Le antiche Macine

An expression of the company Leidi SRL founded by Romeo Leidi, the brand “Le Antiche Macine” produces coarse-grained and rustic flours with traditional methods, ideal for preparing polenta with a rough flavor and for being used in all the recipes handed down to us by our grandparents. For three generations, the Leidi family has been grinding flour with stone, and not with any stone: in fact, a specific type of French flint is used in the Bergamo production plant, coming from the small town of La Ferté-sous-Jouarre - the most famous and valuable for this type of processing.

This short introductory hat will surely match, in the reader's imagination, a lush rural setting — which we actually find in the area where the company is located — where a characteristic wheeled mill stands out, an architecture that refers to periods far removed from modernity. Being operating in the 21st century, therefore, the Frantoio delle Antiche Macine is not a postcard building, but a modern industrial plant where the technology of the past meets that of the present, offering the public the advantages of the former at the pace of

the second.

Some details about stone grinding

To produce finer-grained flours, such as the well-known 00 flour, it is mandatory to use millstones coated with a compound very similar to what we find at the base of some non-stick pans, whose constituent elements are emery, magnesite and flint. In this case, the rotational speed of the mills is really very high, which, however, produces an undesirable effect on the temperatures generated by friction: the excess of thermal energy, in fact, heats the corn and deteriorates its nutritional properties, thus affecting

the quality of subsequent processing.

The flint mills, on the other hand, rotate at a lower number of revolutions per minute, ensuring a temperature equal to the average summer temperature (around 30°C). In both cases, the ground beans are complete, they are not stripped of the bran and the germ: this, however, adds richness to the range of taste, fibers, vitamins, proteins and fats contained in the final mix, ready to

be packaged and distributed.

The advantages and disadvantages of this production method

Wholemeal or partially whole wheat flours certainly have peculiar characteristics, which go even beyond the simple difference in texture and taste. They are more resistant to leavening, in principle their conservation has a shorter period, but in our opinion the advantages far outweigh the few disadvantages: to know if the flours of “Le Antiche Macine” are right for you, we suggest a selection of products to be enjoyed in the ways suggested by your

imagination.