Just beyond the hard rush of Viale Marconi, in the quieter Via Gerolamo Cardano, is a popular bakery called Albanesi il forno delle meraviglie, meaning “the oven [or bakery] of wonders”. Established in 1959 by Aldo Albanesi, and now run by his sons Adriano and Alessandro, Albanesi is wondrous also for its size. Behind an 11-window shopfront lies almost 500 sq m of shop floor, and a small maze of laboratories in which almost everything that can be made is made: bread, pizza, pies, cakes, biscuits, fresh egg pasta, sauces, baked pasta and other dishes that are ready to eat. The snake of glass-fronted counters also hold cheese, other dairy products, cured meats, and vegetables and olives preserved in various ways, while the shelves are packed with everyday provisions of good and practical quality. This is a shop with something for everyone.
It also sells acini di pepe, a tiny pasta shaped like peppercorns and made of durum wheat, and pastina, another small pasta used mostly in soups or for stuffing into vegetables. Acini di pepe was the reason we first visited the shop six years ago, on the recommendation of a colleague, and at a time when I was writing a book about pasta and therefore trying to get my hands on as many shapes as possible. On that first visit I bought stelline (stars), alfabeto, puntine (dots) and risoni, of course, which is pretty much the same shape as orzo, only not called orzo in Italy, because that word means “barley”.
