“Tradition is our main ingredient and passion is what heats our ovens: we have been creating signature confections for three generations and we bring them to tables across the world.” – Dario Loison
The Loison story encompasses three generations of foodies. Originally a small wood-oven bakery, the tiny workshop in Costabissara (a town on the outskirts of Vicenza) has now grown to be a well-established and highly renowned company, whose production is in great demand all over the world.
In fact, over 50 per cent of the more than €9M comes from international sales from over thirty countries. Included are: Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Korea, Brazil, Canada, Russia, Belgium, Switzerland, USA, South Africa and Australia.
Perhaps Loison’s most popular product is the notorious Panettone. Loison have been baking Panettones for more than 75 years. The cake was first created by Tranquillo Loison in 1838 and today his grandson, Dario, cares for the business.
In case you are not familiar with Panettone, or just need a little reminder, this dessert is somewhere between a bread and a cake in taste and is traditionally served around Christmas time in Italy. The dough for panettone is quite rich and contains a lot of butter and eggs. The addition of all of the fat to the dough gives it a very fine, tender texture. In other words, it’s heaven for your taste buds.
For Loisin’s ‘top line’ panettones, all of the ingredients are carefully selected by Dario: the freshest eggs, butter and cream from Italy’s mountain farms, and fine Italian flours and sugars. The panettones are made using the traditional sourdough process, with each cake taking 72 hours from beginning to end. This gentle proving gives rise to the panettone’s exquisite texture and rich flavour.
“Tradition and innovation”, “substance and creativity” and “roots and evolution” are the slogans that guide Loison’s everyday work. This rings true when you look at the bakery’s success and the beautiful products they create; which extends beyond their famous Panettone (now 80 products with several variations of each).
In fact, the team at Loison use our Escher MW Mixer to assist in their Panettone production. This machine uses industry leading dough hydration technology and is precision engineered in Italy. You can learn more about the Escher MW Mixer and how it may be helpful to you and your baking here.
We hope this blog has provided a little education on the history of Loison and that it encourages you to indulge in a little Panettone (or a lot).