Country: Italy
Region: Tuscany
Producer: Masoni Pietro
This is the adventurous story of a family with a vocation for commerce and baking. Documents show that the Masoni family was active in the province of Siena already around the year 1300.
The production of bread, biscuits and typical Masoni cakes gets into full swing during the last century thanks to the opening of a bakery in Colle Val d’Elsa by Ippolito Masoni and his wife Petronilla. During WW1 many Italian soldiers on the front-line coped with hunger thanks also to the Masoni products.
A decisive step-up in products’ quality took place around 1920, thanks to Giuseppina who had married Giovanni, one of Ippolito’s children. She had a natural passion for quality baking and traveled to Florence where she learnt the secrets of top-quality pastry making with Maioli, the famous Florentine pastry Maestro.
Back in Colle Val d’Elsa, Giuseppina helped to create Alimentaria, which for a long time remained the only pastry factory in the city.
During world WW2, the scarcity of raw materials brought about the creation of a strange but delicious Panforte? made with dried figs and walnuts?.
In the 50s production became industrial, however never losing the original vocation for quality.
The roots of the Torrone history are based in ancient Rome. This delicacy made of honey?, almonds and albumen was reserved for formal functions or as offerings to the gods. Various other cultures have versions of Torrone, such as the Arabs, who are said to have introduced it to the Spanish.
Italy has its own well-documented version of Torrone, born on October 25, 1441. At the wedding of Bianca Maria Visconti and Francesco Sforza, the bride not only had many jewels, money and riches of every kind as part of her dowry, but her father also offered the city of Cremona itself. To commemorate this, the court's pastry chefs decided to make a new confection in the shape of the city's tower named the Torione, in order to represent the city.
By mixing almonds, honey and beaten egg? whites and cooking them for long hours over low heat, they precisely reproduced the large tower that dominated the city. Needless-to-say, the sweet was a great success with the guests who came from Europe, and soon requests for the city's special delicacy were received from all over the world.
Nougat: Almonds, Honey?, Sugar?, Glucose Syrup, Candied Orange? Peel, Egg? Whites, Wafers, Flavours?.
Chocolate?: Sugar, Cocoa Mass, Cocoa Butter??, Lecithin, Flavours, Cocoa Min. 51%.
Pack Size: 200g
Traditionally served only around Christmas, torrone is now commonly enjoyed as an elegant dessert alternative throughout the year.
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