Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
After selling her creations at suburban Chicago farmers markets, Nicole Pietrarosso-Pavlinic now has her own bakery, Nicola’s Heavenly Cucina, located in the Lockport Metra station.
“I’ve been baking my whole life — my mom taught me — and it’s been a dream for me to open up my own bakery,” Pietrarosso-Pavlinic, whose father is Italian, told the Herald-News. “A lot of these recipes have been in my family for decades.”
The menu includes Italian classics such as butter cookies, cannoli and tiramisù, the latter imported from Italy; coffee; and her house specialty, sourdough bread. She also sells other sourdough creations, including scones, bagels, cookies and English muffins.
Pietrarosso-Pavlinic told the newspaper she makes all the bread from scratch, a two-day process that involves fermenting the dough with homemade sourdough starter and using imported Italian flour. She said she decided to focus on sourdough because it is more beneficial to health.
“If you make it with homemade starter instead of commercial yeast, it’s very different and healthier,” she said. “Lots of sourdough in grocery stores is made with yeast and vinegar to re-create the taste, but it loses out on the benefits.”
She also uses European grass-fed butter, organic sugar, homemade vanilla extract, ricotta from a Joliet dairy farm, sausage and bacon from a small family farm in Michigan, and raw milk and cream from Vintage Meadows Farm in Indiana. For more, click here.
