Know your focaccia from grissini, and carasau from cornetto? How you’ve been eating Italian bread wrong all along

Claudio Favero, chef de cuisine at Royal Garden Hong Kong’s fine dining restaurant Sabatini Ristorante Italiano, talks us through how you’re really meant to enjoy your pre-dinner bread platter

There is nothing better than tucking into a basket of freshly baked bread before a meal with a slathering of butter " or, as they do in Italy, a warm stick of grissini, or breadsticks, dipped in olive oil with a touch of balsamic vinegar.

"Actually in Italy we only put olive oil on the table for the bread," says chef Claudio Favero, who oversees the kitchen at Royal Garden Hong Kong's fine dining restaurant Sabatini Ristorante Italiano.

"In Hong Kong and Macau, for more than 20 years, they have put olive oil and balsamic vinegar on the table to go with the bread in Italian restaurants, but you do not see this in Italy. Balsamic is used in salad dressing, not for dipping your bread."

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Another difference between the way diners here like their Italian bread as opposed to how it's eaten in Italy is the way grissini is consumed.

"Grissini is eaten crispy in Italy but here it is soft," says Favero, who has lived in Asia for six years, first at the two-Michelin star Don Alfonso 1890 at Grand Lisboa in Macau, before helming the kitchens at Sabatini.

"I think there may be some misunderstanding " as I don't know why people here like their grissini soft. It has become a signature at Sabatini, though, as well as other Italian restaurants in Hong Kong and Macau; soft grissini served hot with a little bit of a crispy top. In Italy I have never seen grissini made this way."

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Italy has more than 350 types of bread, with 250 kinds easily accessible in the country. The most common is ciabatta, a flat loaf good for making sandwiches.

Then there is cornetto, which is similar to a croissant but sweeter; it is served at breakfast, often filled with cream or jam. And there is the dried hard bread we sometimes see in Italian restaurants here, called friselle.

"Italy produces its own flour and semolina to make bread, while other countries import it," says Favero, who worked as sous chef de cuisine at El RacO de Can Fabes restaurant, a three-Michelin star restaurant in Barcelona, Spain before coming to Asia.

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At Sabatini, which is a 26-year-old traditional Roman fine dining restaurant, Favero serves a basket of four types of bread: focaccia, grissini, carasau and country-style/farmer bread.

"My favourite is carasau " the large thin crispy one " which is made with semolina and is from Sardinia," says the chef, who is from the country's northeast.

"This is delicious dipped in olive oil and the grissini goes well with pesto or tomato paste."

"In Rome, focaccia is known as pizza Roma," he says. "I put cherry tomatoes, rosemary and olive oil on it."

Italian bread is very different from French bread, which is made simply with water, flour, salt and yeast and is soft but more dense, with a crispy crust on the outside. Italian bread often includes ingredients such as olive oil, milk and sugar, and is lighter, more airy and absorbent, and is better for soaking up olive oil " as opposed to butter, which fares better with French bread.

Favero adds that the flour in France is different.

"They use different flour in France " they usually import their flour, whereas, as I mentioned, in Italy we produce our own flour and semolina.

"We mainly use semolina or whole wheat flour but in some parts of northern Italy, black flour is used for certain kinds of bread," he explains.

"In southern Italy we use more semolina and tomatoes. In the north, in places like in Genoa, there is a lot of focaccia and it's made with regular wheat flour or sometimes with chickpea flour."

Bread made from chickpea flour is a flatbread and is suitable for vegans, but it is also a classic bread in Tuscany.

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Chef Claudio Favero's tips for making focaccia

In Hong Kong, we use a mixture of wheat and semolina flour with a little olive oil, fresh yeast and water. We prefer to use mineral water. The taste isn't much different but the water is more natural.

The dough has to be at a temperature below 28 degrees Celsius otherwise the yeast will start to react.

It can be difficult to make bread here because of the humidity, but depending on the weather you can keep the dough outside in winter for six to eight hours. In summer, put it in the fridge.

Make holes in the dough with your fingers when it is on the tray, put halved cherry tomatoes seasoned with salt, oregano and olive oil into the holes.

We make focaccia 3 to 4cm thick and bake it for 20 minutes.

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