From our blog itParis
The most amazing bread in Paris according to Le Parisien? That of Pane Vivo! We accompany you in the universe of Sicilian wheat and the coolest mother yeast in the capital. And we talked about it with him, Adriano Farano, or the founder of this 100% Italian boulangerie! With a past as a journalist and an experience that led him first to Paris and then to California, Farano is back in the Ville Lumière. Its goal? Bringing him to life, al pain qui fait du bien! And you chercheurs d'emploi, stay tuned: Pane Vivo is taking.
Pane Vivo lands in Paris: le pain qui fait du bien
Let's face it, in Paris certainly the bread not missing. France boasts an ancient tradition in the field of bakery. That fragrant perfume that overwhelms us, for example in the 4th arrondissement, a stone's throw from Notre Dame and in the middle of the kingdom baguette. Yet, bread that is so beautiful to the eye can hide pitfalls. This is why we want you to reflect on his digestibility. If you cannot, in fact, digest the sandwich devoured in the pause, we need to ask ourselves about the cause.
Will it be the latest idea of your otherwise nice boss? Or yet another bottling in the metro, in close encounters of the third kind at blast furnace temperature? Well, no. That bloated or sometimes stomach ache feeling is determined by the type of flour in your sandwich. Of this and much more, we talked with Adriano Farano, journalist and founder of Pane Vivo, le pain qui fait du bien.
Hi Adriano! Thank you very much for being here with us at itParigi.it. Tell us your story! As a journalist first in Paris and then in the States and now again here as baker. Why did you decide to found Pane Vivo in the Ville Lumière?
Thanks to you, it's a pleasure! Look, the bread thundered me about three years ago. Then there was a juncture of other events, including the birth of my third child. Also, I had recently sold my start-up in California and after nine years living in the Silicon Valley, I needed a new challenge. Getting my hands on it gave me other sensations than apps and journalism, and that's how it started.
Just think that I built the first clay oven with my hands and with my children's feet! I started selling my bread in California, but both my family and I were homesick for Paris where we had also lived for nine years. In the Ville Lumière I had developed my journalistic career, I had founded the newspaper Cafe Babel. We lacked Europe, the art and the beauty of Paris and so I decided to found Pane Vivo here. Of course, the return was not easy: we found ourselves in the middle of the protests for pensions and the demonstrations of the yellow vests. Despite this, we strengthened ourselves and threw ourselves into this new adventure with joy.
Here in Paris you have found a hostile or proactive environment for the launch of yours bakery?
The old guard was very hostile, especially in the beginning. Consumers, on the other hand, welcomed us with open arms. I remember well the conversation with a baker who was awarded the title of Meilleur Ouvrier de France. He looked down on me from his thirty years of experience in bakery, judging me a rookie! For him the ancient grains, which I insisted on proposing, were too expensive. He defended the modern varieties of wheat, which were more profitable but also more harmful to the organism. Consumers, on the other hand, immediately understood the novelty of Pane Vivo and immediately appreciated us. Then, you know, the bread evokes stories that have their roots in spirituality in general and in the Christianity in particular.
Even in Ancient Egypt, bread was revered as a divine element. And if we go even further in time, the bread marked the passage of Man to Neolithic! It was really Homo Sapiens to use a pestle to mash first the oat grains and then the wheat ones. Man then observed the miracle of fermentation and this is how bread was born. Who knows why, however, the magic of leavening with whole grains, known since prehistoric times, has been "forgotten" over the centuries ...
We come to today where there are more than fourteen additives in bread, too much salt and too rapid leavening with brewer's yeast! All of this is bad for our health. We at Pane Vivo, on the other hand, want to return to tradition with a futuristic vision of our product. In short, we want to combine the goodness of seeds with the modernity of today's science, for example by appealing to gluten analysis that we commissioned before choosing our flours.
Adriano, please tell us, a physical and a moral ingredient, essential for making the best bread in the world. Or at least to make that of Pane Vivo
The indispensable physical ingredient is definitely the flour. Most of the bakers tour the large industrial mills and find the best offer to receive funding to start their business. It is often the large mills that finance the creation of boulangeries. So their purpose is not to find the best flour for our health. The nutritional side of wheat is totally in the background. Think that, very often, the nutritional card of the flour is completely missing.
I spent three years testing hundreds of flours for the launch of Pane Vivo. Then, I analyzed the ones I thought were most interesting and the choice fell on one Russello variety durum wheat flour. It's about a Sicilian indigenous flour, whose ear has a slightly reddish color. The beauty of this grain is that it features a gluten highly biodegradable in the human body, namely al 100% digestible.
The second indispensable ingredient, the moral one, is the password. Bread must be explained and that's what we do at Pane Vivo. It is a magic that oscillates between the Myths and Logos and the choice of Sicilian wheat brings us back to Greek legends. Diodorus Siculus, a historian of 90 BC, tells that the goddess Demeter had given the grain to the Siceliots for having consoled her for the abduction of her daughter Persephone, by Hades. It is nice to wrap our customers in the embrace of the mythical tale. It is pure light. In fact, for us, our salesmen are not simple the sellers'. We prefer to call them éclaireurs : that is, bearers of that light which is our bread, of a real one educational activity in the direction of the consumer.
In a provocative post online, you mentioned the high glycemic rate of the baguette. Do you want to explain, once again, why bread is often indigestible?
Well, if you tell me about that baguette of white wheat that criminally would like to be elevated to the cultural / food heritage of France, I say mine. White bread is extremely harmful to the body. But if you realize the same baguette with a whole grain and noble, the result is sensational and healthy! In summary, the problems of a indigestible bread there are three:
- Il germ: grains of modern varieties are preferred, which are more profitable, but harmful to health;
- La flour: the white one is deprived of the endosperm, in short, of the germ, that is, of the noblest part of the grain. This is why there are too many traces of sugar in the flour;
- La fermentation: brewer's yeast is harmful! In fact, it develops a leavening too fast which prevents the body from assimilating the minerals contained in the plant. Instead at Pane Vivo we only use the mother yeast which comes from a integral milling. All this to create an all-round food, finally doing justice to the bread!
Where can we find you in Paris and what are Pane Vivo's future projects?
You can find us in the 20th arrondissement, Ménilmontant district at 49 rue de la Chine. We also have around a dozen distribution points throughout the French capital accessible on our site. For example, from RAP, the best Italian epicerie from all over Paris, distributes our bread and we are very proud of it. Among the future projects of Pane Vivo is that of continuing to realize the pain qui fait du bien.
Our company is having a lot of success and we are looking for new ones éclaireurs o girl scouts, who love bread as much as we do and who are bilingual in French. Because as I told you before, our bread must be explained and told: the customer deserves to be informed. Our consumers have the right to get to know the gustatory and healthy magic of our products up close.
Adriano, we thank you for this nice chat and we wish you the best for yours bakery
Thanks to you!
And you, éclaireurs e girl scouts listening? If you think you are the rare pearl, the right person to emanate the light of Pane Vivo products, the lucky one bakery await your applications. Visit the Facebook page . or Official site e send your CVs in the "contacts" section.
Bonne chance, alors et bon appetit! And always remember that:
Bread is the kindest, the most welcoming of words. Always write it with a capital letter, like your name.
(Russian cafe sign)
