Il forno di Calzolari

Bread, grain, and the mountain around it

Bread is the whole argument at Il Forno di Calzolari, and the flour behind it comes from the Apennine slopes above Monghidoro. The forno opened in 1956 as the village bakery and stayed in the family; more than twenty years ago it “inverted the route,” leaving the conventional urban bakery model to let the mountain speak to the city through bread.

The bread programme puts that into practice. Calzolari works with organic, short-supply-chain flours and grains from the surrounding area, what it calls “farine di cui conosciamo nomi e cognomi,” flours whose names and surnames are known. The bakery is a founding member of the Comunità Grano Alto di Monghidoro, a network reviving local cereal cultivation and mountain social life around grain. Its loaves are raised with lievito madre for slow fermentation, and the grain work extends to soft wheat, hard wheat and barley grown in experimental plots.

A mountain forno, not a café room

This is a traditional walk-up forno in the heart of the village, not a café organised around table service, drinks or a fixed dining format. The character is rustic and community-facing, and the work reaches well past the counter: Calzolari was one of the founding producers at Bologna’s Mercato Ritrovato, the farmers’ market begun in 2008.

That outward role is central. The bakery has run Mangirò for twenty-one years as of 2025, a twelve-kilometre edible walking trek through Monghidoro’s forests and fields before the wheat harvest. The name joins mangiare, to eat, and girò, to walk, which is the philosophy in miniature: bread connecting people, land and tradition. Walkers eat along the route and pass the wheat fields behind the bakery’s work. Calzolari also joins Forni & Fornai•e, a gathering of bakers, millers and farmers with field walks, experimental grain plots and a mobile transformation point shared between Italian bakeries.

Start with the bread itself

Rather than plan around a café order, start with the bakery’s rhythm: bread from known-origin organic flours, lievito madre fermentation and the seasonal grain cycle of the Monghidoro mountains. Mangirò adds merende calde, warm snacks baked during the festival, which points to portable, event-led baking shaped by the walk, the fields and the pre-harvest timing.

Festive baking arrives with Panettone à Porter in December, built around a large panettone baked over a communal fire. That sits naturally beside the everyday bread culture of local organic cereals and public gatherings that make the grain journey visible. Gambero Rosso awarded the forno Tre Pani for 2026, a recognition that fits a bakery whose reputation rests on bread, mountain identity and organic short supply chains rather than café polish.