Nebaletan Word of the Day — Cootz /Kootz
Every Italian-American family had its own language. Not “proper” Italian, not even proper Neapolitan sometimes — just words that somehow survived immigration, Sunday dinners, and decades of people yelling across kitchens.
In our family, one of those words was COOTZ (or CUTZ). It referred to the end piece of a loaf of hard-crusted Italian bread — the heel. And in our house, that piece was prime real estate – Chip and I would dive toward the knife and mom (Grandma Joanne) would start cutting, narrowly missing the blade, while grabbing that first cut, the COOTZ.
When Sunday sauce was simmering in the giant pot, the COOTZ was the ultimate dipping weapon. While the middle slices folded like cheap lawn chairs after one dip, the COOTZ held together like reinforced concrete. Maximum crust. Maximum stability. Zero fear of losing your bread in the sauce and having to fish it out while our cousins judged us silently from across the kitchen.
Naturally, every kid wanted it.
Recently, while having dinner at Angelo’s (my favorite Sarasota spot) when the bread basket was delivered. I grabbed the COOTZ, I started asking about the “Official Italian Origin” of the word.
- Manlio, the head waiter from Napoli, said it’s CULLO — meaning “rear end” or “butt.”
- Whereas, Frederico, from Rome, said CULLETTO — “little butt” or “little end.”
Basically the same answer – that’s a good start! And, honestly, makes perfect sense. “Real” Italians are practical people. The back end of the bread becomes… the butt of the bread.
That also lines up with the Neapolitan word CUZZETIELLO (sometimes spelled CUZZETIÈLLO), which refers to the crusty end or heel of a loaf of bread.
Over generations, especially in Italian-American families, long dialect words often got shortened: CUZZETIELLO – Which likely became: COOTZ or CUTZ OR KOOTZ OR KUTZ
Of course, once I started investigating this important cultural mystery, I had to consult the experts: Capo Carm and Capo Donnie DIRECTLY FROM ANGELO’S (and annoying Cathy because I was on my phone)!
- I texted them: “What did you guys call the end of a Balkan bread loaf?” (Though it was called Balken Bread, it was owned by an Italian family, and friends of ours!)
- Carm replied: “The Kutz. Not sure I spelled it right.”
- I answered: “Hmm… my parents called it the kutz… koots.”
- Then I explained the restaurant debate: “I’m at a southern Italian restaurant right now. The Neapolitan waiter called it the cullo, the Roman waiter called it cooletto — ass and little ass respectively.”
- Donnie, without missing a beat, replied: “We called it: Time to go buy another loaf.” Honestly, that may be the most Italian answer possible.
- Then Donnie added: “We called it the coollo too, or the butt. I think I’ve heard some of my family called it the kutz, too.”
And there it was — another confirmation that these words evolved differently from family to family, neighborhood to neighborhood, and probably argument to argument.
That’s how these family words survived. Nobody wrote them down. They were passed verbally from grandparents to parents to kids, usually somewhere between “mangia!” and “don’t touch the meatballs yet!”
And honestly, there may not have been a more important skill in an Italian household than properly selecting bread for sauce-dipping operations. The COOTZ wasn’t just bread. It was structural engineering (and this engineer is writing them down for my grandkids to keep!)
EPILOG – after sending this to Capos Carm and Donnie to proofread, I wrote to them, “BTW – just writing that made me crave Balken bread (since at that moment, I just made a batch of sauce for that night’s meal)…it’s one of the things that I miss greatly about home!”
Although I bake sourdough bread at least weekly (and just dipped a freshly made Sourdough Chestnut bread in that sauce), my breads are always whole grains or multi-grains and never pure white flour, crusty loaves like Balken…maybe time to bake a batch!
