Upvote:2
It was possible in the past to travel with the receipt (cedolino/tagliandino) and there were restrictions to do so which I will highlight below;
You should have handed in the renewal of your permit with the police headquarters (Questura) and should be awaiting for your permit which is in process of been issued.
You should take a direct flight from an Italian airport to your home country airport without transiting in another Schengen country. (There are some cases in the past that allowed transit in Schengen countries but communication was issued explicitly by Italy to the other Schengen countries and this was between the months of November and January when Italy had a backlog of permits to process and couldn't cope)
The best thing I would recommend is go to the Questura and ask them because you have not had your first permit of stay yet, which will be based on your expired visa.
After you have a first permit of stay issued, successive permits will not be based on an entry visa but on your previous permit which is issued by the Questura and falls under the jurisdiction of Ministero dell'interno. Visa issuance fall under the ministry for foreign affairs (Ministero degli affari esteri) and the last thing you want to do is deal with two Italian ministries when you are blocked abroad.