58 • The Sunday Times Magazine
The panettone baker on making 140,000 cakes a day for Christmas
Roberto Di Gennaro
A Life in the Day
D
i Gennaro, 50, was born in
Turin, northern Italy. After
an engineering degree at
Politecnico di Torino, he began
work at Maina, the family bakery
business created in 1964 by the
union of two families: the Di
Gennaros from Puglia and the
Brandanis from Tuscany. Their
descendants still run the
company, which makes 22
million panettones in the run-up
to Christmas. The son of the
original pastry chef, Bruno Di
Gennaro, Roberto is director of
the company and lives in Fossano
with his wife, Sabrina, and
children, Ilaria, 15, and Bruno, 12.I wake up at 6.45 and
have a cappuccino
and a slice of fresh
panettone. I live just outside
Fossano, a town in Piedmont
famous for our wines, white
truffles, hazelnuts and chocolate.
At about 7.30 I drive my children
to school, then on to the Maina
factory, surrounded by mountains.
The smell that welcomes me
inside reminds me of my father;
it’s the same sweet, buttery,
citrussy aroma he used to bring
home on his clothes at the end
of the working day when I was a
child. Vincenzo Brandani, one ofour founders, is married to a
Di Gennaro, so we are now six
cousins working together. And we
still have two members of the first
generation, now in their eighties,
involved in decisions every day.
I put on my white coat and
hair net and go to the production
line to make sure the night shift
went smoothly. Our team work
24/7 from the beginning of July
until Christmas week. Then at
the beginning of January we start
again with colomba cakes
[dove-shaped cakes for Easter].
Every day I visit the Mother
Room, where our mother yeast
rests. We call her Mamma Maina
because she’s the mum of all our
products, a living organism who
has been reproducing herself
since 1964. The Mother Room is
kept at 19C, with about 65 per cent
humidity, and accessed only by
employees trained to revive her
each morning by hand with water
and high-protein wheat flour.
Mamma doesn’t just feed, she
“breathes” the air in which she
lives, developing unique flavours.
All we add is Italian fresh milk,
creamy butter, candied orange
peels and citron and juicy sultanas.
Next, I stop by the oven to make
sure the baked products have the
right colour and height. Oncebaked, panettones are turned
upside-down and left to cool in
this position for eight hours to
maintain their dome shape and
achieve a smooth, moist texture.
At around midday there’s an
unconventional business meeting
with the rest of the family. We
always struggle to keep things on
track; the uncles end up talking
about golf tournaments, but their
opinion is crucial. Our business
and our life was created by our
parents, so we feel a responsibility
to respect tradition. Despite
modern technology, a panettone
still takes more than 60 hours from
yeast preparation to final boxing
— the same time it took a century
ago — but these days we are
baking up to 140,000 cakes a day.
When I was a kid, my dad used
to tell a story about how Babbo
Natale [Santa Claus] delivered all
Mamma Maina’s festive cakes on
Christmas Eve. I still imagine the
sled and the panettones flying
behind in the winter sky over our
factory. Nowadays the procession
of 22 million panettones would be
about four times the distance from
Maina to London!
Usually my wife cooks dinner,
though I sometimes make pizza,
my speciality. I spend my evenings
binge-watching American TV
series, before bed at midnight. In
my dreams I’m planning Christmas
where the whole family — first,
second and third generation — is
together. Everyone will bring
a dish, but dessert is always the
same: panettone with whipped
cream, sprinkled
with freshly ground
coffee powder n
Interview by Caroline Scott
Maina makes all Waitrose
panettones; waitrose.comAbove: the bakery in 1964. Below:
Di Gennaro with the mother yeastBringing together
100 of the most
remarkable people
from this acclaimed
column, A Life in the
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