Il Forno di MocchieA small but highly impressive mountain bakery in the small outlying hamlet of Mocchie above Condove in the Susa Valley. After leaving her old job, Michaela Mischinelli and her husband Massimo Tomassone decided to make the move to the mountains to grow grain. Michaela inherited her passion for bread from her great grandmother, who left her native Puglia in the 1950s to move to the Val di Susa, where she had a bakery installed. The bread-making tradition was subsequently handed down from Michaela’s grandmother to her mother then to Michaela herself.
In 2016, Michaela turned out the first loaves baked in her own wood oven. For the bread, she uses the flour from their grain, which they will soon be able to grind on situ, blended with flours from Piedmontese mills. With other members of her family and all-female team of assistants, Michaela produces different types of bread (wholemeal, semi-wholemeal, rye, ancient grain, standard, with stone-ground flour), as well as baked goods such as grissini, cakes and tarts, cornmeal biscuits and “inzupposi”, or dipping biscuits. Thanks to the use of sourdough and slow fermentation, the final result is bread that is easy to digest and highly nutritional. The farm also grows mountain potatoes and other vegetables.
***
