Part 2: A Day at Atelier Fuerza

“Atelier Fuerza might have been my idea, but now it’s the idea of many, we work in a collective. That’s how we sustain it all, by working together. We need more cooks working in bakeries. It’s a different universe, it’s a world, and it’s beautiful. We need to stop talking about sourdough and start talking about baking bread with an Argentine identity,” Fran believes.

“My name is Zoe Glusman, I’m 23 years old, I am from Buenos Aires and we are at Atelier Fuerza, always with a good attitude. We make sourdough breads, 100% organic, and we also make Argentine pastries. We are pretty well known for our puff pastry. I am in charge of customer service, and it’s a fun atmosphere. There is constant interaction with clients, and they let us know that they are happy with what we do. Our products really do cause addictions!” - Zoe Glusman

“Argentine breads and pastries are a fusion of various immigrant groups that arrived in Argentina. There’s British, Spanish, Italian, French and Danish influence. We wanted to take everything that defines Argentine pastries and value that,” Fran says.

“Instead of making croissants, we’d make medialunas, not because we don’t like croissants, but we are trying to put value on Argentine identity and products. Medialunas are unique, drenched in syrup, there’s nothing else like it.” - Fran

Fran says they also wanted to honor local ingredients, like flour, which has a special taste unique to Argentina. AF also works with all organic and some agro-ecological products, while always respecting seasonality. It’s also very important for them to choose the providers who they want to work with. 

"Many Argentine classic desserts had disappeared from bakeries, so we wanted to bring back the ricotta cake, pastafrola, palmeritas, alfajores, coquitos, and chipa. We aren’t just dulce de leche, we have so many Argentine delicacies that have been lost." - Fran

Stella has worked for over 10 years in the restaurant industry as a pastry chef, but only now at Atelier Fuerza has she begun to focus on Argentine desserts and pastries. Here, she wants to let Argentine baked goods shine, making sweets like alfajores, coquitos, pastafrola and ricotta cake. 

“What’s a coquito? It’s like a cookie, dry but moist, it tastes like orange but it’s made with coconut. It’s a bit crunchy on the outside but soft on the inside. I don’t know if there are coquitos in other parts of the world, it’s ours. It wasn’t easy to achieve this texture, it takes us days to make.” - Stella Panighetti

For Atelier Fuerza’s second anniversary instead of baking a cake, they made a giant alfajor cake. “We wanted to make something very Argentine, and what’s more Argentine than an alfajor, right?” Stella says.