Pank La Bulangeria

Two things arrive at the Mercato Centrale counter that Florence does not otherwise have much of: baguettes with a real crust, and croissants made on good butter. Pank La Bulangeria has been baking in the city since 2014, when the French baker David Bedu brought boulangerie technique into a Tuscan food hall, and the stall still bakes in view of the floor.

Stone-milled flour, levain, and a French hand

The bread is built on organic wheat milled on stone and raised on levain rather than industrial yeast. Dough is made at a workshop in Sesto Fiorentino, then finished in the ovens at the Florence counters, which is why what reaches the shelf is warm rather than merely fresh.

Some of the loaves reach back into local history. Pank revives older breads including San Lorenzo bread and pan à la Reyne, made in honour of Caterina de' Medici. That sits deliberately against Florence's own tradition of saltless pane toscano: these breads are more seasoned, more aromatic, more about crust. Gambero Rosso has awarded the bakery its Tre Pani, and in 2020 named it among Tuscany's champions of white art.

A market stall and a neighbourhood room

The two Florence addresses behave differently. The Mercato Centrale stall sits on the market's first-floor food court with the bakers working in the open, busy with visitors and Florentines at once, and a midday queue is normal. The Via Gran Bretagna branch is the quieter one, a warm neighbourhood bakery-cafe with Wi-Fi and space to sit over a coffee and a slice of panettone.

Coffee is not an afterthought at either. Pank pours Caffè Piansa, a Florence specialty roaster, so the coffee break is treated with the same seriousness as the bread rather than as a way of moving pastry.

What to order

Start with the viennoiserie: croissants, pain au chocolat, pain aux raisins, and the apricot or pear danishes, all made on butter and salt. Éclairs sit on the pastry side of the counter, and panettone appears seasonally, made as a craft product rather than a boxed one.

For something more substantial, the baguettes carry the savoury side: a formaggio baguette at the counter, or a croque monsieur at the sit-down branch. If you want the point of the place in one order, take a baguette and a croissant and compare them with what Florence bakes a street away.