Where Does
the Bread Go?
The small plate at the upper left of your setting, the one you have used your whole life, is not there.
For a lot of American visitors this is one of the first Italian table habits to register, and almost nobody says anything about it, because the alternative is asking a waiter for a plate and being looked at. So the bread goes on the tablecloth, which feels wrong, and the rest of the meal proceeds with a small unresolved question at the edge of it.
The question is worth resolving, because the answer explains several other things about an Italian table, and one of them is about the linen.
The Plate That Is Not Missing
Here is the part that makes it confusing rather than simple: a formal Italian place setting does include a small plate for bread, on the left. Italian etiquette guides describe it, and you will see it at a wedding or a serious restaurant.
At many trattorias and everyday family tables there is no separate bread plate at all. The bread simply sits beside the setting, often directly on the cloth. An American writer describing her own confusion in Italy put it exactly: the bread was on the tablecloth beside the place settings, and if you took a piece you were stuck holding it until a plate turned up.
So it is not that Italy abolished the bread plate. It is that the plate belongs to the occasions that call for one, and a great many meals do not.
The bread plate is not missing from the Italian table. It is reserved, which is a different thing.
And There Is No Butter
This is the second surprise, and it arrives faster than the first.
Bread and butter is not the customary accompaniment at an Italian table, and neither is the restaurant ritual of a small dish of olive oil to dip into before the meal. Gambero Rosso, which is about as close to an authority on Italian eating as a magazine gets, says so plainly.
Bread and olive oil certainly belong to Italian food, as an afternoon snack or a plain supper. Serving oil as a default course before dinner is another matter, and it is largely a convention of restaurants abroad.
Once you know that, the missing plate makes more sense. Take away the butter, the oil and the idea of bread as the thing that occupies the wait, and a plate of its own has much less to do.
Bread Is Not a Course. It Is a Tool.
This is the whole thing, and everything else follows from it.
At an Italian table bread is not what you eat while you wait. It is what you eat with. It pushes a stubborn piece of something onto a fork. It goes with the part of a dish that has no other vehicle. And at the end it does the job it is really there for, which has a name.
Which changes what it is doing there rather than when it appears. The bread may well be on the table before anybody sits down, and often is. What it is not doing is standing in for the first course while people wait, which is the job it has been given at a great many American tables.
La Scarpetta, and Why Your Guest Is Not Being Rude
At some point somebody at your table will tear a piece of bread, pinch it between thumb and finger, and drag it around an almost empty plate until the plate is clean.
That is la scarpetta, the little shoe, named for the way the bread is dragged across the surface like a shoe across a floor.
Formal etiquette has long frowned on it. Italy Segreta, writing about the practice, traces the objection back to the Galateo, the Italian book of manners published in 1558 that gave the word to the language, and to an old association between the gesture and hard times.
In ordinary life the rule has fared badly. At an informal table, finishing a good sauce with bread is familiar enough that it is far more likely to be read as appreciation than as bad manners.
Formal etiquette may object. The cook usually does not.
If you are the host, the useful thing to know is this. Somebody doing the scarpetta at your table is not forgetting themselves. They are telling you the dinner worked, in the only register that is not embarrassing to say out loud.
What This Means for the Linen It Is Sitting On
Now the part that is actually our business, and it follows from the first section rather than being bolted on to it.
If bread sits on the cloth, the cloth is part of the service. Crumbs go on it. A little flour goes on it. A piece of bread that has just been dragged through olive oil and tomato goes back down on it, because there is nowhere else to put it.
Which rules out a certain kind of table linen. Not because it is not beautiful, but because a cloth you are anxious about is a cloth that makes the bread go back in the basket, and then you are hosting a photograph.
Two things follow, and they are the two things we would actually say to somebody standing in front of the table.
The placemat earns its keep here. A coated linen mat gives the bread a defined place to land that is not the bare wood and not your good cloth, and a spill on it stays at the surface long enough to be lifted off. On marble it matters more than it sounds: acidic food such as tomato can etch the stone, and sealing does not make marble immune to that reaction.
The napkin does more work than at an American dinner. Hands touch bread all evening, which is the whole point of the thing. A pre-washed napkin falls open on a lap and stays there for two hours, which is what a long meal asks of it.
And the basket is where the bread comes from and goes back to. Not a plate at each seat: one basket in the middle, low enough to see across, passed when somebody needs it.
The Italian Version, at Your Own Table
If you want to run it this way, and it is worth doing once to see what changes, it is five decisions and none of them cost anything.
Do not treat it as the course before dinner. The bread can already be on the table. It is there for the meal, not to fill the wait.
One basket in the middle. Low, passed, refilled. No plate at each seat.
Break it, do not cut it. A piece is torn off by hand, not bitten from a slice and not sawn at with a knife.
No butter on the table. If you are hosting people who will look for it, put a little out at one end rather than at every seat, and let them find it.
Let the plates get cleaned. Somebody will. It is the compliment.
The one that takes any adjusting is the first, because leaving bread on the table without anything to put on it feels like an omission, right up until the sauce arrives and the bread is still there.
Why is there no bread plate in Italian restaurants?
Because bread is not served as its own course. Italian etiquette does describe a small bread plate on the left in a formal setting, and you will see it at a wedding or a serious restaurant, but everyday service does without it and the bread sits on the tablecloth beside the setting. Take away the butter and the before-dinner course, and the plate has nothing to do.
Do Italians eat bread with butter?
Not customarily. Bread and butter is not a standard pairing at an Italian table, and neither is the dish of olive oil for dipping, which is mostly something restaurants outside Italy adopted. Bread is eaten with the food rather than spread with something before it.
When do Italians eat bread during a meal?
During it, and at the end of it. Bread is used to help food onto the fork, to go with the part of a dish that has no other vehicle, and finally to clean the plate. It is not what you eat while you wait for the first course.
What is la scarpetta?
Cleaning the plate with a piece of bread at the end of a dish. The name means "the little shoe", after the way the bread is dragged across the plate. It is done with a torn piece pinched between thumb and finger.
Is la scarpetta rude?
Formally yes, in practice no. The Galateo, the Italian book of manners published in 1558, rules it out, partly because it involves touching food with the hands and partly because of an old association with poverty. At an informal table it is close to universal and is understood as a compliment to whoever cooked.
Do you put bread directly on the tablecloth?
In everyday Italian service, yes, beside the place setting. If that makes you uneasy at your own table, a placemat gives the bread somewhere defined to land that is neither bare wood nor your good cloth, and a coated one lets crumbs and small everyday marks be dealt with at the surface, without a wash after every meal.
How do you serve bread at an Italian dinner party?
One basket in the middle of the table rather than a plate at each seat, sent out with the food rather than ahead of it, kept low enough to see across, and passed when somebody needs it. Bread is torn by hand rather than cut.
- Gambero Rosso, on bread without butter or oil, and on bread as the thing that finishes a dish.
- Italy Segreta, on the meaning of the word scarpetta and on the 1558 Galateo forbidding it.
- Your Guardian Chef, on the formal Italian setting, which does place a small bread plate on the left, and on breaking bread by hand.
- Between Naps on the Porch, an American account of the missing bread plate and of bread sitting on the tablecloth.