Pane e zucchero is the new book by Menotti Lerro (Ladolfi, 2016, pp. 64, EUR 10) just released. It is surprising, because unusual and at the same time already known. Both the content (a childhood remembered without tenderness) in both forms (free, with fractional lines, many enjambement, with nervous rhythms and without mitezze). "Bread and sugar" was the formula that, in childhood in the South once again (now I do not know), was used to sweeten tea-time. Many years ago there were no snacks that today are found in supermarkets, there were not stuffed with ham sandwiches or provole. Or, rather, there were, but they were the preserve of rich families, aristocratic or bourgeois. After World War II in the South there was poverty, even misery. During the reconstruction have a snack with "bread and sugar" was the luxury of poor families. This title, therefore, not only is evocative of a time certainly not happy but was in the "formula" of bread seasoned with sugar sweetener of everyday life. especially children. The other formula, perhaps even more widespread in the South Italian, always in those years after the war but most of the reconstruction until the beginning of the seventies, was "oil bread and sugar" and the other "bread and oil." In short, poor solutions for palates that knew how to appreciate the little, that is, the bread as a staple food, which every day was based on pasta, and cheese, tomatoes and olive oil. Only weekly, it appeared the meat or fish. Indeed in Sea countries more often the fish, because then it was cheaper meat. It is (to be) of a poor diet with low calories, but with well-identified flavors. For example, the oil was the most popular product in the South, because there were (and still are) expanses of olive groves.