Della Fattoria Tour
In April 2009, CUESA led a tour of Della Fattoria bakery in Petaluma. After an inspiring day of listening, looking and learning, we filled our bellies with oven-baked cheese sandwiches made with Della Fattoria bread and Cowgirl Creamery cheese.
Kathleen Weber (pictured) and her husband started the bakery on their ranch in Petaluma. Della Fattoria means “from the farm.”
The Webers use several ingredients grown on the ranch for the bread, including their own rosemary for their famous Meyer lemon rosemary campagne.
The plan has always been to grow slowly. Kathleen started out baking bread for her own family and friends, and then she filled orders for the Sonoma Mission Inn and the French Laundry. Word soon got out about how delicious their bread was, and they had a list of restaurants wanting to buy it from them. Now they sell in several farmers' markets and at their own cafe. Kathleen manages the business end of things while her son Aaron is the head baker.
The bakery sits on what used to be the Webers' deck. They started baking for themselves and expanded into a business, at which point Kathleen says they literally "built a barn over the deck."
The bakery is small; our tour group filled the space to the brim.
Aaron Weber, Kathleen's son, has taken over the baking process and manages the wood-fired ovens.
Della Fattoria uses no commercial yeast. They maintain a starter that they started over a decade ago using flour, water and grapes.
The dough rises in these antique French molds (they leave a faint spiral on the round loaves).
Aaron manages a small team of externs and employees who work very fast to get many batches of bread in and out of the oven. "We still burn bread almost every day" he says.
Della Fattoria uses all organic flours. Their breads all start with a natural sourdough starter, pure well water, and coarse grey sea salt from Brittany.
Aaron Weber, baker extraordinaire.
The wood fires are started the day before the bake and allowed to burn for around twelve hours. Then the ovens are swept out and sealed up, allowing the heat to disperse evenly throughout the oven for another six to eight hours. The hand-shaped loaves are baked directly on the hearth, using the heat that has been stored in the bricks. At the time of our visit, the ovens were almost 800 degrees.
Behind head baker Aaron Weber is the "third oven"; It was devised as a way to utilize the heat generated by the other two main ovens and works for braising and other slow cooking purposes.
The first batch of loaves are done in 4-6 minutes, and the bake time gets longer and longer as the ovens cool.
Despite the hot ovens, the large screened windows kept the bakery relatively cool.
The seeded wheat was developed for the French Laundry, with input from chef Thomas Keller.
Della Fattoria breads are an artisan product made almost entirely by hand. This was one of the few machines we saw in the bakery.
The Weber farm was once an egg farm, like much of Petaluma.
The whole family lives on the farm, including Kathleen's two grandsons.
Kathleen's son-in-law Yunker feeds three of the ranch's seven dogs.
The ranch has some great spots for sitting and enjoying a meal (canine companions included).
We made our sandwiches with Cowgirl Creamery Mt. Tam cheese...
...and the bread came from these Campagne pullman loaves.
The final product!
Kathleen's daughter Elisa also lives on the farm with her husband and runs the bakery's new cafe in downtown Petaluma. Here she is carrying a platter of the marvelous grilled cheese sandwiches she helped us make in the Della ovens.
dinner time
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CUESA (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture) is dedicated to growing thriving communities through the power and joy of local food. Learn More »