Valeriana de Berardinis
MEET VAL & HER APPROACH
Since she was young, Valeriana had a very creative mind, and in her twenties set upon opening a famous pizzeria restaurant in Abruzzo, in the heart of Italy. The main product was the award winning pizza, which she developed over many years of practice. She used to go around the whole region trying pizza from competing pizzerias, tasting them, analyzing them, and incorporating the positive elements of each into her own product.
After lots of experimenting, Valeriana finally developed her ultimate pizza, which was declared the best in the area. Although she was satisfied with her product, she never stopped improving her craft, and was often her worse critic.
Valeriana eventually moved to the beautiful English South Downs, and after 15 years of pizza making was keen to set her creative mind on developing a different product. She invented Farretti, an organic, savoury biscuit, made with spelt flour, hence its name, as spelt in Italian is “farro” and farretti means “little spelties”.
Farretti Ciabatta
Slow fermented hand-made Italian bread
Farretti is a producer of handmade, authentic, Italian slow fermented bread. Based on the original recipe of the late Dr Cavallari who was the founding father of new wave Italian bread. He developed Ciabatta bread in the early 1980’s to compete with the popularity of the French baguette, which was damaging the Italian bakery product market. Valeriana researched the history of this popular baking style prior to launching her product range. They remained in regular contact until his death in 2106. Valeriana says her bread was ‘influenced by his generosity of advice and passion for his craft’.
Since starting the bakery in 2010 Farretti bread has won a strong consumer following who love its naturally developed flavour, soft chewy crust and light texture. In addition this bread when oven heated or toasted forms light crispy bite.
Ciabatta, a crisp-crusted Italian bread with hints of sourdough and loads of crannies longing for butter!
- Valeriana de Berardinis -
Ingredients
QUALITY INGREDIENTS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE
Farretti uses a small range of high quality ingredients. Manitoba flour from Marriages is a high protein wheat which is perfect for long fermentation baking. Manitoba wheat originates from the aboriginal Canadian region of Manitoba and is used extensively by Italian bakers. Italian extra virgin olive oil and olives. Fresh vegetables and herbs.