Italy loves bread, and the peninsula is home to a number of famous loaves such as foccaccia and ciabatta. Sicily has its "S" shaped durum wheat loaves, Sardinia the cracker-like "carta di musica" flatbread and other regions have their own specialties. The bread labeled as "Italian bread" or Pane Italiano in American supermarkets is a simpler thing, a basic crusty white bread baked on a sheet.
Dough
Standard recipes for Italian bread call for the dough to be mixed in a single stage in the mixer or mixing bowl, which bakers refer to as the "straight dough" method. This is the simplest method for bread baking, using a relatively large quantity of yeast and a short rising time. It makes a straightforward, neutral-flavored white bread with a pleasantly light crumb and crisp crust. However, some bakers instead start their Italian bread with a portion of aged dough, called a "biga," which improves the flavor of the loaf.
Biga
Wheat has a relatively high level of natural sugars, but they’re bound up in large molecules of starch. When a dough has the opportunity to rest for several hours, natural enzymes in the flour have time to break down the starch molecules into their component sugars, giving the bread a deeper, more complex flavor and a distinctive red-cold color when baked. A biga is a portion of dough made ahead of time with just flour, water and yeast. It has the same consistency as regular dough, and when it’s added to the new dough, it gives the whole loaf an improved flavor.
Loaves
Loaves of pane Italiano are baked free-form, rather than in pans, to give them a visual resemblance to artisanal loaves. The most common shape is an oblong with well-rounded ends, to differentiate them from some French loaves, which have pointed ends. The same bread can be shaped into a round loaf, if desired. The loaves are usually slashed with a razor or serrated knife before baking. This serves two purposes. The slash marks are esthetically appealing, and they keep the breads uniform in appearance by letting them rise in the oven without their crust bursting from the expansion.
Crustiness
The signature of a good Italian loaf is its light, crisp crust. Professional bakers use ovens with heavy stone hearths that transfer heat directly to the underside of the bread, and steam injectors that moisten the air in the oven and help make the bread crustier. These conditions can be replicated at home with a pizza baking stone, or unglazed terra cotta tiles, to serve as a hearth. To generate steam, manually mist the oven a few times with a spray bottle of water, during the first 10 minutes of baking.
