Benvenuti to the first Cucina Conversations post of the new year! This month, our topic is bread, specifically what Italians call pane raffermo (stale bread). To an inexperienced cook, the phrase “stale bread” can have negative connotations as it brings to mind hard-as-a-rock, inedible bread that is past its soft, crusty, chewy prime. But in the Italian kitchen, pane raffermo becomes a valuable ingredient that was born of the cucina povera (“cooking of the poor”), where no ingredient was wasted and less-desirable parts of animals and vegetables were creatively cooked into recipes that continue to thrive in homes and trattorie across the peninsula. Bread […]
