Il Forno del BorgoMauro Maritano produces bread and baked goods in the small hamlet of Bertassi, just outside Avigliana. He does so with the finest organic ingredients (wheat, rye, spelt, barley, Senatore Cappelli durum wheat and other cereals). He makes his bread, which is digestible, delicious and keeps well, with flours from an old stone mill and sourdough, and bakes it in an old wood oven.
Recipes, some handed down by Mauro’s grandmother, include five-cereal bread, rye bread, pan di sole, with pumpkin seeds (much in demand), rye bread with dry and dehydrated fruit, stirotti (hand-stretched breadsticks), baguettes, classic grissini, French loaves and the characteristic pan barbarià, literally “barbarised bread”, made with rye and durum wheat flour. The shop also sells typical Susa Valley delicacies such as canestrelli biscuits and paste di meliga, cornmeal biscuits.
It’s worth mentioning a technique, known as “’l leva” in Piedmontese dialect, Mauro uses to prove some of his breads. It’s a tradition that dates from the ancient Egyptians and it involves taking a small piece of the day’s dough, leaving it to rest and using it the next day to make new bread. Breads made this way is tastier, more fragrant and more digestible than average.
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