Pictured is a delicious, cheap Roman lunch:  pizza rossa and bianca al fresco in the Campo di Fiore (except the bianca was consumed before I remembered to take a photo).  Un’ etto (100 grams) of PB or PR will set you back all of .70 euro.  Pizza bianca (and its sister, pizza rossa) is Rome’s iconic bread-snack-fast-food and my favorite thing in Rome…..every neighborhood has at least one bakery turning out fresh pizza bianca several times a day.  The bianca is often split and stuffed with simple fillings (mozzarella & proscuitto, bresaola & arugula, eggplant, and so on).

PB is a slender flatbread, baked in comically long, thin planks; the texture is somewhere between crusty focaccia and the outer rim of Neapolitan pizza.  Chewy, yet tender, with distinctive lengthwise striations resulting from the baker’s stretching the rising dough.  Bianca is topped with a simple drizzle of oil, flakes of salt, and (sometimes) the barest scattering of dried herbs.  Rossa is thinner, crispier without being hard, topped with a simple tomato sauce.

I prowled around the kitchen door of my favorite PB bakery, the Antico Forno on the Campo di Fiore, and my favorite PR bakery, the Antico Forno in the Jewish ghetto.  Take a look at these delicious photos.