Peasant bread, one-time bread, spelled, rye, Trentino, sole mio, multigrain, wholegrain, with olives, with walnuts. Isabella describes them one by one her breads to the customers who enter the Panacea store in corso Siccardi 15, to turin. Some are aficionados, others, instead, are just passing through. There are those who ask specific questions, but also those who are looking for the one "who does not do the crumbs, because otherwise the husband complains". «And it lasts?, The client asks again. "Yes, ma'am, it's hard." "No, no, how long does it last?" Isa allows herself just the time of a joke, then immediately starts talking about her loaves, as if she were doing it with her own children. "Hard, tough lady, even up to five or six days, if she wraps it with a cotton cloth. Our bread is made only with water, sourdough and zero-kilometer flour. "But there is no zero kilometer," says a suspicious man. "In Turin, yes," assures Isa.
There is not only agricultural bread in Milan
Not only Milan, therefore, even the city of the Mole can boast its own "Agricultural bread". All thanks to an obstinate agronomist and a group of social workers who founded in 2015 Panacea Social Farm. The cooperative, which distributes the finished product is, in fact, only the last link in a chain that has its roots in Stupinigi Natural Park, passes for the Roccati mill of Candia Canavese and lands at oven in via Baltea 3. A small network, well oiled, which manages to control the bread supply chain from sowing to table.
This is how the first Piedmontese flour supply chain was born
Isa was the first to believe it. When in 2014 she went to talk to the owners of the farms operating in the Park, the first obstacle was their skepticism. After all, why change, already having a well-established cereal production? To convince them was the idea that the Turinese could eat a bread "100% made in Turin". «If you go to the farmer proving you already have the complete supply chain, or those who grind you the flour, who transforms it and the distribution network, have an advantage, because the deal is practically armored.
Five producers have therefore decided to sign a supply chain agreement, which was added to the specifications of the Park. The identified companies were all of a reasonable size and therefore able to face the possible risks of a conversion. On the basis of this contract they undertook to dedicate part of their land to the production of modern grains, but with a less tenacious gluten, therefore less impacting on the environment, needing only a few fertilizers. One, instead, has been entrusted with the production of an ancient grain, recovered thanks to the collaboration with the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Piacenza.
From Panacea quality bread at an affordable price
Enhancing theproximity agriculture and the ancient agricultural vocation of the Park a thread has been created that starts from the cultivated land of Stupinigi and arrives directly on the tables of Turin. That's how it was born the first chain of Piedmontese flour, a real one territorial mark. "Working in a short supply chain, without intermediaries, allows us to guarantee thetotal elimination of chemical additives and improvers and to offer consumers a product whose quality and provenance are completely known, all at once affordable price, Explains Isabella.
That of the controlled price was immediately one of the guidelines that the partners decided to give themselves. The cost, that does not exceed 6.70 euros per Kg, is fixed at the beginning of the year, during a meeting between the various players in the supply chain, who are aware of the earnings of each member. No one hides that it is a little higher than the bread that can be found at the supermarket, but only because it reasons on the principle of "Fair revenue". And working without chemical additives and respecting nature requires more care and more time.
Via Baltea, urban regeneration is also done through food
The transformation takes place in the oven of Via Baltea, a urban regeneration project in popular Milan Barrier district managed by another cooperative, Tailor-made. Barrier labs are a social cafeteria, a lounge and a kitchen to rent, a coworking, a carpentry shop, a jazz and Panacea school. Here they work there two bakers full time, Noor, originally from Bangladesh is Rachid, Moroccan.
Main pasta, the union was the founding act
Together with Isa and a bakery expert they have developed the Panacea recipe, the one most suited to the characteristics of Stupinigi's "weak" flours. In Turin they were the first to sell bread made only with sourdough. This was inherited by three different people, joining the three mothers was their founding act. The oven works at full speed seven days a week. Not only bread comes from here, but also crackers, breadsticks, desserts, pizzas and focaccia. The most requested breads are the multigrain, the "one time", based on type 1 flour and the "farmer", a semi-wholemeal with a type 2 flour.
Where to buy Panacea bread in Turin
The first harvest dates back to 2015, and the first store was opened that year. Today's stores there are five, four in the center of Turin (via San Massimo 5, corso Siccardi 15, via Madama Cristina 96, via Principi d’Acaja 59) and, for some months now, one also in Stupinigi, in what was once the food of the country. Not counting i farmers markets, where the members of Panacea try to always be present with their banquet. To sell bread, but also to tell the people of Turin that what they eat at lunch is "their bread".
