Pretty Awful Bread

I was roundly criticised for putting red peppers in my panzanella. It is, apparently, simply not done. I’ve done it anyway. Tastes pretty good to me.

Lots of countries have pretty awful bread but it is a source of wonder that a country with such a glorious dedication to good food should produce bread quite so tasteless as the average Italian loaf. There may be perfectly good historical reasons – the high price of salt is usually cited – and I am never one to spurn tradition, but it is a bit of a mystery that the Italians still refuse to put salt in those great dry loaves that one lugs back from the bakers. The bread does not really make sense until it becomes stale.