Who’s Brio gluten free bakery?

Today we get to know a new gluten free bakery that opened in Verona, in Italy: Brio Bakery. Brio Bakery is a project around love, artisanal know-how and great tasting food that happens to be gluten free. Co-founders Paolo and Giovanna answer to my questions.

Chiara: Why gluten free?

Paolo: Both Giovanna and I are not intolerant to gluten, to us it was a challenge in the first place: make gluten free become more mainstream by showing everybody, not only people suffering from celiac disease or food intolerances, that is actually very good. All around us there were products made by big companies and gluten free shops that looked rather sad to us; we wanted to create a bright, cheerful place where you can feel good about yourself and eat great food.

Giovanna: A few years ago I discovered I was lactose-intolerant and out of sudden I could not drink a cappuccino in the morning any more or a brioche the way I used to do …I was faced to a drastic change in my life. Later on some of my best friends discovered they had celiac disease. Their health suffered from it but also their social life: they could not go out as they used to do, drink an aperitivo with friends or going to the restaurants became much more difficult. I come from the South of Italy and to me food is about sharing, this is a very important aspect to me. People should not feel excluded or “different”. Then, I think that in Italy we have the “taste” of food, I mean that we don’t eat just because we have to nourish ourselves but we eat for the pleasure of it. So taste becomes key to us: food has to taste great. With Brio bakery I wanted to create a place where everybody could eat and share good food in a relaxed, friendly way.

Chiara: What is Brio gluten free bakery?

Paolo: It is a bakery, a coffee shop, a place where children can play, and soon also a space for workshops with naturopaths and food specialists to spread the culture of eating healthy and gluten free. We are focused on quality food: we make our bread with sourdough, it rises for 24 hours and it is baked fresh every day.

Giovanna: We are basically focused on three production lines: the bread, the fresh pasta like tortellini, lasagne, gnocchi and different kinds of pastries

Chiara: What is the gluten free food that you loved the most?

Paolo: When we came to Paris last summer, I loved both Noglu and Helmut Newcake pastry shops. I also ate great gluten free food in Amsterdam.

Giovanna: To me it is definitely the cheesecake I ate at Helmut Newcake in Paris.

Chiara: Gluten free is…

Paolo and Giovanna: It’s a challenge ! A very interesting one.

Giovanna: It’s this bakery we created that it’s like our home and where we work putting much effort and passion. Before we got married we decided to walk 300 km in 10 days on the way to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. When I work here I sometimes get that same feeling: you have a very long road ahead of you, the more you walk the longest it feels and you are tired but somehow you make it and you discover that in the end, it was beautiful just the way it was.

Paolo: To us gluten free is an opportunity to re-think the way we use to eat every day, to revise the grammar of our food habits and get the chance and the opportunity to know about new ingredients, textures and flavours.

Come discover Brio gluten free bakery in my post:

http://bacididamaglutenfree.com/en/portfolio/brio-bakery/