Every loaf that comes out of Grani's ovens in Vittoria, Sicily, begins with the same sourdough starter, one that's been kept alive since the 1960s. It's the kind of continuity that you can't buy, but can only inherit, and it's exactly what drew us to this small family bakery.

A bakery passed down, not just built

Emanuele Guastella grew up around his family's bakery, watching his grandmother knead and measure by eye, guided by experience rather than a recipe. She'd learned her trade as a leavener at the Motta bakery in Milan in the 1960s, before returning to Sicily and creating the sourdough starter that Grani still uses every day. Emanuele took his instinct for the work, and his care with it, from her.

Grain with no shortcuts

Grani bakes with a handful of Sicilian wheat varieties largely forgotten outside the island – Timilìa, Perciasacchi and Russello among them – alongside ancient grains like emmer. Fermentation is long: some loaves prove for twenty-four hours, others for thirty-six. This is the definition of slow-food.

More than bread

Alongside sourdough loaves, Grani makes traditional Sicilian biscuits – including buccellati, the fig-and-almond pastries that are usually a Christmas staple, baked here in miniature form year-round. Panettone, made with the same starter and a long, patient proof, is Emanuele's own favourite thing to bake.

We regularly receive fresh stock of Grani's sourdough bread and biscuits in store – proper, slow-food Sicilian baking, with the kind of story behind it that a label can't quite capture.

Delivery throughout Malta & Gozo.

Shop Grani sourdough & biscuits.

In 1978, a group of young farmers near Verona took on an abandoned farmstead and turned it into a dairy cooperative. Nearly fifty years on, Ca' Verde is still run the same way — own animals, own land, own dairy, nothing bought in. Here's their story, and what's new on our shelves.

Rescuing an abandoned farm

The name Ca' Verde belonged to a derelict farmstead outside Verona before a group of young farmers took it over. Too small to compete alone, they formed a cooperative instead — pooling land, animals and labour rather than each trying to make it work solo.

Organic before organic had a name

By 1985, seven years in, Ca' Verde had already committed to farming without pesticides, herbicides or chemical fertiliser — years before organic certification existed as we know it now. It's the kind of decision that only makes sense if you're doing it for the land rather than the label.

The cooperative's brand name, Ottomarzo, references its own founding date: the 8th of March.

Between Lake Garda and the Lessinia mountains

The farm sits between Monte Baldo and the Lessinia mountains, overlooking Lake Garda — good grazing country for cows and goats. The milk goes straight from the herd to the on-site caseificio, where master cheesemaker Alvaro turns it into ricotta, mozzarella, scamorza, stracchino, pecorino and more, the same day.

We regularly receive fresh stock of Grani's sourdough bread and biscuits in store – proper, slow-food Sicilian baking, with the kind of story behind it that a label can't quite capture.

What's arriving at Farmer's Deli

Their full range lands in store this week:

• Cow's milk: fresh mozzarella, stracchino, ricotta, scamorza (natural and smoked), caciottina

• Goat's milk: robiola, primosale, mozzarella, ricotta, scamorza, morbidella, magrello

• Sheep's milk: pecorino fresco and stagionato

• Latte Fieno STG, fresh organic cow's milk, 1L — from cows fed on grass and hay only, no silage. It's an EU-protected designation, and the milk has a short shelf life, so it's worth grabbing while it's here.

All of it certified organic, all of it from one cooperative that still raises its own animals and makes everything on site.

Delivery throughout Malta & Gozo.

 Farmer's Deli online shop.

Giorgio Minardo opened his pasta workshop in Modica, in the south-east corner of Sicily, in 2007, after years spent researching wheat varieties that had all but vanished from the island. That research is the reason Minardo pasta tastes the way it does.

The hunt for lost wheat

It started with a question nobody could easily answer: which wheat varieties had Sicilian farmers actually grown before industrial agriculture arrived? Minardo began digging into the genealogy of the grain being sold as "traditional," working with the Stazione Sperimentale per la Granicoltura in Caltagirone, Sicily's grain research station.

Between them, they traced and recovered three varieties that had almost disappeared: Russello, Timilia and Senatore Cappelli – wheats that had fed Sicily for centuries before being pushed out by higher-yielding modern strains.

Bronze drawn and slow dried

Minardo pasta is made from nothing but these ancient Sicilian grains and mineral spring water, certified organic throughout. It's bronze-drawn – extruded through a rough bronze die rather than a smooth industrial one, for a surface that holds sauce incredibly well – and dried slowly at low temperature, rather than fast at high heat.

The result is a pasta many people find easier to digest, with a texture and flavour that's noticeably different from anything mass-produced.

19 shapes, one philosophy

Minardo now makes nineteen different shapes from Russello and Timilia wheat, from long cuts like Linguine and Pappardelle to little soup shapes like Ditali and Anelletti. A few worth knowing:

• Busiata lunga – a twisted Sicilian classic, traditionally served with pesto alla Trapanese

• Paccheri – large tubes, big enough to stuff

• Calamarata - named after calamari rings, a southern Italian favourite with seafood

• Whole wheat gemelli and penne – deeper and nuttier than the standard versions

Certified organic, €4.90 per 500g pack.

Find an extensive selection in store in San Gwann, or order online with free delivery in Malta & Gozo.

Shop Minardo Pasta online at the Farmer's Deli.

Most of the pasta we grow up eating comes from a handful of modern wheat varieties, bred after the Second World War for yield rather than flavour. Amedeo, a farmer in Tuscany's Val d'Orcia, took a different path, reviving grains that had almost disappeared from Italian fields. This is his story, and why it changed how we eat pasta.

Three wheats that nearly disappeared

After the war, Italian agriculture chose efficiency. Modern, higher-yielding wheat replaced regional varieties that had been sown in the same valleys for centuries. Three of the ones lost along the way were Verna, a soft Tuscan wheat from the Mugello and Casentino hills that performs poorly under modern fertiliser; Senatore Cappelli, a durum wheat named after the senator who championed it in the early 1900s, sidelined by the 1960s Green Revolution; and Monococco, or einkorn – the first wheat ever domesticated, around 10,000 years ago, abandoned because it yields less and is harder to harvest. All three are grown again today, in small quantities, by farmers like Amedeo.

Farming in the Val d'Orcia

The Val d'Orcia is the UNESCO-listed stretch of Tuscany between Siena and Monte Amiata – clay and chalky soils, long dry summers, the kind of demanding ground that suits deep-rooted, drought-tolerant ancient wheats. Amedeo runs a filiera corta, a closed-cycle farm: he grows, harvests, mills and dries everything himself, with no brokers or anonymous flour in between. If something goes wrong with a harvest, he's the first to know, and the only one who can put it right.

Why the process matters

Three details separate this pasta from most of what's on supermarket shelves:

● Stone milling, done slowly and at low heat, keeps the grain's germ intact - along with its flavour and nutrients - rather than stripping it out the way commercial steel rollers do.

● Bronze drawing extrudes the pasta through a rough bronze die rather than a smooth Teflon one, leaving a slightly matte, textured surface that holds sauce properly.

● Slow drying at 40°C over fourteen hours (against the two to four hours at 80–100°C used industrially) keeps the pasta's structure and flavour intact, and makes it easier to digest.

The wider Sapore di Sole network

Amedeo is one farmer within a larger collective. Sapore di Sole has worked since 1999 with organic and biodynamic farmers across Tuscany and central Italy – among them Viviano and his wife in Valdarno, growing legumes and vegetables, and Lorenzo in Modena, making IGP balsamic vinegar. Their Tuscan tomatoes are processed within 48 hours of picking, and their ribollita recipe waits for the first icy nights of the year, when black cabbage tastes as it should.

"Organic is a serious matter, a concept to be kept clean, an idea worth struggling for, with its own ethics and soul." – Sapore di Sole.

It's a philosophy we recognise. It's the same one behind Farmer's Deli.

Shop Sapore di Sole Pasta online at the Farmer's Deli.

Warner's Distillery is the brainchild of Tom and Tina Warner. A husband and wife from England and Ireland, the couple grew up in farming families which gave them a strong work ethic, great love of food and drink, and a respect for the natural world that provides for us. Each bottle has the same love, pride and care as a home-cooked meal from their farm.

Since 2012, they’ve been on a mission to save the world from mediocre drinks and help save the planet, one sip at a time. Their globally-award-winning spirits are lovingly crafted with nature using farm-grown botanicals from their biodiverse gardens, hedgerows, and natural springs of their family farm, the historic Falls Farm estate in Harrington, amongst the rolling Northamptonshire hills in the UK.

Come discover the full range of Warner's premium gins in store at the Farmer's Deli.