Pane v. Olie di Oliva

Unless you are eating foccacia, bread in Italy is generally blasé. No offense my new Italian friends. I'm afraid my expectations were set very high by the French and I had anticipated great flavor and variety. I've yet to find it.

What I have found resembles fresh cardboard: a thin, crunch of a crust, much like the outside of a meringue. The center is softer, sponge-like, very dense, with virtually no flavor-not sweet, not salty, not sour, nothing-completely devoid of flavor. Initially, I was perplexed and greatly disappointed, so I ordered different shapes and sizes, and still found, no flavor. Then, one evening, I ordered bruschetta at a restaurant, Pane e Vino, and I discovered why, no flavor.

The sole purpose of Italian bread is to deliver the good stuff-usually plain olive oil, which is so full of flavor that you think they must have doctored it with something but no it's plain Italian, off-the-tree, olive oil. And the bruschetta, a meal fit for a King, served as an appetiser. Two pieces cost 3 Euro, select your toppings: mushrooms or roasted tomato, eggplant or radichio slightly sauteed in balsamic vinegar, pick a cheese-any cheese, swim it all in olive oil, and season with a pinch of sea salt and pepper. No wonder the bread is dull-you wouldn't want it to interfere with the good stuff.

Now the Biscotti is a whole other story. There's a bakery across the street from my apartment and I stepped in one early morning for a bag of 8 biscotti. Not able to read the Italian flavors on the bags or knowing the price, I got to the register to discover 5 Euro-Yikes, basically a buck a cookie! Well they must be extraordinary to warrant Starbuck's pricing. Of course, they were: vanilla, with a hint of orange rind and extra sweet almonds. Good thing I make my own coffee to afford my cookie breakfast -sometimes I have two.

The package said the biscotti would be good from September 20 to December 10; they lasted till September 27.