Piadina

MIDDLE AGES
During the Middle Ages, the consumption of these flatbreads was widespread in many regions (*6) and especially in the area corresponding to present-day Romagna. They soon became the food par excellence of the poorest people, used when bread, for various reasons, started running low (*7). In times of famine their main ingredient, wheat flour (*8), could be added (or replaced) with cheaper cereal flours (*9).
The first written mention of the word ‘Piada’ dates back to the second half of the fourteenth century and can be found in the ‘Descriptio Romandiole’ (1371), a document attributed to the papal legate Anglico de Grimoard.

MODERN AGE
It was the famous poet Giovanni Pascoli, several centuries later (*10), who formalized the name of the delicacy he loved, the ‘Piada’ (*11). For a long time, the specialty remained ‘family food’, prepared by the ‘arzdore’, the housewives from Romagna, for their children and husbands. The situation changed completely after World War II, especially in the 1960s, at the time of the economic boom, when large numbers of Italian and foreign tourists started to pour onto the Adriatic beaches. It was then that the first kiosks (‘Chioschi’) opened along the roads leading to the sea: they were (and still are) the ‘temples of a Piada’, which, in the meantime, had become ‘Piadina’.

Notes:
*1: The Italian word ‘azzimo’ (‘unleavened’) comes from the Greek ‘ἀζύμη’, whose translation is ‘without yeast’;
*2: The Bible, for example, tells about the ‘unleavened bread’ (in Italian ‘pane azzimo’) eaten by the Jews during the Exodus from Egypt;
*3: Such as, for example, the ‘Pita’ (or ‘Pitta’), belonging to the culinary tradition of many Mediterranean countries, the Turkish ‘Yufka’, the ‘Taguella’ made by the Tuareg, etc.;
*4: The Roman poet Virgil, in the VII book of the Aeneid, makes clear reference to an ‘exiguam orbem’ which most probably was the ancestor of Piadina;
*5: Patricians, the Roman aristocrats;
*6: Such as the Ligurian ‘Farinata’, the Umbrian ‘Torta al Testo’ (or ‘Crescia’ or ‘Ciaccia’), the ‘Panigaccio’ (or ‘Panigazzo’) from Lunigiana, etc.;
*7: Bread could be in short supply not only because of famine but also because it was usually made only once a week;
* 8: More often corn;
* 9: At the time, ‘poor flours’, such as rye, barley, or spelt, were subject to lower taxation. It could happen that, in particularly difficult periods, acorn flour or even sawdust were used!
*10: That is to say in the early 1900s;
*11: It should be emphasized that the ‘Piada’ so loved by Pascoli had become a kind of food anything but poor: its taste was enriched by lard and many types of fillings;