Marè Prati Bakery in Rome: from father to son, flatbread pizza and a new family bread

Marè is like his father Fabio, who, while Daniele is baking pandoro, covers panettone with chocolate icing. Today, the roles are reversed: Daniele is in charge and Fabio is in charge. "The bakery in Prati opened in 1987. I've always been here, but in 2005, my father passed the business on to me. And he allowed me to carry on my little revolution. I learned a lot from him. He made me work my way up, the real thing. You don't know this, but as a child, I used to go down to the warehouse to cry." Marè is like his uncle Massimo, also a baker, with a namesake shop in Garbatella. Marè is like Emilio, Massimo's father, who started a family of bakers.

With Daniele's arrival, the old bread-making systems and industrial flours in Prati are replaced by more modern processes, research into ingredients, and the creation of blends and new doughs. Sourdough starter arrives, along with the great leavened products: Colomba, cheese pizza, casatiello, panettone, and pandoro. "We didn't use them before. But now they're my passion. They're like my children." Thanks to research and discussions with other producers, Daniele has permanently replaced direct doughs with Retarder, a cold process that stops yeast fermentation, allowing for longer and better management of leavening times. Inside the small workshop, alarms and dough timers ring continuously. One on the phone, one at the counter: "How much longer?" they ask each other.

The flours are chosen by Daniele, who creates his blends from Italian producers. "I'm certainly not an extremist. But I can't use anything I don't like, something I want to eat." He continues: "I like the aromas certain flours release. Sometimes we bake here in the lab and we smell incredible scents of wild herbs, chamomile. A friend of mine eats our bread and says it tastes like flour. And I tell her that's the flavor of wheat." It's a free approach, not radical but functional and passionate. Among the flours, he chooses those from Molino Paolo Mariani, in the Marche region, some flours from Tuscia, and flours from Mulino della Riviera, in the province of Cuneo. The latter was a biscuit factory, run by the Cavanna family, who decided to buy and restore a watermill to create their own flours.

The bakery's products have it all: delicatessen, pastries, large leavened products, Italian croissants, biscuits, and then pizza. There's pizza alla pala, both stuffed and topped, "stirata" because the dough is stretched and stretched directly on the wooden peel used to bake it, a style that's disappearing from traditional Roman baking. Then there's bread: homemade, with a mix of rye and buckwheat flours, unsalted, rye bread, and seasoned breads, like those with walnuts or a mix of nuts and dried fruit. "Who used to sell these things? Now customers are starting to like less traditional breads, too."

Daniele arrives at the bakery every day at 4 a.m. and leaves after lunch. "But now that it's Christmas, I spend whole days here. I rest for two hours and start again. But I don't find it hard work. Also because working with yeast and dough means working with a living thing. Maybe that's why there's a romantic aspect to leavened products." A growing project, increasingly appreciated. So much so that Gambero Rosso awarded the business two out of three loaves in the 2019 "Pani e Panettieri" guide and then with the title of best emerging entrepreneur for Daniele in 2020. That was the year they also launched an online store, a big step forward for a historic, family-run business. And in the future? "I was already ready to open a second bakery in 2019. Then 2020 happened what it was. We'll see next year."

Marè Prati Bakery. Viale Angelico 88, Rome. Tel. 06 37511594. Online Shop. Facebook Page. Instagram Page.