Aldo Balocco, honorary president of the confectionery company of the same name in Fossano (Cuneo), died during the night. He was 91 years old, most of them dedicated to the company that with him helped to make the giant that everyone knows today.
Born in Fossano (Cuneo) in 1930, Balocco becomes orphan of his mother at one week of life. He spent his childhood between Genola, where his mother’s sister raised him, and Fossano, above the pastry shop founded in 1927 by his father, Francesco Antonio Balocco. Displaced during the war in the Langhe, he returned to Fossano in 1949, after completing his high school studies in Cuneo, where he grew up with his cousin Piero, creator of the rebirth of Venchi chocolate.
The first plant with just 30 employees
The honorary president’s idea, suggested to his father, to insist on dry pastry and to begin producing sweets for wholesale. The Balocco revolution starts from the first plant, spread over four floors, with just 30 employees. The tins full of sweets, the “tole” in Piedmontese, intended for wholesalers throughout Italy, are the most eloquent image of the change that is taking place.
The first ovens with removable trolleys for panettone arrive
These were the years of the economic boom, and in the factory in Via San Bernardo, the embryo of the future Balocco, the first removable trolley ovens for panettone were installed. To push the panettone beyond the borders of Fossano and the province, it was necessary to overcome the obstacle of their conservation.
Natural leavening technology
In 1955 Aldo Balocco decided to hire a young Lombard, displaced to Cuneo in the dark years of the war, who had worked in Milan at Motta and Alemagna, at the time two giants of the confectionery industry. Ermanno Crespi, originally from Abbiategrasso, introduces the “natural leavening” technology to Fossano.