Festive Breads

...Italian natives who want a taste of home can find an authentic Milanese-style colomba pasqual at Emporio Rulli in Larkspur, an Italian bakery and coffee bar.

Baker Gary Rulli, who opened his shop in 1988, bakes Italian pastries year round. But at this time of year he is elbow-deep in brioche dough, making up hundreds of dove-shaped colombas.

As a boy, Rulli remembers the Easter table including toralli, a bread made from grape juice, walnuts and cinnamon. But in cooking school in Milan, he focused his attention on making the perfect colomba.

"The colomba is really the national Easter bread in Italy," he says. "You see it everywhere. It’s the panettone of Easter, of spring."

Using starter that he carried back from Milan, Rulli started making the rich, minimally sweet bread 15 years ago, selling it to locals, both Italian and not.

This week, Rulli will make a seemingly infinite number of fruity hot cross buns; a few dozen pastiera, a Sicilian crust filled with ricotta, cinnamon, and orange peel; and some morenita, a flourless chocolate cake that is perfect for Easter or Passover.

But the latter part of the week will be devoted to turning out 200 loaves of his beautiful, snowy white doves. "We have been making the bread so long here that it’s become a Larkspur tradition."...

   - By Jolene Thym
   Article Courtesy of The Argus - April 16, 2003