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F4;2><8=6 General manager Elisa Weber, center, with Vanessa Pritchard and Elena Miska.

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;^eT P]S <PVXR Della Fattoria’s bread is raised by farm and family By Tori Masucci

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lisa Weber grew up on the 14-acre ranch in Petaluma that her grandfather bought back in 1940. To this day, the Webers continue to grow gardens and raise livestock on the land. Yet the Weber’s real story should be told from the inside—where the smell of coffee and baked bread wafts through the kitchen of their Petaluma cafe, Della Fattoria. Entering Della Fattoria is like entering a home of sorts, where friends sit across from one another, telling stories and catching up on the latest chitchat over rich espressos and warm, flaky cinnamon rolls dripping with sweet syrup and crushed walnuts. As the morning sun shines through the front windows, the cowbell tied to the door chimes and regular patrons buzz by to grab a few baguettes or a loaf of their favorite artisan ciabatta. Della Fattoria has the charm of a small European cafe; its inviting atmosphere can be attributed to the Webers’ emphasis on upholding the basics: family and food. “We live together and work together,� Elisa says. “The cafe is like an extension of our home. Everyone cooks in our family; the kitchen is where everyone gathers. That’s where the

love and magic happens. Cooking together is important, because it’s what we love to do.� Della Fattoria, appropriately translated as “from the farm,� is indeed a family affair. Elisa is the cafe’s general manager, her brother, Aaron, is the head baker, and their parents, Kathleen and Edmund, run the wholesale bread distribution on their farm, as well as the farmers markets where their bread is sold on Thursdays in Marin and Saturdays in San Francisco. A lengthy list of restaurants and grocery stores, from Santa Rosa’s chic Syrah Bistro to Whole Foods in Mill Valley, now carry Della’s bread for its organic, handmade quality. Straight from the wood-fired brick ovens that evenly cook the bread using retained heat, Della Fattoria makes anywhere from 300 to 1,000 loaves of bread each day, based on distribution needs. “We are quite a small production compared to most bakeries, but it takes a lot of hands and its very labor-intensive. You have to be very patient. You can’t rush the bread,� Kathleen explains. In 1994, she created a natural starter of organic flour, water and a cluster of grapes from their ranch. The next morning, the slurry was bubbling, the scientific foundation to an art that became their bread-baking business, which first ran from their home on the ranch, until Edmund

found the space downtown a decade later. What makes their bread so special? To that, Aaron—still wearing his apron as he steps out of the kitchen—responds, “The care that goes into it. We don’t pay a bunch of underwaged workers to come in and make our products for us. We all tend to it. I think that matters a lot. A lot of other bakeries use mixers, and dividers or shapers, or machines that put it in the oven. We do everything by hand, the way it was done for hundreds of years.� Baking the bread is a 24-hour cycle, from heating the ovens to infusing the dough with the original starter—or as the Webers refer to it, “the mother�— which is still used as a natural leaven for their breads. It is fed twice a day with organic flour and pure well water “to keep it happy,� as Aaron quips. The Webers are very careful with their bread; they know its behavior, down to the way it responds differently to the touch of a newly hired baker’s hands. “So many things can go wrong that impact the bread, especially the weather, the temperature or even how it is handled,� Elisa says. Yet Kathleen points out the rare beauty of their loaves from the hearth. “Our customers know that our bread is consistently inconsistent,� she says. “It’s consistently good, but on some days it can be taller or darker, or the shape of loaves can be a little different, but it’s all done by hand, so they appreciate that.� &+ THE BOHEMIAN

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