November 10th - 13th

Arriving at Panta Rei had a completely different feel than arriving at Spannocchia. We needed a smaller bus to get up the steep winding path to Panta Rei. Unlike Spannocchia, which had hundreds of years of travel leading to it’s front steps.

View from the front hallway

It was also less immediately striking. No castle top, but a long light filled hallway, that led to a main common area looking into the kitchen. The wooden tables are arranged in a square, with shared benches to sit on. Upstairs are rooms upon rooms of cotton beds, layered upon eachother in bunks and sleeping lofts. Everything is made of wood, rope, willow or cotton. There are few outlets and the lights are not very bright, making it feel like a cucoon.


This layout really changed the feel of the space, it immediately made it feel like a community space. The window into the kitchen and always open kitchen door also changed the energy between diner and cook. Instead of a small window which we only delivered dirty dishes, there has been a relative freeness of wandering in and out of the kitchen – asking what others are making and helping out. This strengthens the feeling of community, while also creating more of a sense of chaos.

Our schedule for the week

Like at Spannocchia, I do not have personal control over when I eat. Though there is always tea and fruit and bits of bread. However, we are in the cooks - meaning the times when we eat are not so dependable. Also, instead of being served courses one at the time, sitting at the table, they are served buffet style. This rush to the food window as soon as food is announced is stressful and I think causes people to worry about getting enough food. I think it would be easier if we had someone serving the courses separately, like at Spannocchia. Of course, since we are now in more of a community setting, this would require a member of the community to take themselves out of the dining experience to serve everybody else. This tiny challenge exemplifies the difference in Spannocchia and Panta Rei. In Spannocchia there were kitchen staff which we rarely saw, and who served us, as guests, promptly and made sure everybody had enough to eat. In this situation, it is only us. We must just trust each other to have enough care and thoughtfulness to ensure that everybody is fed and happy.


I try to do my part by reminding myself that we are in a place of abundance. We are surrounded by food, all the time. I am surely not going to go hungry. But there is still a nagging feeling that perhaps I must hoard away some more for later, like some sort of squirrel. Overall, I do see people being kind and generous to eachother in this situation. As someone who did various projects in the kitchen, I was often offered food first as a thank you for this work. In return I tried to be conscientious of my portion sizes.

Sunset across the lake

In terms of what we have been focusing on, I have found the bread workshop to be the most exciting and engaging. I came to realize that the way I learned to make bread was pretty much only for commercial production. Though we did  learn artisanal breads and we had an active levain which we fed every day - we always used commercial yeast to plump up the bread, to get that elusive rise.

Of course when you are making food for the mass public you think of the standard - you try to fit into what they would like. And so even though I know all the twelve steps of bread making, and what happens with yeast and gluten development and how to troubleshoot a dough - I never make it at home. And that is because to achieve that commercial perfection became a little bit too intimidating.

Seeing Dafne play with the bread by hand (we never kneaded by hand), use farro flour (we never used a flour we did not know the exact protein content of), and explain the process in such a fun and light way really changed my mind about bread making. And then I realize, of course - I learned the way an expert makes bread. With many rules and traditions and a well defined outcome. But what Dafne showed us was how an artisan makes bread, and how people have made bread for centuries. It is a living thing which changes day to day, and the true skill is honing your senses enough to understand what to do with those changes.