THE PERFECT PLATE OF PASTA

Ceramics and Italian Cooking · AT Il Baciarino, Tuscany

October 1 - 10, 2027

There is a particular kind of pleasure that comes from eating food you cooked yourself, from a plate you made with your own hands, at a table in Tuscany in October when the olive harvest is near and the light is doing something extraordinary.

This is the retreat built around that pleasure.

How It Works

Twelve participants. Two studios. One long table.

Before you arrive, you’ll choose which cooking classes interest you the most, and we’ll build you your own personal schedule around those choices. The ceramic classes are looser as we follow what forms are most interesting to you. Six of you will be in the clay studio and six in the kitchen, and then you’ll switch. By the end of ten days you have made the plates and you have made the food to go on them.

The ceramics and the cooking are designed to speak to each other. In the studio we are thinking about what a plate needs to do: how it holds a sauce, how it presents a composition, how the weight and the rim feel when you carry it to the table. In the kitchen we are thinking about the same things from the other side.

In the Ceramics Studio

We make tableware - plates, bowls, serving dishes - designed specifically for the food we are cooking. A pasta bowl is not a salad bowl. A shallow plate for a composed antipasto is not a deep plate for a ribollita. Each form has its own logic, and we work through that logic deliberately.

We throw and hand-build. We think about rims, about feet, about the relationship between the interior volume and the food it will hold. We glaze for the table - for durability, for beauty, for the particular way a glaze catches candlelight at an evening meal.

Your finished pieces will be fired after the retreat and shipped directly to you. They will arrive at your door ready for the table.

In the Kitchen

We cook Italian. Not the tourist version - the real thing, rooted in the seasonal ingredients of the Maremma and the particular genius of a cuisine that has always understood that simplicity is the hardest thing to achieve.

Pasta made by hand. Sauces built slowly. Vegetables from the garden. Bread from the wood oven. And the particular pleasure of cooking in a kitchen where someone who knows this food well is cooking alongside you.

There are wine tastings. There is lunch in the olive grove. There is at least one dinner you will not forget.

A Typical Day

Mornings are often in whichever studio you are in that morning - focused, hands-on, genuinely taught. Afternoons are more fluid - there are still classes but also walks, the beach, the market at Vetulonia, or simply sitting in the sun with a glass of something good.

Evening at the long table. This is where the retreat finds its centre. The food arrives. The plates are passed. The conversation goes where it goes.

By the end of ten days the two halves of the group will have traded everything - skills, recipes, the particular pride of having made both the vessel and what it carries.

Who This Retreat Is For

The Perfect Plate of Pasta is for people who love food and making in equal measure. No previous ceramics experience is required — the studio instruction is designed to meet you where you are. No culinary training either — just genuine appetite for learning to cook Italian food well.

It is also, reliably, the retreat that makes people cry at the dinner table. In the best possible way.

2027 Dates and Price

October 1–10, 2027

€2,800 per person — all inclusive. This covers all tuition, all materials and tools, all meals and drinks, all day trips and cultural excursions, and pick-up and drop-off from Grosseto train station.

Your finished ceramics will be fired after the retreat and shipped to you. Shipping is included in the price.

Accommodation is separate. See below for options and pricing.

A note on availability: all 2026 retreats are currently full. Early booking for 2027 is strongly recommended.

Before booking I recommend spending time with the Il Baciarino website and Instagram — it is the kind of place that sells itself once you see it.

Questions about the kitchen side, the studio side, or anything in between — write to me directly. I will answer honestly about whether this is the right fit.

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