Italian Cooking: Dean Jacobs 4 Bread Dipping Seasonings VS. 5th Season Italian Seasoning

Anyone who likes to cook knows that a little bit of spice adds a lot to your cuisine, and it becomes necessary if you're cooking Italian. I used a pretty standard Italian Seasoning by 5th Season until I found Dean Jacobs' 4 Bread Dipping Seasonings and realized what I'd been missing for so long.

Fifth Season Italian Seasoning is pretty good for a quick fix. It's stocked with the standard Italian spices: oregano, basil, rosemary, and thyme. You can put loads of it in a marinade, sprinkle it on top of garlic or cheese bread to be broiled, or cook it into sauces. No matter how you use it, it's going to boost your food's flavor and you'll be glad you did.

Also, Fifth Season Italian Seasoning is really cheap. You can get it at Wal-Mart for just fifty cents and I'm sure you'd never pay more than two dollars for it no matter where you buy it. That means you don't feel bad no matter how much you use to spice up a sauce because it's cost you next to nothing. I've gone through several bottles of Fifth Season Italian Seasoning in a year's time and not worried about it at all.

That was before I found Dean Jacobs' Four Bread Dipping Seasonings at a "Le Gourmet Chef" store in the mall. It's a much larger seasoning bottle made up of four distinct compartments and a separate opening for each. Within the four compartments are four different Italian Seasonings: Tuscany Blend, Parmesan Blend, Rosa Maria and Sicilian Blend.

It's labeled and sometimes packaged as a bread-dipping seasoning, but I've found it's just as versatile (and a bit more so) as a standard Italian Seasoning like the one Fifth Season makes. But, if you want to use it for bread-dipping (something that's becoming increasingly popular at Italian food restaurants), all you have to do is sprinkle a healthy dose of it in a small bowl and add some olive oil. Then, just stir it up and dip your bread in! At the Le Gourmet Chef store where I bought it, they also occasionally offered it in a pre-packaged set with garlic-flavored olive oil. I have a friend who got that and it was a perfect combination.

Each one of its four varieties provides an outstanding flavor and easily replaces a regular Italian Seasoning. And though none of them are a one-type-suits-all mish-mash of the basic Italian Seasonings, each one of them easily stands alone and is better off for it.

The Tuscany Blend (one of my favorites) is subtitled as "Sundried Tomato & Basil" but also includes its own salt, garlic, bell peppers and standard anti-caking preservatives. The Sicilian Blend is labeled as "Traditional" and includes salt, garlic, onion, bell peppers, tomatoes and the rest. Rosa Maria is subtitled "Rosemary & Garlic" and has garlic, salt, rosemary, parsley and the rest. Finally, Parmesan Blend is described as "Roasted Garlic & Cheese" and includes garlic, salt, parmesan cheese and other spices.

Dean Jacobs' Four Bread Dipping Seasonings' one setback is price: you can pay anywhere from four to seven dollars for it. But, when you figure it has about as much seasoning in it as three bottles of Fifth Season Italian Seasoning, it doesn't actually cost that much more. Plus, you get the variety of four different types of seasoning while only needing the storage space for one large bottle.

Dean Jacobs' Four Bread Dipping Seasonings may be best for making bread dips with olive oil or for sprinkling on buttered bread to be broiled in the oven because each unique flavor has a better opportunity to stand out. But, I've enjoyed using it on a regular basis for just about everything I used to use Fifth Season Italian Seasoning for. Now, I have no reason to go back.