Panetteria Rio dal 1929

Pasta madre and old grain on the Rio

The loaves come out with a crackling crust and a great deal of argument behind them. Panetteria Rio dal 1929 works with pasta madre and slow natural fermentation, organic flours, old grain varieties and what the bakers call free semi-varieties, putting genetic diversity and non-industrial grain at the centre of the shelf. Grissini, pasticceria and seasonal pieces run alongside the bread.

The site is older than the name. Bread has been made in this Mantova building since the 1800s, with ownership documentation dating from 1929, and a watermill was once attached to the house for grinding flour. The couple who took the shop over in 2018, from an older pair tied to that history, have talked about rebuilding it so the milling can happen here again.

An activist bakery, plainly stated

Bread here is treated as a way to communicate as much as something to sell, a product and a form of connection at once. The response is to the intensive, chemical-dependent monoculture around Mantova: the bakery buys from regenerative and ethical growers it chooses personally, and keeps the supply chain short enough to name every step from seed to table.

It belongs to Panificatori Agricoli Urbani, a collective of roughly a hundred Italian bakers whose 2020 manifesto argues for a different cultural understanding of bread, agriculture and artisan processing. The panification that results sits noticeably apart from the wider Mantovano bread landscape, which is exactly the intention.

What to look for on the shelf

Take a loaf with the crunchy crust first, since it is the plainest demonstration of what long fermentation and old grain do to flavour. Grissini are the easy addition, and the pasticceria changes with what the season and the growers supply. Ordinary bakery items sit beside outright experiments, and both come out of the same fermentation habits.

Seasonal leavened cakes are worth planning around. The panettone keeps the familiar cupola shape but fills it with local artisanal ingredients, including pumpkin, honey and semi-wilted harvest grapes, and artisanal colombe follow at Easter. The shop works less like a fixed pastry list than a slow laboratory, where bread production can sit beside dandelions drying and ginger beer brewing. In June 2024 it received Gambero Rosso's Premio Tre Pani, a national distinction given to fifteen of Italy's best bakeries.