Third generation of the Pão de Gimonde bakery, the Portuguese is the first woman to receive this distinction and has visited Cantabria to collaborate with the chef Jesús Sánchez.
At the age of eight, Elisabete Ferreira (Bragança, 1977) decided to become a baker. Three decades later, at the age of 48, Elisabete is among the world’s baking elite. She is currently the best baker in the world (World Baker of the Year 2024), according to the International Bakery and Confectionery Union, and the first woman to receive this distinction.
Ferreira runs the family bakery Pão de Gimonde, founded in 1960 in this small territory in the municipality of Bragança; he chairs the Richemont Portugal Club – one of the world’s pioneering institutions in the promotion of healthy bread – and devotes much of his time to training new generations of bread artisans.
Baking is not just a craft: it is a language. And Elisabete Ferreira speaks it fluently. Her work is an international benchmark, not only for having enhanced the value of the bakery, but also for preserving traditional methods and researching other flours and processes that help to make more digestive breads. This week he visited the Cenador de Amos bakery where he shared knowledge and techniques with chef Jesús Sánchez and his team.
