A journey in Alta Badia from rituals to everyday life and everyday times

Bread has never been just food. It is a memory that allows itself to be kneaded, it is time that takes on a shape when between the hands, it is an ancient gesture that continues to breathe in the present. It spans the centuries without being consumed, uniting the tables of peasants and kings, the refectories of monasteries and the kitchens of ordinary homes. It is there, every day, both silent and yet capable of expressing everything: famines, revolutions, expectations and promises. Perhaps it is not necessary to know when it was created: it is more important to recognize what happens each time it is made: there is a transformation. Flour and water, poor earthly elements pass through fire and become something else and it is during this passage that a threshold opens up.

Claude Lévi-Strauss called it the distance between raw and cooked: between Nature and culture. Yet to me it also seems like a more intimate distance: that between what exists and what we choose to care for and make exist. Making bread means exactly that: paying attention to time. Waiting, watching, not forcing. Accepting that transformation doesn't happen instantly, that it requires space, warmth and listening. Bread teaches us a form of presence that we've almost forgotten today. When I arrived in Alta Badia, the sun was everywhere. The light was clear and precise, as if it wanted to reveal every detail, such as the wood of the houses, the still uncovered mountains. I walked, I listened, I went into places I didn't know, and each time someone kindly opened a door for me. I set off again yet this time with the snow. Everything had changed. The muffled sounds, the softer contours, the slower time. In this transition, so clear yet so natural, I recognized something that also belongs to bread: a transformation that doesn't interrupt, but accompanies - a change that doesn't separate but maintains. Then I began to look at bread not just as food, but as a kind of relationship. The historian Fernand Braudel wrote that the “trinity: wheat, flour, bread” has filled the historical pages of Europe, becoming a constant concern for merchants, cities and states. All it took was for the price of bread to rise for everything to begin to tremble. Put like that, bread appears for what it always has been: not just nourishment, but a fragile balance between order and disorder and between stability and revolt. Yet, alongside this historical and political dimension, bread continues to contain something more intimate. It is something that is broken and shared. It is what allows us to be together. This is where I began: with a bakery.

A bakery isn't just a place, it's a rhythm, it's time flowing backward: while the town sleeps, someone is working to make sure that there's bread in the morning. When I meet Nikolas Seppi of the Panificio Seppi in Corvara, as far as he’s concerned, it’s still nighttime. His body follows a different rhythm: he starts when others finish, he stops when others begin. He talks to me about his profession with a earnestness that has something fundamental about it. “For me, doing this job means being a craftsman. You create something with your hands, you see the result of what you produce.” His words bring everything back to the material, back to basics. Hands, dough, the oven. Bread cannot be abstract. It only exists if someone makes it. Nikolas was born here, and grew up inside the bakery, amidst movements that were watched and repeated long before they were even understood. His grandfather arrived in the 1950s, his father continued, and today he carries on this work together with his family. Here, bread is also a genealogy. It’s not just a recipe, but the passing on of knowledge, dedication and perseverance over time. “What they taught me was sacrifice” he says, and sacrifice has a precise time: the night. You work when others are asleep, you knead in silence, you turn on the oven before dawn. It's work that requires constant presence, that breaks up your sleep, that repeats itself every day. Yet, within this labour, there's a clear meaning: that of being needed. “It's important to offer a service to the community.” Here, bread isn't just any old product, it's still a shared good. People come in, they buy it, they take it home. Yet in that simple daily gesture, something greater is renewed: a form of belonging. In laboratories, bread takes on many different shapes but there's one that belongs to this area more than any other: the puccia. This is the bread of the Ladin mountains. It's made from rye, a hardy grain that is capable of growing at altitude and which is less fragile than ordinary soft grain wheat. While this grain doesn't promise easy abundance, it guarantees continuity. Rye is enriched with spices that reflect the landscape such as cumin, fennel and fenugreek, intense, profound aromas that convey the character of the territory they come from. Every baker has his own version. Tradition is never static: it is maintained as it changes. Alongside the puccia, other breads emerge, each bringing its own, more subtle story. There is bread that accompanies life such as the bina; soft, white, prepared for births and offered to mothers in labour as a sign of passage. And then there is time, the times of the past when bread wasn't bought every day, but made together. Bread was the organization of life. It was community. Today everything is faster, yet something still endures. Nikolas sees it in the eyes of those eager to learn on his courses, in the hands of those trying to knead for the first time, almost as if, beneath the surface of speed, there was still a desire to return to that slow gesture. Before leaving, Nikolas is generous with me. He sets aside some bread, insisting I take it with me. He then explains how to preserve it, how to make it last, how to eat it the next day, too. In that bread lies the night's work, the continuity of a family, the memory of a land. There's something there that can't be bought, and I understand that bread, even before being something you eat, is something you give.

If bread from the bakery tells the story of a community's present, the farm maintains the deepest memory of its past. I arrive at Maso Alfarëi in the morning when the light is clear and the landscape seems to hold a stillness that is not immobility, but expectation. Together with their cat Jerry, Antonio and Rosa Piccolruaz welcome me into their home, in the Stüa. The warmth is immediate, enveloping, and brings with it a specific scent: wood, fire, something that gently warms. I sense a smell I recognize before even naming it, one that has to do with time that is both domestic and layered. The farm building dates back to the 13^th century in late Romanesque style, and the first documents attesting to its existence date back to 1285. Since 1645, it has been run by the same family, and walking through these spaces means entering a rare example of continuity in which history is not displayed but inhabited. When I ask what it means to maintain such a long history, the answer is simple: “We are grateful to be able to preserve it and show how it once was.” Here, the relationship with the land is still direct. The animals, the garden, the wild herbs: what ends up on the plate comes almost entirely from the farm. It's not an aesthetic choice either, but a daily practice. “It's a wonderful thing to bring our products to guests' plates.” Within this system, bread has been a central element for centuries. Once upon a time, the farm was self-sufficient: they grew rye, barley and sometimes wheat, and ground them in the mill. Bread was made not every day, but rather twice a year through a long, arduous and collective process: the wood-fired oven was lit, the dough kneaded and then baked over days. Then the bread was dried, kept and consumed over time. “The bread they ate was almost always stale or hard.” Yet that bread became the basis of any number of dishes: nothing was wasted, everything was reused. The puccia was created precisely as an answer to this need: rye bread that was durable, designed to last, to nourish for a long time, to adapt to the mountain conditions. But breadmaking was never separated from Nature, since the harvest depended on the weather, and the line between abundance and scarcity was thin. “If the harvest didn't turn out well, it also meant a bit of hunger.” Farming here meant accepting uncertainty. Hail could destroy the crop, the work was almost entirely manual, and every stage demanded time and endurance, which is why the spiritual dimension was an integral part of daily life: people prayed, bells were rung, and protection was sought for the fields. Today, many of these practices are no longer necessary, but they haven't disappeared, and the bakery and the mill have been restored. When I return in the evening, dishes arrive at the table that speak the language of a simple and deep-seated cuisine. Canederli, made with stale bread, immediately express the meaning of this culture by transforming what remains, providing continuity, not wasting. It is here that bread reveals its deepest meaning, in the sense that it is not only something that nourishes, but which also holds together. It was out of this awareness, that the Festa dl Pan (Bread Festival) was born. This is held in Alta Badia in September and takes the form of a journey through farms and mountain huts in which bread returns to the forefront as a shared gesture. The tools of the past are displayed, as well as the work done in mills and farms, and each location offers a bread-related dish. Yet it is not a reenactment, but rather a way of keeping knowledge alive, and a reminder that bread was not born as a product, but as a process, a collective effort, and as a form of community.

And then there's another, more silent gesture that is another page in this story. Bread goes into the rucksack: often a puccia, it is cut in half and filled with speck or whatever else is available. It's not a dish, it's not a declared ritual, but it is perhaps one of the most essential forms of continuity. In the mountains, you carry what you really need with you: something that nourishes, that lasts, that can be shared. Eating a roll sitting on a rock during a climb isn't just consumption, it's a pause that measures the body, the breathing and time itself. In that simple gesture—biting into the bread while gazing at the mountains—an ancient relationship remains intact, between effort and nourishment, between autonomy and landscape.

If, then, on the farm, bread is memory and necessity, at the Gourmet Hotel Gran Ander it becomes awareness and design. The history of this restaurant is rooted in a family tradition that spans multiple generations. It all began with Grandma Anna, born in 1896 and a central figure in the passing down of domestic knowledge linked to cooking and hospitality. Her son Germano, after stints in international kitchens, returned to Alta Badia in 1968 and founded Gran Ander with Rita, bringing a vision with him that combined local roots with skills acquired elsewhere. Today, Andrea continues this  journey, maintaining a strong connection to Ladin culture and reinterpreting it through contemporary instruments. The cuisine is thus built on a balance between continuity and transformation: reviving family knowledge (all too often destined to disappear) and integrating it into a modern system. The products used come largely from a direct supply chain: vegetable garden, bees, in-house preparation, and meat from local farmers who follow shared criteria. In this context, bread plays a central role. It is served as the first element of the meal, not simply as an accompaniment, but as an integral part of the experience, and in some cases, it becomes a course itself, highlighting its value. “Bread is a gift” Andrea tells me, an idea that translates into specific choices. Here, it is neither overproduced nor automatically distributed at the table: it is available at a buffet, where guests are invited to cut only what they will eat in a simple gesture that introduces reflection on waste and responsibility. The ingredients are also the subject of research. The flours are partly ground in the restaurant's own mill: minimally processed, natural flours, sometimes low in gluten and often combined with flours from small producers. The absence of chemical treatments and the choice of essential raw materials define an approach that prioritizes quality and integrity. The leavening processes are long and natural. Sourdough and fermentation obtained from vegetable juices (carrots, apples and turnips) are used, allowing for the development of complex aromas and a more digestible structure. In addition, the leavening times can be up to three days, giving the bread a temporal dimension that logically approaches the traditional one. Baking takes place in a wood-fired oven, a feature that maintains a direct link to older practices while fitting into a contemporary context, and the result is not so much a break with tradition as a reinterpretation of it. Bread is no longer tied to the need for storage or survival, as in the context of the farm, but becomes a cultural expression, a tool for storytelling. And yet, even in this transition, its original meaning is not lost. Bread continues to be what opens the meal, what accompanies and connects. Between memory and innovation and between ancient gestures and contemporary awareness, bread thus maintains its deepest function: that of a shared element, capable of crossing different contexts without losing its symbolic value.

When I leave Alta Badia, the snow has already changed everything. The paths disappear, the contours become uncertain, the landscape retreats into a more essential form. What holds firm, remains. I think back to the different breads I discovered: that which is born at night, that which is made twice a year, that which today is once again chosen, thought about, and cared for. It has never been just nourishment, it is a way of existing in the world. It is kneaded, anticipated and shared. It is taken with you. Perhaps this is what bread continues to do, even now: to hold together what passes and what remains.