In every respectable Tuscan bakery, you will find Tuscan Bread, the "saltless" one, ideal for accompanying the "toasty" flavors of the local cuisine. In 2016, it also obtained PDO recognition: the official recipe calls for soft wheat flour containing wheat germ, water, natural yeast, and, of course, is totally salt-free.

Tuscany is not the only region where saltless bread is common; it is often found in bakeries in central Italy, from Umbria to the Marche to Viterbo, but Tuscan saltless bread is perhaps the most famous, with an annual production of 950 thousand kilograms and a consumption value of 3.3 million euros (Ismea-Qualivita Report 2021). The first existential question: why is it saltless?