Words and Photos by Anna Pearson* Have you ever heard of an “agripanetteria”? I never had until recently, but then I figured it out: “Agricoltura” (agriculture) + “Panetteria” (bakery) = “Agripanetteria” = a bakery that processes home-grown grain!
Et voilà, in Dogliani there is someone who does just that: Stefano Musso grows ancient grains which he uses to bake very good focacce, breads, grissini etc.
This is the small, self-built shop of Stefano Musso’s “Agripanetteria”. This is Stefano.
At the heart of the bakery is the beautifully restored old wood-burning oven. It had not been in use for some time – although in the past, the families of Dogliani would use it together to regularly bake their own bread.
Stefano tells us that it was a challenge to learn how to bake in this oven, since the temperature cannot be controlled like it can in a modern oven.
To heat up the wood-fired oven properly, Stefano has to get up very early. Once the desired temperature is reached, it is a question of using it optimally for the different baked products: first, those which need a high temperature to bake, and at the end those for which lower temperatures are best, such as the grissini.
Stefano grows old varieties of grain which have a lower gluten content. This kind of dough has to be kneaded for much longer than one made from modern grains. However, in a normal kneading machine the dough would heat up too much during the long kneading process, which then affects the quality of the baked goods. For this reason, Stefano uses a kneading machine that is normally used for the production of panettone. With this machine, the dough is not kneaded with a rotating dough hook, but gently worked by two metal “hands” that also incorporate a lot of air into the dough. This is the only way that Stefano’s breads can turn out as airy as we are used to with modern grain varieties.
So why use old varieties at all? Because they are suitable for organic cultivation, because they have more flavour and more nutrients. Combined with a long dough, this results in high-quality breads with lots of flavour that stay fresh longer and are easier to digest.
I ask Stefano whether he is actually a trained farmer or baker. He answers: neither – he is actually a bricklayer. But when he became a father, he started to think about whether the food he was giving his children was actually healthy. He came to the conclusion that he could not justify feeding his children conventionally produced food. So he planted a vegetable garden, later a grain field, and started baking bread; first for his family, and later for the whole village!
Agripanetteria Stefano Musso Borgata Biarella 7, Dogliani +335 7067332 stecomestai@alice.it
*Anna Pearson is a designer, cook, cookbook author and publisher. With her publishing company, ‘Edition gut,’ she has published two books in collaboration with her sister, photographer Catherine Pearson: “Zu Tisch.” (2014) and “Pasta” (2018). Both books have won various book awards. For years Anna has been involved with Slow Food, a global movement that promotes good, clean, and fairly produced food and that everyone has access to. This conviction is in all her projects, as she always wants to inspire a sustainable approach.
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