Friday Bread Basket 7/31/26

Bake like an Egyptian

31 Jul 2026 — 3 min read

Found here.

Pizza romana originated in bread bakeries as a humble snack, served bianca (plain) or red with tomato sauce, said Pierluigi Roscioli, the third-generation baker behind Antico Forno Roscioli, and part of the family that’s given us the celebrated Salumeria Roscioli. In the 1960s and ’70s, immigrants from Abruzzo, he said, brought their pizza in teglia (pizza in an iron pan) to the Italian capital, and the two lineages merged. Mr. Roscioli went on to transform pizza bianca into Rome’s most coveted carb unit, with long fermentations of dough and fanatical attention to detail. In 2003, the star pizzaiolo Gabriele Bonci sparked his own movement when he opened Pizzarium with thick sourdough crusts and toppings like vanilla-scented potatoes.

Now a “Roman pizza 3.0” generation is shaking things up. And so, during a recent stay in Rome, I succumbed to a delicious carb-on-carb overload in pursuit of the city’s most exciting pizza developments.

“Today, Rome’s best pizza al taglio isn’t just about a beautiful counter display,” said Sara Bonamini, the co-founder of Tulipane bakery and the former editor of Gambero Rosso’s Pizzerie d’Italia guide. “It’s about taking something simple and making it with tremendous care, so that every piece carries a story, a heritage.”

The last time I was in Rome was 2014, when Bonci was still the star of al taglio, so I need to get back there, stat.

(Original here.)

Joy is made to be a crumb

I've been meaning to work up a toasted sourdough ice cream recipe for a while now, but now I don't need to, because Sophia Real of Real Simple Food has gone and done it for me (and you):

...I hate food waste with a passion. I used to volunteer for a Food Waste charity in the UK and I’m still horrified by just how much food we throw away. And what is one of the most wasted food items? Stale bread. (And yes, one of the last things I did before we left on our latest trip was slicing some stale baguette and putting it in the freezer)

When we think of repurposing stale bread we often think of French toast / pain perdu / torrijas or maybe bread pudding (or its savoury equivalent strata). But what if I told you that with a little bit of sugar, butter and salt you can turn the rest of your sourdough loaf into sweet and crunchy little nuggets to rival the best kettle corn? And that if you fold those nuggets into a creme fraiche custard and churn in your ice cream maker you end up with one of the best homemade ice cream flavours?

When I first shared a few snaps of this Toasted Sourdough Ice Cream in a Note last November, it brought me tens of new subscribers. And I knew I had to share the recipe in my newsletter. I just figured I would wait until the summer months to share it! So here we are.

Sophia says that the crumbs should be in "pieces no bigger than a corn kernel" which is going to be a challenge with the sorts of rock-hard hunks I have lying around; hopefully yours are in a more pliable state.