Do Italians Pair Pasta and Bread in One Meal? [the numbers speak]

If you’ve ever visited Italy or enjoyed Italian cuisine, you might have wondered if Italians truly eat bread and pasta in the same meal.

We Italians often enjoy bread with our pasta. We might use a piece of bread to soak up the remaining pasta sauce (we call this “fare la scarpetta“) or have it as an appetizer, with dishes like crostini or bruschetta, before the main pasta course. However, you’d rarely see us taking a bite of pasta and bread simultaneously.

So the answer is yes, as we will see from these statistics we Italians (actually, me too) eat bread and pasta in the same meal, which occurs at home in everyday lunches and dinners, especially at restaurants in our city.

Clearly, this is not a rule, but pretty much an eating habit. If you are curious to know why bread is served with pasta or how many Italians eat bread and pasta and if they really do it every day, look at the statistics I found below.

Italians and Their Love for Bread with Pasta: A Statistical Insight

According to this report on the eating habits of Italians, there are several of my countrymen who always eat bread and pasta for lunch and/or dinner.

About 2.1 million Italians declare that they always eat pasta at lunch and dinner seven days a week, from Monday to Sunday;

While there are over 17 million “carb lovers” of bread, who eat it every day for both lunch and dinner, in short, at every meal. Here I have really dealt with the reason for this love between Italians and bread.

Italians who always eat pasta and bread (*)

Food	Lunch	Dinner	Lunch and Dinner
Pasta	9.800.000	3.000.000	2.100.000
Bread	24.200.000	21.500.000	17.100.000

Although these data do not exactly answer the initial question of whether Italians eat pasta and bread at the same meal, they give us a good clue.

Considering the large number of people who eat pasta every day and at all meals (more than 2 million), it is easily believable that there are several Italians who at some meals find themselves eating pasta and then bread.

As I have already anticipated I am certainly one of these, although I do not do it every day.

But let’s see precisely how we Italians can eat bread and pasta together and when exactly this happens.

Do Italians eat bread with pasta in restaurants?

Let’s now take specific examples and talk about the typical Italian restaurant, let’s start by saying that almost all Italian restaurants serve bread and water first thing as soon as you sit down at the table, even before you decide what to eat and order. If you are wondering if bread is free in Italian restaurants, follow the link.

1. Here is Why Bread is Served with Pasta: “Scarpetta”

When bread is on the table, it’s often accompanied by a pasta dish. This suggests that in a typical Italian restaurant, both pasta and bread are likely part of the meal, whether it’s lunch or dinner.

However, rather than seeing an Italian eating both simultaneously, you’ll more often observe them using a piece of bread to savor the remaining sauce after finishing their pasta.

This is called “scarpetta nel piatto“: it is done precisely once the pasta on the plate is finished. Scarpetta involves taking a piece of bread and using it to scoop up the remaining sauce left on the plate after eating pasta. The ideal type of bread for doing the Scarpetta generally tends to be rustic bread, without salt, with a soft crumb and a crust that’s not too hard. 

And this is exactly why bread is often served alongside pasta in restaurants, they know you’d probably like to make Scarpetta!

Be aware, however, that this gesture is not exactly graceful, some people avoid doing it, many other Italians on the other hand do not mind and do “scarpetta” with the bread until they have finished all the sauce on the plate.

It’s not customary to make ‘Scarpetta’ with Garlic Bread. Follow the link to find out more.

Here is another example again from the restaurant.

2. Eating bread and pasta in one meal: the crostini or bruschetta

Still, in our Italian restaurant, there is another case that often leads us to eat bread and pasta together in the same meal.

As I mentioned above, the typical Italian meal consists of several dishes: an appetizer, a first course, a second course, and a dessert.

While it is true that the first course is often a pasta dish dressed with some meat or vegetable sauce, it is also true that the appetizer is often made from crostini bread.

Crostini is a typical Italian appetizer, a similar variant is also called bruschetta, each region will have its specific recipe for crostini, but to make it simple it is a thin slice of bread with toppings on it, such as sauces, meat pate, vegetables, fish and more.

So here it is if I order crostini or bruschetta as an appetizer and order a pasta dish as a first course, I will end up eating the two together in the same meal.

Do Italians eat bread with pasta at home?

Yes, just like in restaurants, Italians when at home set the table with fresh bread, even though pasta will then be served on the table.

It is certainly not one of the habits most recommended by our dieticians, but certainly, many of us when we eat a plate of pasta with sauce at home, do not deny ourselves the pleasure of finishing the sauce left on the plate with bread, thus making the Scarpetta that I explained above.

Similarly, when you have important lunches or dinners at home with other family members, the breadbasket is put on the table and you will probably also have appetizers made from slices of bread such as the crostini I mentioned, which you can follow up with the first course that is almost always pasta.

In conclusion: does the average Italian eat bread and pasta in the same meal?

From the data we saw above, but especially from my experience living in Italy (almost 40 years now!) I can answer you:

Yes, we Italians may eat bread and pasta in the same meal, because we use bread to finish the sauce, or we use bread for other dishes in the same meal such as crostini or bruschetta. On the other hand, it is unlikely to see an Italian eating bread and pasta at the same time, right in the same bite.

It would be very unlikely and unwise to accompany the bite of pasta with a bite of bread, since we are talking about two foods that share the same base, flour.