Italian Job

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday April 3, 2007

Helen Greenwood

It's better than the bread from the old country.

When Davide Guaiana arrived in Australia from Italy in 1998, he got a job at Pan d'Oro Bread Shop in Five Dock. There he met Italian bakers who'd been working the ovens and mixing machines for 30 years and stumbled on their old recipe for "a beautiful bread" he reckons he'd never have found in the old country.

"I couldn't believe it," he says in his sing-song accent. "I started to improve my recipes and my job more in Australia because the owner of Pan d'Oro and people like him came here 50 years ago and they've kept the old recipes."

Australia is something of an archive for traditional recipes such as Guaiana's best-selling rustica loaf, which he adapted from Pan d'Oro's. Migrants here have preserved methods discarded in their native countries, where customs have moved on.

Guaiana, 35, learnt to make biscuits and cakes from his father in Sicily at the age of 13. When he was 19, he met Giada Moschen, who would become his wife. Her father, who had returned from Australia to Palermo to open a bakery, taught Guaiana to make bread by hand.

The couple married after moving to Rome, where Guaiana worked in a commercial factory that made breads and biscuits by machine. To realise his dream of opening his own bakery and cafe, they decided they would have to move to Sydney.

They started in Fairfield. Their first shop was so small they had to concentrate on wholesale and were supplying cafes and clubs around the area. After four years, they quit the site and bought these much larger premises in the next suburb.

The clean, tiled shop fronts a huge production bakery. The warm smell of good bread wafts through. A dozen different loaves and rolls, made by machine, by hand and a combination of both, are in baskets lined with red and white gingham.

The traditionally shaped breads such as pugliese and pagnotta, triangoli and torpedini have a "tender" crust and an airy crumb. The rustica, which is proved for

24 hours, has an intense crust and flavour.

Moschen runs the espresso machines and serves the pizza slices - up to 17 varieties on the weekend. Various types of sfogliata or puff pastry are filled with ricotta or apple or Nutella. There is a crostada or tart with jam or chocolate and a ricotta cheesecake. Huge palmiers and croissants catch your eye but look out for the home-made grissini and the packets of biscuits.

You'll find treccine (plaited), quaresimali (almond biscotti), reginelle (a Sicilian specialty with sesame seeds), fiochelli (with jam) and pane al biscotto, which older Italians like to soak in milk for breakfast.

Sapori di Pane

Shop 5, 44-46 The Horsley Drive, Carramar, 9728 4858

Mon-Sat 7am-5pm, Sun 7am-2pm

Best buys

Pane di casa rustica $2.20

Pugliese loaf $2.20

Cannoli with ricotta, above, $2.20 each

In the neighbourhood

Gato's Pastizzi

Shop 4, 46-66 The Horsley Drive, Carramar, 9724 3861

Maltese filled pastries, above, by the freezer-full in this shop attached to the factory. You can also pick up frozen pastry and fresh Maltese biscuits.

Tasic Hot Burek & Pecivo

Shop 113, The Crescent, Fairfield, 9736 1161

Get a carton of buttermilk from the fridge and ask for a slice of meat or spinach burek and you'll snack the Balkan way.