Can Lluís Febrer, the sweet life

CM/Ferreries - Ca'n Lluís, at 65 Dean Febrer Street, in Ferreries, is today, without a doubt, the Menorcan benchmark for gluten-free pastry. The master artisan pastry chef Lluís Febrer (Ferreries, 1959) is largely responsible for turning this small bakery into a true temple of pastry making. At 65, he plans to retire in July, and his wife, Mari, will do so next year. But the couple leaves the business in good hands. They will be succeeded by the couple's daughter, Maria Auxiliadora, and their son-in-law, Junho.

Lluís Febrer trained from a very young age in the prestigious Serra pastry shop in Ferreries, which he would succeed from 1983, founding Patisseria Artesana Lluís Febrer, after a period of higher education. In 1992, Febrero obtained the Carta de Maestro Artesano (CMA) and in 2008, the Denominación de Calidad Artesanal (DGA), awarded by the Government of the Balearic Islands.

Lluís Febrer C.B is a family-run company dedicated to both traditional Menorcan pastries and cakes, as well as the making of all kinds of pastries and cakes. Its creations are pure craftsmanship, a true culinary marvel.

But if there is one thing that has made the bakery famous, leaving aside the excellence and quality of its sweets and pastries, it is the production of gluten-free products, work that the company has been carrying out in a committed manner since 1998. During all this time, the bakery has been perfecting its results and expanding its offering, reaching the point of manufacturing exclusively gluten-free products to provide greater guarantee and security to people with celiac disease.

The bakery has the “gluten-free” certification for all the products it uses as ingredients and has eliminated wheat flour from its production process, replacing it with other gluten-free flours, such as rice flour, wheat flour, chickpea flour, or buckwheat flour, among others.

Ca'n Lluís makes sweet pastries (the classic coffee sweets, cake, imperial or the surprising semi-cold sweets, among many others) and traditional pastries, such as panellets, rubiols, crespellinas, sponge cakes, cheeses or coca bamba ensaimadas, among a long list of products. Crossing the door of the workshop is equivalent to immersing yourself fully in the world of the senses.

Next July marks the end of a lifetime dedicated to pastry making, but his first intention was to dedicate himself to Fine Arts...
I went to study Fine Arts, but in the summers I worked at the Serra bakery in Ferreries. When I did my military service, I had to put my studies on hold. When the owners retired, they offered me the chance to buy the business with all the machinery and the recipe book. So at the age of 23 I took over the Serra bakery and moved the business to that premises, which belonged to my parents. In 1983, I finally opened the shop, which last year celebrated its 40th anniversary.

And here, it has become a benchmark...
It was the only bakery in the village. I joined the Menorcan bakers' guild and at the age of 27 I was made president of the Association of Bakers, APAME. Together with other bakers from Menorca, we brought in some masters from the Barcelona bakery school to train us. This allowed us
to expand our offering. We started making monas, nougat, semifreddo... Our references are halfway between our bakery and the Catalan one. We make pastries in the style of those made in Mahón, as my teacher, Antoni Serra, taught me: pine nut sweets, coffee sweets, imperial sweets...

When did you decide to make gluten-free pastries?
In 1995 we had Joan, our son, who was diagnosed as coeliac. That was when we decided to start making pastries for coeliacs and we also became interested in making gluten-free bread. The president of the Menorcan Celiac Association, Irene Pons, was in contact with the Catalan Celiac Association. She also had a coeliac daughter, and she encouraged us to make gluten-free products. Little by little we started testing. As you know, coeliacs cannot eat wheat flour. There are other flours that can replace it, but they lack the same properties. We made several products that people really liked. Today, all Menorcan pastries - formatjades, congret, coca bamba... - are made gluten-free. The population diagnosed with celiac disease currently does not reach 2% of the population, but the truth is that more and more people are choosing to eat gluten-free baked goods.