There's bread you buy, and bread you make a pilgrimage for. The bread from Forn Anglada, in the village of Ullastrell, in the province of Barcelona, is the second kind: it's come out of the same wood-fired oven for more than a century and a half, made to the same recipe as ever — flour, water, salt, and sourdough starter, nothing else. Running it today is Magda Anglada with her children, the fifth and sixth generations of a family that decided, at some point, that improving the formula would ruin it. For anyone living in Barcelona for a while, the trip out to this bakery is one of the tastiest lessons there is in what a trade actually means.
More than 150 years on Carrer Serra
Forn Anglada, known as 'Cal Forner,' was born in the mid-19th century in Ullastrell, where it still stands: Carrer Serra, 22. Its origins are those of so many rural businesses of the time: it started as a general store, and around 1893, during the building of the Ullastrell road, it also worked as an inn. Bread ended up as the heart of the business, and it remains so six generations later.
What's truly exceptional is the material continuity: the original wood-fired oven is still working, and the premises are the historic ones. There's no other bakery of this age in the Barcelona area that has kept both. It's, quite literally, a piece of the 19th century still at work every day.
Flour, water, salt, and sourdough starter
Forn Anglada's recipe fits in one line: flour, water, salt, and sourdough starter, no additives, with the method passed down from generation to generation since the 19th century. At a time when the word 'artisan' gets stamped on bags of industrial bread, this bakery is the gold standard to measure against: here, the artisanal part isn't an aesthetic, it's the absence of shortcuts.
Today Magda Anglada runs the business alongside her children, the fifth and sixth generations of the family. That human chain is as valuable as the oven: a trade like this isn't learned in a course, it's inherited by working. Forn Anglada is a reminder of what's lost every time a century-old bakery closes — and of what's saved when a family decides to carry on.
Why it's worth the trip from Barcelona
Ullastrell isn't in central Barcelona, and that, far from being a problem, is part of the point of the visit. Travelling there for bread turns the shopping trip into an excursion, and the excursion into something like a small pilgrimage: you don't pass by chance, you go on purpose. And the things you go to on purpose are remembered differently.
For anyone spending weeks or months in the city, short trips like this are the best way to understand that 'living in Barcelona' includes the whole of Catalonia: villages, trades, and landscapes less than an hour away. A sourdough loaf fresh out of a 150-year-old wood-fired oven is as good a reason as any to step outside the Eixample grid — probably better than most.
Bread as a city's thermometer
Anyone who starts paying attention to bread ends up understanding the city better: which neighbourhood bakeries are nearby, which ones really knead their own, what time the batch comes out. It's a cheap habit that structures mornings and starts conversations with bakers, who, along with market stallholders, are any neighbourhood's best informants.
From our Barcelona lofts, the plan is twofold: the trusted daily bakery near home, and now and then the trip to a temple like Forn Anglada. Between the two you learn more about how this city lives than from any must-see list.