GOOD THINGS: PANIFICIO MARIA LUISA RUSSO

Pane, amore e fantasia, or ‘Bread, Love and Dreams’ was the name of a popular 1950s neo-realist Italian romantic comedy. It might also stand as the motto of one of the Sorrentine Peninsula’s most celebrated bakeries, the Panificio Maria Luisa Russo in Piano di Sorrento.

It was amore that led Maria Luisa Russo to open the bakery in 1991. Back then, the only guaranteed employment for most of the able-bodied men in the Sorrento area was as merchant seamen, a trade that meant they were away from home for long stretches. If she turned her talent for home baking into a profession, Maria Luisa reasoned, she’d provide a job for her husband too, as the family bakery would need all hands on deck. The ruse worked – though eventually it was the couple’s two sons, Emiliano and Gianluca, who would become the master fornai of a bakery that is better known locally as ‘Il Pane del Girone’.

They work Monday to Saturday with a few days off in August and a couple of weeks’ vacation in January. But the atmosphere in the bakery and shop is anything but stressed. “It helps that we’re all one big family”, says Emiliano.

Bread, much of it made from a sourdough mother or criscito that began its life more than three decades ago, is the bakery’s core product, and it comes in a huge range of types and shapes: alongside classic white loaves and baguettes, the panificio turns out, among other fragrant creations, wholemeal bread, ryebread, spelt loaves, bread with walnuts and dried fruits, or – a guest favourite at Le Sirenuse breakfast buffet – golden yellow bread flavoured with turmeric and scattered with a rainfall of pumpkin, poppy and sesame seeds.

Then there are the rectangular-format pizzas with various appetizing toppings, sold by the slice from the shop that fronts onto the garden of a rural property that was the family’s house until the bakery took over part of it in the 1990s. Sweet delights include a brioche made with dough flavoured and aromatized with local oranges, lemon biscuits, Christmas panettone and spicy mostaccioli biscuits, and Sorrento casatiello, a dense rum-soaked cake that has little in common with the Neapolitan savoury ham-and-egg bread of the same name – except that both are associated with Easter.

Over the years, the bakery has built up not only a faithful local clientele but a national and international fanbase. The late Giorgio Napolitano – the only politician ever to have served two terms as Italian president – was an aficionado. To sample pane that is made with amore and fantasia, head for Piano di Sorrento on the main Amalfi Drive road and at the first hairpin bend after you begin to descend from Colli di Fontanelle, turn left into Via Galatea. The bakery (remember, it looks like a regular family house) is a little way down on the right, at number 20. They’re open Tuesday to Saturday from 7am to 9pm, Sunday from 7am to 1pm.

Photos © Roberto Salomone