The Backery

The art of baking welcomes modernity and technology, without forgetting ancient baking techniques and the scents of old times, when the aroma of freshly-baked bread and pastries filled the bakeries, while the scent of vanilla and cocoa spread throughout the streets.

Tradition, the real one, built by hard-working people, has simply allowed novelty and technology to keep pace with the times, to improve quality, quantity and flavors, to cross borders and to become known and appreciated as the Zani Bakery is today.

The Zani Bakery, with its excellent artisanal products, has been around for more than a hundred years.

History

The art of baking bread and the ancient recipes have been handed down from father to son, or to be more specific, from great grandmother to grandson!
It all started in the mid-1800s, in a Venetian-red house facing the river Lemene, right in the heart of Portogruaro, a small town known as “little Venice”.
One day, Maria Grillo, my great grandmother, a lady endowed with intuition and entrepreneurial skills, decided to merge the wisdom of her father, Angelo Grillo, a baker, with her husband’s financial resources and to open a bakery in an old and beautiful Venetian-red house which had been used until then merely as a wheat warehouse.
Thanks to my great grandma’s business foresight, the bakery she had started kept growing as well as the quality of its bread, which besides being sold in town was also boarded on boats and transported along the river Lemene all the way to the old town of Caorle, by the sea.
Those were the legendary times of the ”Bottega Grillo-Milanese”, my great grandma’s bakery.

Today

In recent years, our bakery has moved: it is now located just outside the historic center of Portogruaro. We have embraced technology as a source of efficiency, while keeping alive the traditional techniques and artisanal production processes typical of small, family-run bakeries. In addition to dealing with large retailers, my father and I have decided to open a store within our production site in order to meet the growing demand for our products.
Today, I carry on our family tradition with passion and thankfully with the support of my father Arturo, who has taught me this incredible job, which requires constant attention to detail, respect for tradition and an eye to the future.
Our experience in this sector, handed down for generations, our continuous search for the best raw materials, together with our growing attention to energy saving and thus to environmental protection have allowed us to expand our distribution network throughout northern Italy and to explore also the foreign market.
By combining traditional techniques and artisanal production processes with the most advanced technologies we are able to meet high quality standards while remaining always faithful to the ancient flavours.