The new changes in bread and panettone

It’s not a question of reinventing bread or panettone. Yet the morning explicitly dedicated to these two products, on Monday 7th at Identità Milano (Sala Blu 2) will show how their use can be changed, and their quality improved. New techniques, different ideas, revolutionary methods – indeed – applied to something we eat every day, the food most often made banal at home and even on the tables of restaurants; and also applied to a Christmas cake whose use is more and more unrelated to the season, having already experienced a decade of great, positive changes, but which for this reason risks becoming banal, standardised. After having mortified it, industrial production has made space for many artisanal producers scattered around the country. Good. Yet the following step is now: if it has to be artisanal, how so?

These are important themes that Identità develops in collaboration with Petra® Molino Quaglia. Let’s hear from them therefore. Piero Gabrieli explains: «As the basic theme of the congress is The Strength of Freedom, that is to say a calm approach, free of taboos, we now need to break one. I mean: we need to free the role of carbohydrates, often demonised but in fact an essential part of the Mediterranean diet. We’re against their bad use, but let’s concentrate instead on a simple, healthy, tasty use of carbohydrates. Let’s use them in an intelligent way

This has always been the case for Renato Bosco, of Saporè in San Martino Buon Albergo (Verona) who will open the works in the room at 10,15 am, presented by – just like everyone else - Francesca Barberini. His speech is titled “Pasta Madre Viva” and is obviously based on Bosco’s commitment for the certification of natural leavening, which drove him to create, among other things, Figli di Pasta Madre Viva. He will explain how to manage yeast in different ways for different uses and he will renew the yeast live. Two tastings are scheduled: Colazioni a Saporè and Pandor0: the first is a bread, of course made only with living mother yeast and oats, which will be presented in a way that follows the breakfast Bosco prepares in his restaurant. Pandor0 (with a “zero” at the end) is of course a "modern" take on the cake from Verona.

After Bosco, at 11,10 am Lucca Cantarin, of pastry shop Marisa in Arsego (Padua) will get on stage. His lesson is titled Panett’ONE and will be entirely dedicated to the importance leavened products have in the pastry industry. Panett’ONE, that is to say the personalisation of panettone: Cantarin will explain an innovative concept and procedure. The cake from Milan will not be varied just by changing the candied fruit inside but by using aromatised shortcake, to be added into the dough with a special technique. In this way, standardization is blocked: every pastry chef will give his product the specific identity that can only derive from the use of “his” shortcake, which perhaps comes form an ancient family recipe, or on the contrary can be the result of a personal creative process. The chef from Padua will present panettone stuffed with shortcake aromatised with cinnamon and lemon, and with chocolate and Maldon salt.

Third and last lesson at 1,20 pm, with Nicola Portinari, of La Peca in Lonigo (Vicenza) and Giulia Miatto, coordinator of the technical and training activities at Molino Quaglia’s Laboratory. The latter will present a new way of making bread independently inside a restaurant: just one basic type of dough, which can then give (good) life to all the products in the classic bread basket, such as crackers, grissini, ciabatta, loaves, etc. A simplified and easy to manage process (using a simple convection oven every professional kitchen is usually equipped with) and with a guaranteed quality, to which Portinari will add his great chef touch, recommending uses and perfect pairings.