A Life Lived Through Chocolate: 24 Hours with Alberto Farinelli

Alberto Farinelli is a lifelong patissier and chocolatier; he is also the maestro at Perugina® School of Chocolate in Umbria, Italy. Here he gives us the flavour of a day in his life lived through chocolate.

My alarm first goes off at 6.30am, but it’s the second one 10 minutes later that actually gets me up. Like everyone else, I’m already thinking about the 100 things I have to do that day, pick 10, and start mentally putting them in order of importance. 

Breakfast is a white coffee and French toast with marmalade – I try to avoid chocolate for breakfast, but, because I’m so crazy for patisserie, I’ll bake Umbria’s chocolate-studded maritozzi for my family once or twice a week, which my wife doesn’t always appreciate as she can’t resist them and worries about her fitness.

I’m a pâtissier 24/7, even at home.

I’ve been in this profession for over 40 years, a passion born from watching and helping my mother make crema pasticceria as a child. When I was 17, I started working in a pastry shop, as well as taking lots of specialised courses. With some colleagues, I founded the 'Pastry Association of Umbria' about 30 years ago. We set up our own private laboratory and once a month or so we would experiment with recipes and compare notes and invite chefs to learn and keep up to date with new and current techniques. We started to collaborate with EuroChocolate in Perugia where I met some Perugina executives. Over the years we went from small collaborations to working together, and the rest is history. I’ve been at Perugina for 20 years now.

I leave for Scuola del Cioccolato Perugina around 8am and spend the morning taking care of course administration with my colleagues at the school. The school is a bit like a small company, in that there are many elements to manage, from purchasing to paying bills. 

Lunch is at the school’s canteen, where I’ll dine with my colleagues and continue our conversations. We eat well, after all, we are all foodies.

The afternoon’s usually spent teaching classes at the school. I am the face or ‘maestro’ of the school, so it’s important I’m there. The school offers a variety of simple, themed courses, from creating famous Baci chocolates for Christmas nativity scenes, all aimed at beginners, whether adults or children. Each student is given a single workstation complete with an oven and all the equipment required ready to complete the sweet task.

We might get students who have never put on an apron before or worked with chocolate, through to students from the hospitality school, but whatever the results or their aptitude, all students they all get to take home a goodie bag. Yesterday’s kids were buzzing with the huge amount of chocolate they put away.

It's a great environment to work in because people come to have fun and create something – which means I’m always in contact with happy people. People come from all over Italy but also from all over the world, US, Canada, Israel, Australia – whoever comes to this part of Italy, comes to the city of chocolate and stays for half a day, does a course, sees the factory and the museum. Perugina museum is one of the most visited company museums in Italy, with 80 to 90,000 visitors annually.

The first and most important thing to becoming a master patissier is a passion for the profession. If someone is already talented, they will already have the manual dexterity to wield a piping bag and decorate in chocolate, but you can also learn. It’s very rewarding to help the guys that are struggling and support them to reach their potential. If I see a youngster from the hospitality school with natural talent, I’ll highlight it to their professor.

To work with chocolate, whether you’re a beginner or a pâtissier, there are rules you have to respect, like temperature, but other than that, it’s a great pliable product and you can do lots of things with it. When it’s solid you can create sculptures, if you melt it you can create moulds and forms, that’s why young people like working with it. In Umbria, more guys are making things with chocolate. Also in the patisseries, once chocolate was a niche product, now I noticed it’s becoming one of the biggest products, it's really gathering momentum. Over the years, interest has also increased in the most intense and purest chocolates. Products such as 70%, 85% or 95% Perugina Nero are increasingly popular because they allow you to play with flavour combinations, they offer different sensations than chocolate sweet and delicate. 

If there aren’t any classes that afternoon, we’ll work on developing recipes which we publish on the Perugina website, for which we also have to take attractive pictures. We indulge ourselves with Perugina products, such as drops, cocoa powder or the Gran Blocco to create all kinds of recipes from cakes to parfaits, creams, small pastries and many others. It is not just the realisation of the recipe – we experiment with the different types of cocoa we have, from sweet to extra dark, and we test which is the most suitable variety in the specific recipes. It might take two days to create the right set or the right look for the product or recipe.

Before Covid, we used to do lots of events, show cooking or conventions with customers. When I do show cooking, I try to transmit my passion for the product and job, which people say that they can feel. In reality, I’m very lucky because I’m doing my profession which was my dream.

Last year I was a guest pâtissier for an episode of Bake-Off Italia, filmed in Perugia. Benedetta Parodi (the show’s host) came to visit the school and we showed her how chocolate is made. I advised the contestants on how to prepare a typical Perugian dessert, ciaramicola, revisited by Ernest Knam (one of the show’s jurors), who added chocolate. It was good fun, the team was very nice and made me at ease because I’ve done a fair amount of TV shows and I’m always worried some words will slip out in dialect.

Every year lots of TV companies visit Perugina, with a stop at the school. It’s now quite regular that I have to do live show cooking to play with Perugina chocolate live on air. I travelled a lot with my job in the past, we did many show cooking activities to launch new Perugina products or to show how they are born and how they can be used in pastry. These are experiences that always leave me with great satisfaction, people are fascinated in following the technique to temper the chocolate and work it. I've done some show cooking in very original places and situations, it's always a lot of fun.

Dinner is at home, it’s the only moment of the day when I can finally relax and sit around the table with my family and have a nice dinner. My wife normally cooks, except on Sunday when I’ll make pizza from dough I’ll start in the morning. I’m in charge of sweets and wine – I’m a sommelier too. We don’t talk a lot because the TV’s on, probably Bake-Off Italia or another cooking show. I used to force them to watch baking shows, now they do it voluntarily. 

I’ve been doing this job for 40 years, and yet I’ve learned that you never stop learning. You need to remain open and curious. When there’s the chance to go to a fair or show cooking with other teachers I always go willingly, for the opportunity to learn from others. 

We are a community of master pâtissiers, but those who go on TV are more well known, I knew Ernst Knam before, and I’ve done a panettone event with Iginio Massari, but generally, we all know each other because we go to events or fairs like SIGEF and share ideas and perhaps dinner.

Sometimes I think I could have a patisserie or chocolate shop, but after a couple of minutes I forget it when I think about the headache of taxes, responsibilities… I spent many years leading a team in a large patisserie, and you have to create to sell, which is not the same as producing for fun. I have a lot of fun and visibility with the products now. 

I go to bed content and wake up happy to go to work because I’m lucky enough to live my passion every day.