People are lying to you about food. You know this, as they’ve been doing it to you your entire gastral life. When you were old enough to understand speech, they said, “But all the other kids love vegetables.” When you were just old enough to try sashimi, they said, “No. That green stuff is definitely avocado.” When you were paid enough to visit a hatted restaurant, they said, “Chef picks all his own micro-herbs from a sustainable wall-garden made entirely from upcycled cardigans.” Women’s upcycled cardigans. Knitted by compassionate monks.
They lie to us, then we lie to them and at this very instant, a father is telling his toddler, “But all the other toddlers in Shandong province love their gai lan”. And a chef in Surry Hills says that her offal is sourced only from consenting pigs, and then the food magazines are filled with the declaration that “focaccia is back”.
Well, strictly speaking, this is not a lie. Focaccia is back, and I have seen this alleged “bread” rise again in our nation’s more influential cafés. The return of this rosemary-riddled brick from the past to our plate of the present is unwelcome. I’d prefer a double-denim comeback; a trend which has possibly re-emerged - I wouldn’t know as I am now consumed by fear of the un-consumable focaccia. Which, as shall be soon revealed, is a non-bread built on top of a falsehood.
The return of this rosemary-riddled brick from the past to our plate of the present is unwelcome.
Now. To be clear. We are agreed that bread in all its non-focaccia forms is proof of our value as a species. Paratha. Tortilla. Bao. Muffin. Let’s not get started on the boulangeries of France. Do let’s praise the panifici, though. The bakeries of Italy have produced and continue to refine loaves of greatest glory. Once, I briefly considered motherhood so that I could have a child and call them Panzanella.
The baking ingenuity of this population is a miracle. And it is hardly as though miracles are scarce on Italian tables. This is a miraculous cuisine. My Irish forebears needed their soda bread badly, as many of the nation’s recipes were written in dirt and famine. But Italians enjoy their fortunate history of food with every course. They have no knead* to prove* themselves with bread, but such excellence is ingrained*.
Focaccia is the exception. It is the one food of an Italian many that is not just less than delicious, but indigestible. I believe focaccia to be an intentional mistake. Think about it. Italian cooks don’t make true mistakes.
Now, perhaps you are blessed with a very supple throat and find it is possible to move this dough-mat to your stomach. Even so, you cannot genuinely say that it tasted agreeable, had a mouthfeel that brought anything to mind but SpongeBob or did not cause you to feel for hours after its ingestion that you could, if needed, now function as a small cement-mixer.
Wake up and smell the burnt rosemary, Sheeple. Focaccia is not a bread Italians eat, but an elaborate conspiracy. Etruscan documents have been forged by talented historians to suggest that the slab pre-dates pizza and was “invented” in time to feed all the Caesars. All Italians are privy to this knowledge and all bakers are sworn to keep this faux-caccia in their windows should a tourist pass by.
Turns out focaccia is un-consumable for this bird, too. Source: Alan Benson
Wake up and smell the burnt rosemary, Sheeple. Focaccia is not a bread Italians eat, but an elaborate conspiracy.
I suggest that at some point in the post-war period, Italian citizens became tired not only of slow economic recovery, but of serving English-speaking tourists the best food they’d ever tasted. These persons did not demonstrate sufficient gratitude, and so, Italy began to tell an elaborate joke in the international language of dough.
Well played, Italia. Brava! In my youth, I ordered and paid for your brilliant deception many times. Now I am a grownup, I’ll just eat all your vegetables. And pasta and fish course and…heck. You’ve given the world so much, you deserve the last laugh.
I’ll have a focaccia, thanks.
* SBS Food regrets its reporter was on a roll* of bread-based puns at the time of writing. Reporter has been warned not to loaf about* in future, or she will be leaven*.
Other breads you can name your child after
Bengali fried puffed bread (luchi)
