L’Arte Bianca

Pasticciotti, biscotti and the Salento counter

The pasticciottino is the way into L'Arte Bianca: the small version of Salento's defining pastry, a short crust shell around baked custard, sold beside biscotti, torte and lievitati as one of the four families the shop organises itself around. Antonio Campeggio opened the laboratory in Parabita in 1992 and it remains the base of his pastry work, a craft patisserie with a café and gelateria attached rather than a general bakery.

Campeggio's stated aim is balance across taste, consistency, texture and colour, from the simplest biscuit to the most elaborate cake. The laboratory works with natural ingredients, local and sustainable sourcing, and no preservatives or artificial colourants, and the range includes products made for gluten-free and intolerance needs.

Sweet counter, savoury counter

The savoury side is no afterthought here. Gambero Rosso named L'Arte Bianca Miglior Pasticceria Salata in 2024, and the shop also holds Tre Torte, the only three-cake rating in Puglia. Those recognitions describe a counter where the filled savoury pastries and the leavened doughs carry as much weight as the sweet case beside them.

The venue is also the public face of a much larger operation. Beyond the daily counter, the business runs ceremony catering, sweet and savoury buffets, pastry courses at several levels, a reseller catalogue and a live dessert service for gala and themed events. Standing at the counter in Parabita, you are looking at the retail end of a working laboratory rather than a shop that buys in. The same address also holds a caffè and a gelateria, so a visit in July can end very differently from one in January.

Start with the pasticciotto, then take the savoury turn

Order a pasticciotto first, in the small pasticciottino format if you want to try more than one thing. It is the most direct entry to a Salento pastry counter and the clearest test of the shop: pastry that shatters rather than crumbles, and custard set but not stiff.

Then follow Campeggio's own arc from the simplest biscuit to the most elaborate cake. Move across the biscotti, then into the torte and the lievitati, where the natural-yeast work sits. And leave room for the savoury pastries, because an award-winning savoury counter is the thing that separates this address from every other pasticceria in the region. Gelato closes the visit if the Parabita weather insists.