In Rome, bread is rich. It comes in large, thick loaves made with generous amounts of olive oil and salt, giving a thick texture and rich taste. The crust is hard and crunchy, but the inside is soft and doughy, like a good bread should be. This is a bread that is delightful all by itself. But the Romans also get creative with their bread. They often make what essentially amounts to plain pizza dough, baked with copious amounts of olive oil on top, and served just as is. Simple, but absolutely delicious.

The Florentines and the people of the Tuscany region, however, prefer their bread unsalted. Salt, if you know nothing about cooking, is what brings out the flavor in everything. Not only this, but they do something to the dough - I'm not sure what exactly - that makes the resulting bread airy and light. Therefore, Florentine bread is crumbly and almost totally tasteless: its like eating air. But the Florentines never intended you to eat their bread alone. Its faults make it perfect to put things on top of it: leftover pasta sauce, olive oil from the bottle, cheeses, meats, whatever. It is the simple vehicle of the condiment, and will no doubt increase the joy of that addition, without overpowering it.

But in Ravenna, the ancient Byzantine capital of Italy on the Adriatic coast, bread becomes decidedly weird. Its flat. In fact, its made from just flour and water and a pinch of salt, then cooked fast on a greased griddle. Imagine a tortilla. Yes, you can eat this stuff by itself, and its not bad, but its really meant to be the canvas for what the Ravennites call the "piadine", what we Americans know to be a wrap. They stuff all sorts of things (olives, meats, cheeses, vegetables, greens, spices, whatever) onto a large round disc of this bread and roll it up. Whether this is a modern invention or not, I do not know, but the result is just scrumptious. You wont find this bread - or any bread - at dinner, however. For that meal the Ravennites prefer thin, crunchy breadsticks.

This is Italy. If every region of Italy has its own way of making bread, the staple of life for thousands of years, then each region also must - and does - have unique ways of doing everything. Each region, almost each city of Italy has its unique culture and lifestyle, down to such trivial things as bread. In my experience, traveling to a few of these regions ignites some sort of primal desire to acquire and collect, and thereafter comes the compelling need to visit all the nooks and crannies of this tiny country in an effort to find all the little regional idiosyncrasies. But these different peoples are not entirely different, they are still united by some common traits, practices, and philosophies. One of those, unquestionably, is the universal worship and love of bread.