SEGMENTO SAMPLED 4 OF ROME’S BEST BAKERIES

Pane e TemPesTa – a storm of passion

Pane e Tempesta is one of the few bakeries that has been given the top rating of “three bread rolls” by Gambero Rosso . Here I met Italian-Egyptian baker and owner Omar Abdel Fattah. He greets me with the awards and honorable mentions he has collected since the bakery opened in 2014, framed and displayed proudly on the wall behind him. “I’m constantly on the lookout for raw materials to improve my products. For example, I only use high-quality flour that I source from Sicily and le Marche. Besides, I’m quite lucky with this address, because you’ll find the neighborhood market with fresh vegetables on the other side of the street. Here I know which stands offer the best quality produce for my pizza toppings”. As we sit and talk, a flow of customers enters the bakery to buy slices of pizza for lunch. I get an exotic turmeric bread and a few slices of pizza myself. After my conversation with Omar, the passion and talent that goes into his baked goods are still tangible to the tastebuds.

Bonci – Rome’s bread guru

Many of Rome’s bread lovers consider Gabrielle Bonci – baker and head of the Bonci bakery – to be un genio due to the quality of his products. His bread business started back in 2003 in a tiny room. Innovation and research into the quality of raw materials have always been Bonci’s credo. Last year his takeaway pizza place, Pizzarium, was awarded “Italy’s best,” ahead of several Neapolitan pizza favorites. Today, his bakery in Via Trionfale is one of Rome’s most popular. People often queue up on the pavement outside the shop. In recent years Bonci’s bread has appeared on some restaurant menus in Rome, and his success has led to bakeries opening in Chicago and Miami. His success has recently led to bakeries opening in Chicago and Miami. The Gambero Rosso has recently given him top marks. This puts Bonci in the company of only four other bakeries in Rome. These are places that should be on every carb-friendly bucket list.

Forno conTi – I don’t really care about traditions!

Rome’s Esquilino district, especially around Piazza Vittorio, is buzzing with social and demographic change. Forno Conti is a modern bakery symbolic of this vibey and cosmopolitan neighborhood. The place opened in November 2021, and baker Sergio Conti is a good example of what you can achieve when talent meets courage. “I’m the fourth generation of a family that has always worked with bread. So, tradition has always been very present in our family. However, I wanted to try something new, break with traditions, and start from fresh in terms of interior style and types of bread,” he says. His wife, Germana De Donno, is an interior designer, and she is responsible for the distinctive minimalist style of this chic bakery. In the corner of the shop a girl is working on her laptop. Outside, two staff members are preparing for the lunchtime rush as Sergio arranges slices of freshly-baked pizza, sandwiches, and crusty bread for display. He looks happy in his life as a contemporary Roman baker.

Pane e Tempesta

Via Giovanni de Calvi 23-25

Panificio Bonci

Via Trionfale 36

Pizzarium

Via della Meloria 43

Preserving A Central Italian Legacy La Cucina Di Alberta

by Isabella Vagnoni | Images provided by Christina Vagnoni

the book, you will find our family’s traditional Easter menu, from appetisers like Good Friday chickpea and potato soup, Easter Sunday lunch including chicken cotolette and lasagne Nonna Alberta’s prayer before eating, the story of our family’s annual tomato sauce day, and other family stories and traditions enrich the experience of the book.

The majority of us preserve our nonnas ’ recipes by writing them down in a notebook that we keep in a kitchen drawer. However, my sister Rebecca, aged 27, from Adelaide, took it a step further by publishing our nonna Alberta’s recipes in a cookbook. The book is entitled La Cucina di Alberta (Alberta’s Kitchen) and is focused on traditional cuisine from central Italy, specifically from Le Marche. The book includes Olive Ascolane or Olive Ripiene (Ascoli Olives or Stuffed Olives), gnocchi, a traditional Easter cake, and fried ricotta ravioli, to name a few.

However, the book is so much more than a cookbook. It highlights the culture and traditions that surround the food. In

Rebecca explained her motivation for writing the book: “As a child, during the school holidays, I would look forward to a cooking day with nonna and my two sisters, Isabella and Christina. We would typically make gnocchi, eat lunch, and then nonna would take us to the park to play and stop to buy us ice cream. This is one of my fondest childhood memories and inspired me to create this cookbook. I want to share my nonna’s recipes with my own family someday,” explains Rebecca.

La Cucina di Alberta features the black and white wedding photos of our nonna and nonno Eolo Vagnoni at their 1963 wedding in Ascoli Piceno, Le Marche, Italy. The pictures capture a bygone era: the men wearing black and white pinstriped suits with black bow ties; the women modestly dressed in blazer dresses; family and friends standing outside the church on their wedding day.

Our nonna Albertina was born in Ascoli Piceno Italy in 1944. Her family home was situated on a farm in the village of Appignano Del Tronto. Albertina was the fourth of five siblings, and her family lived rurally. All the food the family ate was organic because they harvested the crops themselves. Eating from the land is a prominent part of Italian food philosophy. Nonna Albertina’s family kept farm animals, including pigs and rabbits, chickens for eggs and sheep to make cheese. As fridges and freezers didn’t exist when nonna was a child, the family used their cantina to preserve food for longer. The cantina is where they kept their homemade wine and also hung cured pork which lasted all year long.

Life on the farm was hard because the family’s livelihood and the food they ate were fully dependent on the crops they were able to grow and sell. There were times of uncertainty when bad weather caused crops to fail, but nonna said her family had no other choice to survive, so they always made do.

There were happy times as well. When nonna was about five, she accidentally got drunk when she came across a bowl of wine unsupervised in the cantina. She also recalls dressing up as characters with her siblings for religious feast days. From ten years old, nonna also made gelato from snow. Her brothers, sisters, and she did this by adding homemade red wine on top of clean snow. Nonna describes how delicious it was.

Nonna met nonno in 1963 when she was 19 in Ascoli Piceno. Nonno was 32 and had already been living in Australia. He came back to Italy to find a bride. They courted for a few months and were soon engaged. Nonno hired a white Fiat 500 to drive around the village. He took nonna shopping to buy the things she needed to move to Australia. Three months later, they were married.

As a couple, they boarded the Marconi Galileo, which took 19 days to sail from Italy to Australia. Nonna was also pregnant with my father Filippo on the journey, and morning sickness combined with sea sickness was not a fun experience for nonna!

Many years later, one of nonna’s favourite ways to spend time with her grandchildren was to teach us to cook during the school holidays. These are precious memories my sisters and I are grateful for. Rebecca finished by saying that “My hope for this book is to inspire others to cook, bring their family and friends together and hopefully inspire them to preserve their grandparents’ traditions too.”

CIAMBOLOTTO Bundcake

Recipes by Alberta Vagnoni

SERVES: 8

PREPARATION TIME: 15 MINUTES

COOKING TIME: 50 MINUTES

Ingredients

3 eggs

¼ cup olive oil

½ cup sugar

2 cups self-raising flour

1 cup milk

2 tablespoons of powdered Cadbury Drinking Chocolate

Olive oil spray

Round cake tin (shape of tin should allow for a hole in the middle of the cake, otherwise place a small glass in the middle of the cake tin to produce a hole in the middle of the cake).

Method

Place eggs in bowl, add sugar and beat mixture until sugar is dissolved.

Add self-raising flour, olive oil and milk and stir with a wooden spoon until lumps disappear and texture is smooth.

Preheat oven at 180°C.

Place Cadbury Drinking Chocolate in a large cup or measuring jar and add some of the cake batter (about ½ cup) stir through until chocolate is all mixed in.

Spray cake tin with olive oil and lightly dust tin evenly with some flour.

Pour half of the batter in cake tin, then place chocolate mixture evenly on top, finally place remaining batter on top making sure to spread evenly.

Place in oven and bake for 50 minutes or until golden brown on top.

Tip

Use this cake batter recipe (minus the chocolate mixture) as a base for other cakes.

Ravioli Fritti Con Ricotta

Fried Ricotta Ravioli

Recipes by Alberta Vagnoni

SERVES: 4-6

PREPARATION TIME: 15-30 MINUTES

COOKING TIME: 30 MINUTES

INGREDIENTS

FILLING

500 gr Ricotta cheese

2 eggs

1 pinch of cinnamon

1 pinch nutmeg

1 tablespoon lemon rind

1 pinch of salt

PASTRY

4 eggs

Plain flour

Icing sugar

Deep fry in sunflower oil

Method

In a bowl mix the eggs and flour, make a soft dough and with a rolling pin make thin sheets.

Mix ricotta, eggs, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and lemon rind together

Spread the sheet on the table, put one tablespoon of the mixture on the sheet, cover with another sheet. Place a glass upside down and cut the ravioli one by one.

Seal by pressing the edges of the pastry with a fork. It’s important that the pastry doesn’t open when deep frying.

Deep fry in hot oil until golden brown.

Drain the ravioli by placing on an absorbent paper, then put the ravioli in a big dish and sprinkle with icing sugar to serve.