italian families split on whether to have pannetone(sic) or pandoro for
the holidays."

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
Panettone is the correct spelling.

~~~
donretag
Scusatemi se ho sbagliato a scrivere una parola sul internet

------
laGrenouille
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.

------
microdrum
Mamma mia! A fascinating window into the cultural difference that arise after
merely one or two generations apart from the motherland.

This gets linked every once in a while, and is worth it every time:
[http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-capicola-became-
gab...](http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-capicola-became-gabagool-the-
italian-new-jersey-accent-explained)

~~~
emodendroket
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.

------
nkkollaw
As an Italian, I must say that most of the information in the article is
wrong.

------
dannylandau
Is it possible to order bakery items directly from Italy?

------
andreapaiola
As an italian I could say: bad photos, good writing...

