Flavouring Orange Blossom (Fiori D'Arancio) - Paneangeli

Paneangeli is the most famous brand in Italy of ingredients for baking and it literally means “Angel’s bread”. Its story is fascinating and it describes how something so simple became an essential piece in Italian homemade desserts making.

Ettore Riccardi was 14 years old when he started working as a helper in a grocery and pasticerie store in Cremona. When he was finally 18 years old he opened his own shop and in 1932 he started producing his special vanilla yeast.

He moved to Genoa in 1939 and he devotes himself exclusively to the activity of his laboratory. After the outbreak of the Second World War, in 1941, due to a bombing and consequent flooding of the laboratory, he lost everything (he had, in fact, invested all his economic resources in equipment and raw material for production); only one typewriter was saved. He was therefore forced to interrupt the activity.
Soon, however, he stubbornly resumed the production of Paneangeli yeast.
While during the day he adapted to a modest and hard manual work as an employee, in the evening he dedicated himself body and soul to his product, with the help of his unstoppable wife Giulia and the daughter Enrica who, still a child, helped him to pack the tiny “sky blue” bags. From its inception, Paneangeli had grown to be the well-known company that it is today and was eventually bought by the Cameo group.