When talking about Tuscan artisan colombe, it’s important to start by saying there are versions with alchermes and dark chocolate, with limoncello, with peach and tonka bean, with Timut pepper, or with “caramelized” white chocolate. Some are very traditional—even featuring candied fruit handmade by the pastry chef—while others are more unusual, like the savory version with pecorino cheese and cherry tomatoes. These are the best Tuscan artisan colombe, crafted with great skill by top pastry masters, all sharing one essential element: they begin with a perfect sourdough starter, raised and nurtured like a child—or better yet, even more carefully than a child.
Delicious, with a persuasive moisture, slightly sweet and well-balanced: the taste notes of the panettone of the Four Seasons in Florence for Christmas 2023 are proposed again this year with the Panettone della Gherardesca, the result of the collaboration between the chef Paolo Lavezzini, the pastry chef Mariano Dileo and the artisan bakery and biscuit factory Leonardo Firenze. It becomes a sumptuous tribute to nature and the spontaneous flavors of the earth such as bay leaves, rosemary and chestnut honey, but it is also a call that takes you beyond Florence, to taste Apulian almonds and Brazilian nuts. It can only be purchased in the hotel."
Meeting Leonardo Santi has been one of the most wonderful gifts this project could have given me.
Leonardo never set out to create what is now considered an icon of Florentine excellence. His goal was simpler: to share something good, sincere, and authentic with his family and community—as a pure act of love and remembrance.
Perhaps Leonardo instinctively understood that small beautiful things can have as much redemptive power as the greatest achievements of humankind.
Take the cantuccio, for instance: a humble Tuscan biscuit that never aspired to the aesthetic heroism of Michelangelo’s David, yet shares in its redemptive nature—with its modest, pure, and simple beauty and its evocative power.
A curious newspaper headline once told the story of how one of his five children accidentally messed up the dough—and how, instead of scolding him, Leonardo acknowledged the brilliance of the result. The outcome was so exceptional that he went on to “mess up the dough” intentionally for the next fifty years!
[…] All thanks to the visionary work of his son Marco. He is the one responsible for the innovations that carried this love beyond Italy’s borders. He imagined a future that would honor and share the simple, authentic taste of a bygone childhood—the taste that the scent of Santi’s biscuits has forever crystallized in time.
Marco and his siblings still treasure their father Leonardo Santi’s handwritten recipe book: a precious keepsake, with worn edges and a profoundly human flavor.
It all started in the early 1960s, when Leonardo Santi in his bakery, to make biscuits and other delicacies, proposed traditional recipes, using only genuine raw materials and following his little intuitions to make the products he sells in the shop original. This is how the chocolate or fig cantucci were born; the Brutti ma Buoni in many variations, the cakes, the Easter doves and the panettoni for Christmas. His son Marco, in the heart of the Sant'Ambrogio neighborhood, continued experimenting and thus new specialties were born, including a special Mantua cake or the Pan Felice. And of course there is the bread, whose light dough with many alveoli is the result of choosing a flour with a lot of strength and measured leavening times. The dough and preparations take place in the open laboratory from which also come an irresistible schiacciata all'olio and many types of brioche, also served filled. Another point of sale, Leonardo Boutique, in via Porta Rossa 14.
«Paca» — the new Michelin-starred restaurant in Prato — celebrates Easter with the artisanal Colomba by the young pastry chef Gabriele Palumbo, in collaboration with Forno Leonardo of Florence. Born from a careful selection of ingredients, this Colomba is made with sourdough, leavened for 24 hours, dotted on the inside with Noalya salted caramel chocolate and covered on the outside with a voluptuous gianduia glaze. It releases its seductive scent as soon as the Easter cake is freed from its wrapping and the fragrance envelops the senses, precisely achieving the pastry chef's goal, that of expressing a high level of deliciousness and aromatic roundness. The tin that contains it features a reproduction of one of the paintings by the friend and artist from Pistoia Salvatore Magazzini, whose works are also exhibited in the restaurant's rooms, with its dense and decisive colors, which rest on the fleeting features of glimpses of warm and deep light.
Sixty years ago, in the heart of Tuscany, a man named Leonardo led his life according to three inviolable principles: offering traditional recipes, using only genuine raw materials, and following his personal insights to create exceptional products in his store. These values made his bakery famous throughout the region, attracting people from all corners of Tuscany in search not only of bread but also the sweets he sold there, including his famous chocolate cantucci. Leonardo, dedicated to experimentation, was never satisfied, and one day , by mistake, he created a unique recipe that allowed him to achieve a flavor and aroma he had never tasted before. And thus was born the secret ingredient that made Leonardo's cantucci in Florence unique, soft and fragrant. Sixty years later, in the old 1900 workshop in the Sant'Ambrogio district, Leonardo's son Marco continues his father's culinary art, producing traditional and new specialty cookies , from chocolate cantucci with orange peel to Brutti ma Buoni with pistachio, from traditional Mantovana to cookies with figs. Even today, at 90 years old, Leonardo is still present in Marco's life, teaching him the secrets of the trade and sharing valuable tips and recipes. In Marco's open workshop, traditional methods and quality ingredients are used, lovingly producing each product by hand. The aroma of freshly baked bread, Tuscan squash, fragrant cantucci and filled brioche permeates the streets of the historic center, drawing you powerfully to Marco's workshop.But today that bakery in the heart of Florence is so much more. The products have the stamp of Italian authenticity. The cantucci are soft with an enveloping flavour. Take a bite and enjoy the explosion of chocolate. Same goes for panettone or the traditional Easter dove. Soft to the touch and with an intense flavor, the temptation is too great for your sweet tooth. This is one of the products that, born in Florence, are now expanding throughout the world. Ordering Leonardo's cakes from the United States, for example, is extremely easy. Just go to the site, choose products from the catalogue, complete the shopping cart and enter your home address . If you order it from New York, within hours the package will be with you, ready to be unwrapped. And from your Manhattan home, savoring a chocolate cantuccio will transport you back to sunny Italy. This is the power of made-in-Italy products: to be recognizable everywhere, even thousands of miles away.
