Breakfast in Italy is a quick affair. You have it almost on the go. In fact, a poll of just under 1, Italians conducted by YouGov Italy in , established that on working days people here spend on average 13 minutes on breakfast each morning. On weekends, breakfast in Italy still takes only 18 minutes on average.
In all honesty, when all you have for breakfast is a couple of biscuits and a cup of cappuccino, even 13 minutes seems like too much time spent on munching. Italians eat predominantly sweet things for breakfast.
This can be quite a shock if you are used to having toast, eggs and bacon first thing in the morning. Instead, the typical Italian breakfast relies almost exclusively on baked goods like biscuits, pastries, rusks, and cakes. If you go to the website which the Unione Italiana Food set up specifically to promote the value of the Italian breakfast, you will see that the photos in its header are exclusively of sweet things to eat: jam, biscuits, a slice of bread with a thick layer of chocolate spread.
You get the idea! It has to be said though that while Italy eats a sweet breakfast each morning, the level of sweetness here is very measured. And, again, portion control is very tight. Everything is small and restrained. Biscuits, for example, are quite dry and as such perfect for dipping and compact. You are supposed to have a couple of biscuits at most. Not the whole pack!
Breakfast cakes are mainly fruit or jam-based and you are expected to have a small slice. And if you opt for pastries, you pick just one.
If you look at the back of a bag of made-in-Italy biscuits, often, there is a recommendation printed there giving you a good idea of what in Italy is considered a good breakfast — a couple of biscuits, a piece of fruit, and a small pot of yoghurt.
The typical Italian breakfast nowadays is based on coffee, milk, and baked goods. Still, there are some breakfast items that are particularly popular in certain Italian cities or areas rather than all over Italy. One such breakfast food is the so-called uovo sbattuto literally, beaten egg. The basic recipe is ancient. Basically, this is egg yolk that is beaten with sugar into a uniform pale mixture.
It is then eaten as it is or by dipping biscuits or ladyfingers in it. Often, a spoonful or two are added to the morning coffee, too.
Apparently, it was a popular way to get in quickly the calories needed to engage in agricultural tasks. In the Northern Italian region of Lombardy however, they also add a small glass of Marsala wine to the yolk and sugar mixture and call it resumada or rusumada.
I remember coming across my first uovo sbattuto in a cafe in the town of Fano in the Central Italian region of the Marche. The large cup with beaten eggs sat on top of the counter and the patrons could use the communal spoon to top up their coffees the old-fashioned way. Another regional breakfast item I truly enjoyed having was chestnuts and honey with natural yoghurt in the autonomous Northern Italian Province of Trentino.
The cuisine of Trentino is a wonderful mix of Tyrolean and Italian influences. Another thing they eat for breakfast there is the so-called Kaiserschmarrn.
This is a thick pancake studded with raisins and sprinkled with sugar. Truly delicious! If you want to read a bit more about Trentino and its cuisine, please, click here and scroll a bit down the page to the pertinent bits.
If you are interested in regional Italian breakfast foods, I recommend the Instagram account Colazione Napoletana. Their photos of Neapolitan breakfast cakes, biscuits, and sweets held against the stunning backdrop of Naples are simply mouth-watering and life-affirming.
I once spent a very nice morning in Vicenza , Italy having coffee and cakes with an Italian lady who researches food traditions and has her own little trattoria there. At the time I was really puzzled that Italians eat sweet breakfasts while they seem to constantly worry about their appearance and weight. Her reply was really elucidating. As it is quite customary in terms of food history, throughout the centuries food choices in Italy were largely dependant on the economic status of those making them.
As such, the upper classes had access to all sorts of foods including expensive refined flours, sugars, and sweets. They would eat pastries and cakes to show off their social status. They also had access to French and Austrian foods and cooking techniques.
A case in point is the cornetto called brioche in Northern Italy. This nowadays is one of the most typical Italian breakfast foods while originally it was based on the Austrian kipferl. In the s, with the industrial advances of Italy and its economic miracle, eating dry bread for breakfast already had too many connotations of poverty. Hence, biscuits quickly gained a footing on the Italian breakfast table as a richer, sweeter yet flour-based milk-dipping alternative.
By the end of the s, most Italians regularly ate biscuits for breakfast. Large producers like Mulino Bianco developed and marketed a range of shortcrust biscuits — the so-called frollini — specifically to be eaten in the morning. To this day, you can see large bags of biscuits sold in Italian supermarkets.
This is Italy, after all. A crostata is a fruit tart with a crust of pasta frolla , filled with either amarena sour cherry , albicocca apricot or frutti di bosco wild berry. The ciambella is basically an Italian doughnut often filled with jam or custard. Viennoiserie are the fancier, more refined pastries with a French influence. They might include brioches, strudel di mele , eclairs and more. For the Italian rushing to work, he or she has perhaps five minutes of chit-chat with a neighbor while standing-up at the neighborhood bar , slurping down his espresso and cornetto in quick order before rushing out the door to work.
They are places to go for breakfast, espresso, pastries and for lunch they offer panini, small pizzas and focaccia… families with children are welcome. Make the pledge and become a member of Italian Sons and Daughters of America today! I prefer to eat out when it can be a special, slow occasion.
Sadly, as a kid I grew up eating a lot of junk food for breakfast: sweet snacks, cookies, sugary cereals, etc. At the time there was no food culture and no awareness about sugar risks. I think I developed some kind of addiction to it. I still love sweet flavours. Since a couple of years I changed my habits, including at breakfast also fresh fruits banana, apple and other fruits and nuts. And I eat 2 slices of flaxseed bread with lactose free butter and jam with no sugar added.
Some days I have a soft-boiled egg. Every now and then smoked salmon or other kind of proteins. I have low vitamin B12 , so the doctor suggested me to eat eggs and some B12 rich fishes. At least not in my region, that was very poor until the post WW2 war period.
I found no sources online about the reasons of the subsequent habit to have mostly sweet food for breakfast. I was curious too! That said, what do you have for breakfast when you travel to Italy? Do you enjoy Italian breakfast? Usually we would have leftover crusty bread and cheeses, meats and tomatoes if at home.
We are used to loaves of sliced bread in New Zealand so would usually have toast with spreads for breakfast or cereal.
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