IF your partial to a slice of toast and jam on a morning, chances are you won’t be carving a slice off this loaf, dubbed the world’s most expensive bread and made right on our doorstep.

The pricey pan is the brainchild of Juan Manuel Moreno, manager of a family run bakery in the Malaga village of Algatocin, nestled deep in the Grazalema National Park.

The unique recipe, containing all natural ingredients and blended with flakes of edible gold and silver, is sold to lavish clients around the globe for a staggering €1480 per loaf.

Moreno is the manager of the Panadería Pan Piña bakery a business that has been in his wife’s family since 1946 and has been producing quality bread ever since.

Boasting over 170 different types of bread, the bakery still caters for it’s regular customers with regular types of bread, including a buckwheat mix that sells almost 400 loaves per day.

According to an interview with Madrid’s Metropolitan Press, Moreno explained that he came up with the idea after hearing of the world’s most expensive coffee was being sold in coffee house in Marbella.

Keen to see how far he could push the limits of bread making, he set to work creating Panadería Pan Piña’s masterpiece.

Moreno’s first attempt began with experimenting with using edible gold and a type of wheat known as spelt, a grain of wheat popular in the bonze ages and making a comeback in recent years due to its health properties.

This first batch proved a success, selling 150 loaves at €117 each.

This led Moreno to continue to pursue his goal of creating the world’s most exclusive bread, creating another batch using quinoa and chia and this time, frosting the loaf with the gold.

This sold for €192 and set the path for his latest creation.

Using gold and this time, silver, the loaf uses these precious metals in two forms, flakes and dust, and in total uses approximately €1100 of ingredients depending on metal prices at the time.

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“It takes roughly 18 hours to create this particular sourdough loaf,” said Moreno. “It is very much ‘Bread without the rush’.”

According to Moreno, he uses only the finest flours and wheats and and goes through numerous specific processes before it reaches the oven.

“The ingredients are mixed and kneaded and left for 30 minutes to ferment before being reworked, cut and left again to prove.” said Moreno.

It is then formed into the loaf shape and decorated with the unique malt pattern before being refrigerated for 12 hours to slow the fermentation process and allow the sugars to be absorbed.

It is then taken out of the chiller and baked for 40-45 minutes before adding the final decorations ready for sale.

Moreno explains that he has gained a lot of interest for his culinary creation, and has sold loaves to businessmen and elites from China, Saudi Arabia and China.

One particular client, a Saudi Prince, ordered 18 loaves for a wedding last year, and since it’s birth, Pina Pan has sold 96 loaves in total, with six so far in 2021.

“We did not do this for the money, we did this to try to put the bakery on the map and show what is possible.” said Moreno.

The team at Panadería Pan Piña’s hard work also led to the bakery being placed on Malaga’s Sabor a Malaga hotlist in 2007.

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