Posted by Loulou on Nov 20, 2013 | 5 comments

Can you believe this?  In Naples, people desperate to make a living just find any spot available–a basement, a storeroom, dirty, clean, whatever–and just start baking bread and selling it on the streets out of the back of cars, with the backing and blessing of the camorra (Neapolitan mafia), who take a cut.  The fact that mama and papa had a bakery in LA makes me think that it’s not a whole lot different from how they started except for one thing: they did NOT have a wood oven to bake in (although they thought about it, but it’s not easy getting  a permit in fire-hazard LA for a wood oven, especially in your own private house!) and they were certainly not set up by the camorra–no way, Jose!

But here’s another difference:  The bread police are having to crack down on these bakers because they are using anything they can find to fire the wood ovens–old boards (sometimes painted or lacquered!), leftovers from building sites–whatever burns, it seems–and the ironic thing is that in the headline for this particular article, the metaphor was that the wood ovens backed by the camorra could possibly be fired with the wood from coffins!  Probably not true, but it made me sit up and myow.

I didn’t like that idea at all, but it turns out that the story referred to some other hanky-panky connected with the dumping of debris by certain gangs who took refuse from cemeteries (wood and zinc specifically) and disposed of it in illegal places.  The stories are also often spread by legitimate bakers who don’t want renegade bakers taking over their turf, and with good reason. But it is still a sad comment on the poverty of the south.

I can’t really even eat bread, but bread is sacrosanct in this house.  Even if I can’t have any, I sidle toward the kitchen when mama is baking focaccia because the smell of the rosemary and the olive oil (which I LOVE) are one of the most seductive odors on earth.  But imagine if she were using old painted junk to fire the oven!

Still–what I thought when mama read me this article is that people are really desperate.  And everyone needs his staff of life for sustenance and I feel really sorry for these poor people (and they are very poor, always, when they are being compromised by organize crime) who are having to scrape and scrounge to have a small oven and bake bread to sell on the streets using whatever fuel they can find.  There are no jobs, after all, and that part of Italy is not in great shape when it comes to progress, mostly due to the camorra‘s stronghold on so many businesses.

I’m just glad I can sniff the air from mama’s oven or from the ovens near our house here in Rome and know that the bread is safe and tasty and will not harm those who buy it.

When bread is at the center of controversy, we’re in deep d…d…!

I like to know where my food comes from, after all.  Kibble is a kind of kitty bread, no?

And sometimes, I sort of wonder what is really in some of that stuff.

Yeah, what IS in that stuff?