The Arte-Sanna Project
To start speaking about my dream...
It is so difficult when a dream is so mingled with nightmares... When you know your biggest obstacle is inside your very self, when your highest objective is hidden underneath a multitude of superfluous layers, and is so small and as simple as being happy...
When you have so much in your past that it becomes as heavy as a legacy, when
frustrations, lost sentiments of love, anger, despair, forgiveness, unsaid words, unaccomplished projects, all together turn into your personal ghosts... And your life resembles a wardrobe full of articles that you wonder why on earth were invited there in the first place... In short... When life wished to become a timer-resetting button, to surrender the pendency and set the game over, not in the sense of a match that is forever over, but rather as a new opportunity...
I am a scientist by training. My first degree in in geosciences... But over the years I started developing a project which is related to my childhood early days. When I used to watch my beloved grandmother working our homemade dough until it became the staff of life... Bread! I used to wake up very early by the marvelous scent of my granny's baking dough, when only Dona Mello was awake, like a fairy in her spellbound garden, while all other creatures were still asleep under the tranquility of her spell. While her magical oven was steaming all those myriad bread fragrances, she would be already working the sourdough for the next day... At the time I could not realize her dough would take a whole day to fully leaven. But I watched and memorized the fragments of that process interleaved by my own innocent routine. Observing my grandmother in the garden seeding the wheat, watering the wheatgrass rows, and then waiting, until Mother Nature returned more of her jewels... And these seeds were ground into flour by Dona Mello's own hands... And the flour was then blessed by the touch of our spring-water and the living micro-creatures permanently inhabiting our environment, diligently nourished to complete the mission of leavening the staff of our life...
So here begins the new start of my life match...
My DREAM:
... To build a bread studio...
The Arte-Sanna Atelier - Artisan Sourdough Breads! This is a very thorough and comprehensive sustainability endeavor which will liaise our Madeira Island regional micro-farmers and revitalize both their heritage terraces and the old almost extinct watermills. The plan is to have our local organic crops of wheat, rye and barley so as to enable the production of our own malted blends of flours devoted to artisan bread. Some Background insight
Over the last century our modern societies watched their nutrition becoming locked within the economic globalization agenda of our governments. Our diet is now imbedded with collateral factors of both environmental, ethical and nutritional implications. Our foods became morally diminished and subject to the market global laws. Bread was reduced from the most prestigious place in our nutrition pyramid, to a mere subsidiary role within the mundane carbohydrate-based plethora of foods. Most industrial bakers will often obtain their professional flours from sources which blend sub-products coming from all over the world. For example, the starch enhancers may come from China, bran from Brazil, the enzymes and vitamins from Switzerland, and Gluten additives from Canada. As an artisan bread-maker I must say that the only way to ensure the flours are genuinely from whole grain is if we have our own mill and grind our own grain. But flour may still inherit adulteration from agriculture methodologies and indeed from genetic engineering grain-hybridization. This is why, after much research, I became all the more interested in the many rare grain varieties that our local farmers in Madeira Island are still growing. Much of our nutritional problems today may stem, not simply from our modern personal styles which will need to be reviewed, but especially from the adulterated quality of the most basic foods we are consuming. It is truly important, if not utterly fundamental, that we rescue from our history the positive experience and traditions which secured our mere survival and also our health and longevity. Sourdough Concept
What makes a sourdough starter so special a leavening medium for breads is the bio-diversity in it. The amount of metabolites which the sourdough flora produces cannot be equalled by any leavening agent, biological (commercial monoculture such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae), or by chemical agents. The Arte-Sanna's starter has been developed over 20 years of research and work. More than 170 strains of bacteria and yeast have been detected in this medium. It is a very special starter which was naturally inoculated by the atmosphere of nature reserves in South America, Scotland and the Unesco accredited and protected Madeira Island Laurissilva Forests. The Arte-Sanna Project envisions the rebirth of our most genuine and ethnographic traditions, by endowing our breads with transversal societal principles - in short, making bread that bears humanity in itself - foodstuff evolved from the common nutritional projection to a superior dimension... Bread can then be a truly transcendental food, for it feeds kinaesthesically our senses, but our soul too. Here is my DREAM's OBSTACLE (get a €225,000 funding):
In order to establish a commercial activity in Madeira first and foremost I need to secure the space (€170,000). There are plenty of old buildings available that need restoration. And my plan is to use a traditional site, comprising some 250 m2 (main kitchen - 50 m2, pantry - 30 m2, bench room - 25 m2, leavening room - 20 m2 , baking room - 25 m2, packing room - 20 m2, shop and lounge 80 m2.) In order to further equip the place to the legal EU standards the necessary budget will be €40,000. Decoration, License, and certification will require further €15,000. The project will fill 6 work places, and will engage 4 farmers and one watermill master. The production target will be 100 kg of artisan bread per day, and the projected gross revenue will be €25,000/month. All employees will be invited to become associates in the Arte-Sanna Cooperative Venture, and after an experimental period will become partners, fixed salaries will be a minimum €800, with a direct share of production profits.
