Papoula Ribeiro
artigiana del pane
São Paulo, Brasile
Papoula Ribeiro was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and trained in Europe – in France and England. After deciding that her studies in industrial design were not the road for her to take, for the past twenty years or so she has been on the frontline of the “Brazilian leavening movement”.
Having approached the restaurant industry during a long stay in the Caribbean (where she spent 4 years), she grew passionate about bread making and leavening. Once back in Brazil, she started working with some local businesses, including the workshop of French-Brazilian chef Olivier Anquier.
Hence the decision of studying in the Old Continent (where she often returns to visit bakeries and pastry shops to find inspiration from European tradition) acquiring various experiences including the one at the prestigious Ècole LeNotre, where in 2003 she studied cooking, pastry making and bread making. This experience was followed in 2007 by courses at the The School of Artisan Food in Welbeck, a village in Nottinghamshire, where she focused on bread making techniques as well as management.
Having returned home, she opened Papoula Bakehouse: a micro-bakery founded on the idea of good, healthy and “real” bread. After closing her “house of bread”, since 2015 she’s been working (first as director, then as consultant) in the bread making laboratory Padoca do Mani, a padaria part of the Mani group which includes various restaurants; from gourmet locations to this lovely and cosy bakery-cum-café where you can have butter croissant or fried eggs for breakfast, savoury snacks or typical Brazilian cakes for tea or buy Papoula’s fragrant and freshly made bread. Today, she defines herself as an independent artisan of bread.
Called in the jury of the 2017 Brazilian edition of TV show Bake Off, some of her recipes are on Massamadre, a website dedicated to bread-making and natural leavening.
Has participated in
Identità Milano
a journalist born in Naples now living in Rome, she tries to make her three passions meet: eating, travelling and writing