Reggio Emilia bakeries
The bakeries of Reggio Emilia not only sell bread, pasta and other foods supplies to cater for our daily needs but are also a quick “lifesaver” when it comes to a mid-morning snack.
Reggio nell'Emilia
The bread from Reggio Emilia is, by its very nature, ‘condito’ (dressed), being traditionally softened with lard, and comes in the classic shapes of crocetta (little cross), cornino (little horn) or baffo (moustache). Bread from the surrounding mountain areas (the most popular bread from Carpineti and Marola), called terra (earth), has a compacter and bulkier shape. For a quick tasty snack there are basically two options: gnocco, which is a kind of savoury flat bread with lard sprinkled on top, and erbazzone (scarpazzone, which would deserve a treatise of its own since it is a peculiar culinary delicacy which Reggio inhabitants are rightly proud of. Briefly, erbazzone is a baked pie of thin, soft pastry with a filling of spinach or chard, scallion, lard and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. The filling of scarpazzone di montagna (mountain scarpazzone) also contains rice cooked in milk.
Other tasty bakery products include stria (“witch” in the local dialect), a dry crispy flat bread, and chizze, puff pastry rolls filled with Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese which make excellent snacks.