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Rustic Italian bread, also known as pan bigio, is a chewy and rough-textured bread ideal for dipping and sandwiches. It is traditionally made with unrefined flour, including whole-wheat flour, and a biga starter for complex and savory flavors. The bread has a thick crust and earthy flavor, and can be made at home or purchased from Italian bakeries.
Rustic Italian bread is a type of traditional Italian bread known for its very chewy and rough texture. The texture of this bread makes it ideal for dipping and sandwiching, as it holds moisture very well without getting soggy. This bread is also called pan bigio, or “gray bread”, in reference to the unrefined flour that is traditionally used to prepare it. Many Italian bakeries offer this bread and it can also be made at home.
By tradition, the bigio pan is made with minimally processed flour. Typically, that means the flour is whole-wheat, lending a very rich, nutty flavor to the finished bread. Some bakers prefer to use a blend of lightly processed white flour and whole-wheat flour so the bread isn’t as heavy, creating a bread with a speckled texture and a slightly more open crumb. Cornmeal can also be added to make the texture even rougher.
Italian country bread is made with a biga, a traditional Italian starter that draws wild yeasts out of the air. Breads made with bigas tend to be chewier and have more complex and savory flavors due to the slow fermentation of the wild yeasts involved. It is not recommended to make brown bread with dry yeast, as the bread will tend to have a bland, lackluster taste that won’t be very pleasant, and the texture will be substantially different.
A good loaf of Italian country bread has a thick, chewy crust, medium crumb, and chewy texture. The dough includes salt, water and oil in addition to the flours discussed above, and is traditionally very moist and sticky. This can make the dough very difficult to handle, but produces a chewier bread; bakers tend to flour their hands heavily when working with the dough to keep it from sticking.
The flavor of Italian country bread is savory with an earthy note; the strength of the earthy note varies depending on the amount of wholemeal flour used. In case the bread is made in a traditional brick oven, the bread will have a thick crust on the bottom and a slightly smoky flavor; the conditions of a brick oven can be mimicked with a bread cloche and baking stone, for those without access to a brick oven.
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