Dolci&Dolci pastry shop

Last week I was in Chieri for work: Chieri is a lovely town close to Turin – just half an hour by train. I arrived one hour earlier for my appointment and that gave me the chance to make a stop at one of the best gluten free pastry shops that I have ever been to: Dolci&Dolci. Dolci&Dolci has been created by Mariella and her husband 35 years ago. Their long time experience in pastry making and baking made them open a new pastry shop completely devoted to gluten free in 2013. When I stepped in, I felt overwhelmed by all the fantastic brioches, cakes, tarts, biscuits, ice-creams, tiramisù, Italian torrone, chocolates, sweets, confetti and so, so much more! And shall I say that everything I tasted was so good, you could never “ever” say it is free of something except…well gluten!

As Mariella tells me, to her food basically means family: she decided to create a gluten free pastry range after seeing one of her best friends’ son being diagnosed with celiac disease and what it entailed in terms of mainstream products – poor in taste and in nutritional values – that he was buying and eating. So at Dolci&Dolci the challenge was set: create such naturally good gluten free products to fight against the prejudice – very common in Italy and being an Italian+celiac myself I can say that is so true – that gluten free is bad, full of sugar and fat.

Finding the right consistency and the perfect taste in each cake that they make is key to Dolci&Dolci as well. Mariella explains me that they keep studying hard and researching constantly to find new solutions to make their products stay naturally fresh and fragrant as long as possible. They say no to artificial flavourings or colourings in food. Besides, she tells me, Italy is full of pastries that are naturally gluten free like the renown “amaretti” for example- in Italy there are about 200 varieties of them, can you believe that ?!!  I can’t add any more reasons why Dolci&Dolci is a gluten free pastry shop that does deserve the detour if you travel to Turin. Hope to be back any time soon and eat the gluten free chocolate brioche for breakfast!