Meet Pierluigi Mazzella of Fatto a Mano Bakery: Panettone & Artisan Bread

Brian Lance October 13, 2021

When Pierluigi Mazzella thinks of Ischia, his home island off the coast of Naples, he thinks of the sea. The island’s craggy shores and terra cotta villages greet the sapphire waters of the Mediterranean, painting a dreamland you wish to keep secret from others. And the sea brings Mazzella back to his father, a professional fisherman, the man who taught him how to hone and pursue one’s craft.

“I saw him pushing, struggling to support us,” Mazzella says.

His father toiled in the dark and wet, sometimes not returning for days. He wove his own nets. He paid constant attention to season and sea, all in the name of improvement, becoming the best fisherman possible.

“He gave me the appreciation for working with your hands, things that nowadays seem to be worth nothing.”

Mazzella strove for this constant improvement throughout his baking journey, always moving up, always seeking to work in places where he could learn more high-level skills. He worked around Italy as a pizzaiolo, then as a panettone apprentice for the 2019 world champion of panettone, and most recently as the lead bread baker for Atticus Bakery in New Haven.

Now, at his bakery, Fatto a Mano, which translates from Italian as “made by hand,” Mazzella applies his father’s work ethic to his baking. He makes Italian-inspired artisan bread and pastry, including sourdoughs loaves and biscotti. Then there's the panettone.

Panettone lies outside the world of regular bread. Many successful, popular, high-end bakeries worldwide can produce the most Instagram-worthy country sourdoughs with open crumbs and blistered crusts. They can laminate and bake weightless croissants that shed their delicate layers like leaves in autumn. Yet, those bakeries still fail at panettone, especially one that exceeds grocery store quality. Never mind a panettone to match those from Fatto a Mano.

Mazzella’s panettone needs only one word to describe: ethereal.

“Panettone is the Mount Everest of baking,” Mazzella says. “Every step must be exact, precise. It starts with the first feeding of the lievito madre sourdough culture. You must get that right. Or you will fail.”

Traditionally, panettone appeared at Christmastime in Italy and remained on the fringe of world-wide holiday baked goods. Now, it’s becoming a year-round obsession everywhere. Its golden crumb studded with candied fruit and chocolate has entranced both bakers and eaters.

Bakers crave the challenge and notoriety of creating a well-made panettone. Eaters lust after the cloud-like, subtly sweet interior and the surprising, fruity hits of candied fruit. Panettone has a shelf life of months, but seems to disappear in a day after you eat the first slice. It’s the kind of thing you give to friends and family but also contemplate hiding from your kids so you can eat it all.

“For years, I’ve had only panettone on my mind,” he says. “So when I came to the U.S. from Italy, I had a dream to make it here because it’s still new. Many people only know the supermarket one.”

At Fatto a Mano, Mazzella also makes crusty sourdough hearth loaves (often flavored with herbs from his garden) as well as pan loaves with oats and other grains. For these he uses flour milled from grains grown in New England by independent farmers--no easy task itself. He learned the skill while at Atticus. Using regional flour requires a baker to understand the plants and fields from which the grains originate and to sense differences in the dough as the grain blends change season to season, or even field to field. The process, while not as exacting as panettone, demands a similar commitment, scientific understanding, and baker’s intuition.

But the panettone lies at the heart of Fatto a Mano, and it will drive it into a bright and busy future. For now, the bakery is a certified cottage operation Mazzella and his wife run at their home in Monroe. They take internet orders for the limited quantities they bake. Demand has far outpaced production. Their bake sales often sell out as soon as the ordering period opens. Customers call Mazzella constantly, trying to get on a waiting list (which doesn’t exist) for the next sale or to place special orders. Bakers from around the U.S. contact him for advice or invite him to their bakeries for consultation.

With all the attention and demand, keeping up has been a struggle and sometimes confusing for Mazzella. He hopes to change that. He decided to leave Atticus to run Fatto a Mano full-time. He plans to expand it into a commercial space soon. This will help him meet demand and prepare for the future.

Business talk aside, his passion for panettone remains. As does his commitment to the best ingredients: panettone flour from Italy, fruit he candies, saffron-yolk eggs from Connecticut farms.

A single goal drives him.