Ambrosia, the best-selling bread of the new Ambrogia bakery and café, just opened in Milan by two graduates, costs €9 per kilo.
This is the most controversial passage of the piece with which the Milanese section of the Corriere della Sera presented the Ambrogia bakery in Piazza Sicilia to its readers.
Completed by the explanation that Federica Ferrari, 43 years old, graduated in Economics, and Francesca Gatti, 40 years old, graduated in Art History, gave to the newspaper.
If bread at €9 per kilo costs almost double that of a loaf bought at the supermarket, it’s because storytelling is included in the price.
Storytelling? In what sense? We’re talking about bread at 9 euros per kilo. Price from a Milanese bubble within which a dark evil rises, nothing but flour, water, yeast and salt.
Bread for €9: storytelling is an ingredient that costs dearly
The two new entrepreneurs explained to the Corriere: “Our secret? Storytelling: we explain to customers our philosophy and our way of producing bread.”
An explanation immediately contested on the Gambero Rosso website by Paolo Manfredi, who has carved out the role for himself frugal gourmetthat is, as a food critic attentive to prices and the ethical implications they entail.
(He instead defines himself as “just a middle-aged crank who loves to make controversy”).
Manfredi wrote: “Now, the world is full of idiots, but the fact that you recharge me with the storytelling about the product, and above all that you tell me, is also challenging to the questionable wisdom of the hipsters and the sciors who I suspect fill the place” .
The two bakery graduates jewelry store Ambrogia tried to cover the background noise created by Ambrosia bread – we repeat, a kilo for €9 – and by their declarations.
They explained to customers the philosophy of the bakery, that is, using quality ingredients, with a short and traced supply chain. Adding that those, the customers: “understand, appreciate, prefer to spend a little more but bring a good and healthy product to the table”.
Milan prices have created a natural selection
Now, anything is possible. Also that the prices of shops and restaurants in Milan have created a kind of natural selection.
A community that in the name of the free market swallows any pestilential excess, such as bread at €9 per kilo or a plate of plain pasta for €26. There’s so much storytelling.
Who knows what what we used to call the middle class, speaking about it while alive, thinks of certain prices. And by choosing one shop over another, he avoided it being branded as a trap for stupid tourists.
Let’s be clear, this is not intended to be the usual populist tirade against high prices, my lady. The €9 bread from the Ambrogia bakery in Milan is not the pre-cooked bread from who knows where that can be bought in many supermarkets.
Furthermore, the increases in energy prices have a heavy impact on the costs of raw materials, including flour. And when the craftsmanship is healthy it pays employees and suppliers well.
But bread, as much as today we want to pass it off as a commodity rather than a basic food of human nutrition, cannot cost €9 per kilo.
The right price is another. Even in Milan.
