Italy would not be Italy without Mulino Bianco, a brand known for it’s biscuits that Italian mamma’s love to give their children for breakfast with a cup of warm milk or orzo (barley coffee) to dip them in. But according to Mulino Bianco, biscuits are just as good a breakfast for adults that supposedly become very ‘dynamic’ by having five or six Batticuori (beating hearts), Spicchi di Sole (patches of sunlight) or Abbracci (hugs) in the morning, combined with una tazza di caffè, a small tub of yoghurt and some fresh fruit. All the different packets of the biscuits have a suggestion for a real colazione all’italiana (Italian breakfast) that comes with one of the ten principles of the morning meal like ‘taste the flavours’, ‘start the day with warmth’ and ‘find your own rhythm’.
Curious as I am I wanted to know more about the story of these ten principles and thus had a look on the website. It turns out that Mulino Bianco has developed a model of the real Italian breakfast with the help of scientists from various disciplines. The model shows a food pyramid that has biscuits and breads (sweet breads are also part of their range of products…) at the bottom of the pyramid, therefore being the most important part of the meal. The biscuits are being followed by milk and yoghurt, fruit, hot drinks, sugar, honey and jam and at the small top butter. Not only can you find more information about the different categories of the breakfast pyramid, you can also learn more about the importance of love, trust, warmth, energy, care and the pleasure of starting the day with the family around the breakfast table. The project supposedly has ‘a great scientific and cultural value’ and gives guidelines to start the day full of warmth, pleasure and balance. Obviously this is exactly the way the Italians like it, seen the amount of choice in and the quantity of Mulino Bianco biscuits in the supermarket aisles!
Mulino Bianco is one of the major brands of Barilla, the Italian food company famous for its blue packages of pasta. That the people of the marketing department know well how to create an image of Italian life that Italians can identify themselves with became already clear in the 90’s. In John Dickie’s book Delizia! that talks about the history of Italians and their food we can read that Mulino Bianco decided that the White Mill of their logo had to come to life for a new advertising campaign. The biscuits are originally made in Parma, the heart of Barilla’s world, but the area did not offer the picturesque image the company was looking for. This place was found in a remote area in Tuscany where an old building was painted white and a new mill with an electric motor was attached. For the campaign famous actors were being hired to tell the story of a ‘modern family who leave the city and choose to live healthily by going back to nature’. The campaign became the most successful in the history of Italian television. It caused hundreds of city dwellers to go on a pilgrimage to the White Mill in Tuscany, looking for the idyllic country life that they had seen in the biscuit advertisements.
The Drover, who also listens to the name Antonio Dinamico (and Jean Pierre Dinamique since we have tried some biscuits in France), loves Mulino Bianco biscuits from the very first time I bought them for him, back in Australia. I told him about the Mulino Bianco story and while we were mentally getting ready for our Italian adventure, he thought it was good to ‘practice’ Italian breakfast now and then. His family thought that we, and the Italians, were crazy, but oh well, we just enjoyed our Abbracci. Secretly I love them too, but I think that by now it is time to try and bake them myself. Funny enough Mulino Bianco has recipes for all their biscuits on the website, probably knowing that although Italians might identify themselves with the real Italian family breakfast, the times of making everything from scratch at home have been left far behind by most of the population.
The recipe and my trial to bake the biscuits at home will follow soon!
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