Il Forno re-opened this week. Yeah!

I like the fact that, despite Lucca being a very touristic town, a lot of stores and even restaurants are closed in August, at the height of the tourist season. It makes me feel that this is a normal Italian town, where regular people live and work. On the other hand it also means that my favourite foccacia place has been closed for 2 weeks.

Foccacia is bread dough, baked, salted and seasoned with olive oil. There are different kinds, some with corn flower, some with various toppings, but I prefer the plain one. I eat it for breakfast with a little honey, usually chestnut honey. I really like it, and, judging by the number of people I see getting it every day at Il Forno, I am not alone.

An other thing that I like about it, is that it is different every day. There doesn't seem to be any standard: one day it will be thick and soft, like a pan pizza crust (my favourite), and the next day it will be thin and crunchy, which is OK when still warm, but quickly turns hard as a rock when it cools down. So on these days where you get the not-so-great kind, you know it will taste better the next day, and when you get the really good kind you enjoy it all the more because it is rare.

It also means that when I taste the foccacia from other places, which I had to do during those long 2 weeks, I can "objectively" compare it to Il Forno's best, and "objectively" declare that indeed, Il Forno is the best place in town for foccacia. Of course the lady at the bank, who lives on via Guinigi next to an other bakery, completely disagrees with me, and considers Il Forno's foccacia barely good enough to feed the pigeons...

One last word on foccacia: if it's already cold when you want to eat it, just re-heat it for a few seconds in a micro-wave. It will get it all warm and soft. Yum!

posted by michel, 2005-08-10