Tuscan bread has no salt. Blame Pisa.

Taste it for the first time and it seems odd. Flat. Almost bland. Then the prosciutto arrives, the pecorino, the new oil — and it makes sense. Tuscan bread is not a neutral backdrop. It's a precise choice, nine hundred years old.

A story that begins in the 12th century

In the Middle Ages salt was not a seasoning — it was a currency. Whoever controlled salt controlled trade, routes, prices. Pisa was a powerful maritime republic whose port dominated Tyrrhenian traffic. Florence, landlocked, depended on Pisa for the salt that arrived by sea.

In the 12th century, during one of the many conflicts between the two city-states, Pisa raised the price of salt beyond reach — or cut it off entirely. Historians differ on the details, not on the result: the Florentines, and Tuscans in general, stopped salting their bread. Not as an aesthetic choice. Out of economic necessity. And then, as often happens with habits rooted in survival, necessity became tradition.

Dante knew

In canto XVII of the Paradiso, Dante has Cacciaguida deliver one of the Commedia's most famous prophecies: exile. Among the exile's sorrows is this — having to eat "another man's bread", which "tastes of salt". Foreign bread was salted. The bread of home — Tuscan bread — was not. A difference Dante felt strongly enough to set in verse.

"Sciocco" bread

In Tuscan dialect, "sciocco" doesn't mean foolish — it means unsalted, bland. Pane sciocco is the everyday name for Tuscan bread, still used in the countryside. It's not an insult. It's a description. And it describes exactly what it is: a bread that doesn't season itself, that waits for what you put on it, that doesn't compete with the food but accompanies it.

It's a different logic from nearly every other bread in Europe. French bread, German bread, the bread of southern Italy — all salted, all made to be good on their own. Tuscan bread is not made to be good on its own. It's made to go with something.

The 2016 DOP

In 2016 Pane Toscano was granted protected designation of origin — DOP. The specification is precise: type "0" or type "1" soft wheat flour, water, natural sourdough starter. No salt. Loaf or round, the crust golden and crisp, the crumb open and moist. It isn't a recipe — it's an act of protection for something that would risk disappearing in a market that prefers convenience to history.

On the table at Trombicche

At Trombicche the bread is on the table every evening. It's not a detail — it's how the meal begins. We serve it with what makes sense: Mario Vigni's Cinta Senese prosciutto (with the right savouriness, the kind that comes from acorn-fed pigs), Alessia Farina's pecorino from the Crete Senesi, the new oil when there is some. Three strong flavours. A bread that lets them speak.

If you've never understood Tuscan bread, come. You'll understand it in five minutes — or three bites, which is the same thing.