Frisella – the Italian crispbread

Friselle with tomatoes and oregano

Friselle and Knäckebröd

Sometimes there are strange coincidences. We have just added Friselle to our range and I did a bit of reading up on it. That’s when I noticed the similarity to round crispbread from Sweden. Although the dough is different, both types of bread are round and have a hole in the middle. However, while Frisella is baked twice (Italian biscotti), Käckebröd is preserved by drying. Both traditions date back to a time when it was much more difficult to store food.
The real coincidence, however, is that there is something else that is typically Italian and typically Swedish: the Lucia festival, which is celebrated in both countries on December 13 during Advent.

Swedish Käckebröd (crispbread)

Friselle – the bread of the fishermen

Frisella (plural friselle) originally comes from Apulia. There it was baked for the fishermen who took it with them on trips lasting several days. It was similar to the custom in Germany with rusk, which – as the name suggests – is also baked twice. This preserves the bread for a long time. However, the Apulian fishermen did not eat the friselle plain, but dipped it briefly in seawater and then topped it with freshly caught fish. Even the ancient Greeks are said to have known a twice-baked bread and thus the forerunner of friselle and rusk.

Pure friselle

Buy Friselle

Friselle were also eaten on land (but probably not by the fishermen, who were certainly happy to get something “proper” to eat). There is a recipe from Puglia, for example, in which the briefly soaked friselle are used with a mixture of tomatoes, basil and olive oil in bread salad (Panzanella > recipe). In Naples, friselle are topped with tomatoes, basil and olive oil (similar to bruschetta).
If you have acquired a taste for friselle and/or are curious, you can buy friselle and other Italian bread specialties from us. Order conveniently online and the goods will usually be with you the very next day.