They were practically the last houses in the city. Beyond, everything was countryside. In a newly built building, on Camèlies street, in 1952, a couple started the Formentor pastry shop. In the workshop, Antonio Andreu prepared the dough that, once rested for several hours and worked into a rope shape, would give the turns that give birth to an ensaimada. That combination of saïm, flour, and water always kept that pastry chef with his hands in his land. That's also why he named the shop after the northernmost point of the island of Mallorca: Cap de Formentor. Antonio was born in the Mallorcan town of Felanitx and, when he came to Barcelona for military service, he met his future wife, Pilar Rosell.
Together they opened a first workshop in Ciutat Vella, where they made this Mallorcan specialty, until the war and post-war period led them to move to the Gracia neighborhood. They lived in the back room and, although Pilar preferred to cook and take care of the house, in the pastry shop she served as much as needed everything that was being baked in the oven. Their daughter, Carme Andreu, did like the shop and, one day, a family of bakers from outside Barcelona learned about the Formentor pastry shop, and sent their son, Jaume Tasias, to learn the art of pastry making. The love story with the owners' daughter meant that Jaume never returned to his family's pastry shop. The Mallorcan specialties had conquered him in every dimension.
Today it is Pilar, Carme and Jaume's daughter, who is in charge of the shop. Although she wanted to study Pedagogy and work outside the family business, and she did, when her mother retired, she decided to take over. She didn't need to learn almost anything, because everything she does can be said to have been absorbed since she was little. She was born in a clinic just around the corner from the shop and, as the family home and the pastry shop were together, she spent many hours in the back room doing homework, playing and talking with her mother. Until she was 14, before the family moved elsewhere, everything happened there, work and life, when she wasn't at school.
As in any family business, from a very young age, Pilar had some assigned tasks, such as arranging tea pastries on a tray, or serving half an ounce of candies, which were then sold in bulk. "In family businesses, you always help. We have it in our blood. Those of us who are children of self-employed people roll up our sleeves right away, and I really liked being with my mother," she recalls.
With Pilar, the story of the generational handover in the workshop repeated itself. It was when she was studying, already 18 years old. She did it in the afternoons, because in the mornings and on weekends she worked in the pastry shop. And it so happened that a fellow student was looking for a morning job, and her father was looking for an apprentice for the pastry workshop. The apprentice, Daniel Mestre, also fell in love with the owner's daughter, and stayed to work in the family business of which he is now a part. Today, he runs the workshop, along with two workers and his son. All of them get up early to bake the ensaimadas, whose dough has rested for twenty-four hours. Pol, Daniel and Pilar's son, at 31 years old, is announced as the successor to the family business. His brother, Jan, works as a chef in Menorca. "Pol is a very good pastry chef. Of the four generations, he is the first to have studied pastry. Thus, not only has the trade been passed down from generation to generation, but he has contributed everything he has learned at the Gremi de Pastisseria de Barcelona."
Twenty types of ensaimada
The ensaimada is the star of the Formentor pastry shop, its main pillar and most original starting point. They have respected the formula of the Mallorcan grandfather for this Mallorcan specialty. "We make the ensaimada sacredly as he made it, with his exact formulation," says Pilar. It is this sacredly that makes tasting one of their ensaimadas lead to feeling the most authentic of this sweet from the Mallorcan island, probably the most famous local elaboration and the one that most often gets on a plane.
The ensaimadas from the Formentor pastry shop are born in Gràcia and do not travel by plane, but, with them, this workshop has made imagination soar. "We have kept the grandfather's formula, but we have added fantasy," comments Pilar. It's incredible all the variations they manage to elaborate. In addition to the simplest, with nothing ---llisa---, they make ensaimadas with angel hair; cream; dark chocolate cream; sobrasada; apricots; sweet ham and cheese; sobrasada and angel hair; cream; apple and raisins; cream and strawberries; cream and chocolate; burnt cream; tiramisu, and so on, up to about twenty varieties.
"My grandfather would be overjoyed if he saw everything we have done with the ensaimada, which continues to be our queen and the base of our pastry shop," says the heiress. She knows very well what she is talking about. She was already behind the counter before she was born. "This is very demanding. Christmas, Saint Stephen's Day, New Year's Eve... Saint John's Day, Easter... You have to be there for all the holidays. That's why, either you find what makes you happy in all this, or you leave it." And she and her husband have managed to embroider a personalization of the way of working, putting a lot of creativity and many hours into the job. "This is an inherited business, but, with it, we have made our project. We take it as our own, modernized. We have preserved the product, but we have invented a lot," says Pilar. "We receive many congratulations and that is the little engine that makes us continue and makes us happy," she adds.
Despite always being on the job, very much at the service of the business, Pilar explains that they have managed to set some limits that previous generations did not have. She remembers that, as a child, "we ate at a low table in the back room, because my parents didn't close at midday. And, if someone came in, they would get up from the table and go out to serve. But we close at lunchtime, although when it's time to work more hours, it's time." There is, in all this, another motivation that drives them, because as Pilar declares, "this personal project has the family grace of having been carried out by my grandparents and my parents. It is our way of earning a living, but our history is added to it, and this is fantastic. I feel this generational satisfaction which is also a bond for the couple, we row in the same direction."
In addition to the ensaimadas, every day of the week they prepare a different Mallorcan specialty. On Tuesdays, coca de trempó; on Wednesdays, lamb panades and Mallorcan bread; on Thursdays, sobrasada coca; on Fridays, spinach cocarrois. And, by order, they prepare rubiols de brossat (ricotta) or jam.
With saïm ---the fat that gives the ensaimada its special touch and name--- in her DNA, Pilar is the mainstay of this family legacy, of Mallorcan flavor and simplicity that, in the Gràcia neighborhood, is baked in an oven every dawn.