There is no doubt that bread is a symbol of our culture. The measure underlying our food well-being. Saying that there is no life without bread is neither heresy nor a simple metaphor. But there is bread and bread. Because industrialization has also “sterilized” the michetta. The reasons are easy to understand and over time quality has been consumed in the name of quantity of distribution which has penalized artisan bakeries. However, alternative baking – in Milan in this sense Davide Longoni has set a precedent – it is experiencing a new fertile season thanks to the artisan workshops that bake traditional grains. So much so that Luca Martinelli and Laura Filios have drawn a map that contains 100 of them in the volume Good bread, a journey to the Italy of new artisan bakeries.
“Bread – states Luca Martinelli – is a bridge between city and countryside. Each mixture expresses the connection with the earth. Because the cereal that becomes flour is not just a raw material but a safeguard of biodiversity, an element of the landscape, a form of healthy food prevention, a ‘colour’ in the baker’s palette, a distinctive sign of the territory”.
Italy has a new geography of bread: the bakers of the future, often young and enterprising, put their face to it and knead water and flour with social and environmental values. This book tells the stories and philosophies of the protagonists of an ongoing revolution, led by the group of urban agricultural bakers, artisans and entrepreneurs who churn out good, healthy, digestible and flavourful bread, made with local raw materials, wholesome flours and biological. A guide to discovering the places where you can leave happy with a loaf of bread, a focaccia, a pizza or a sweet in foil. A guide to organic supply chains that take care of the soil. Thus states the Manifesto of Urban Agricultural Bakers: “Bread is made of people: the farmers who grow the cereals, the millers who transform them into flour, the artisans who make the bread, the consumers who eat them”. In the name of natural sustainability.
