Molino Colombo launches Opera flour for sourdough fermentation and starter care

The starter on your counter just got a new test case. Molino Colombo’s Opera flour was built for the doughs that demand the most from a baker, from sourdough refreshment to panettone, pandoro and rustic breads, and it launched globally on May 11 at TuttoFood in Milan.

That positioning matters because Opera is not being sold as a generic all-purpose flour. Molino Colombo framed it around fermentation performance, starter maintenance and clean-label baking, with availability already extending to the United States, Spain, France, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. For home bakers working through long levains, enriched holiday doughs or a mature starter that needs steady feeding, the promise is simple: more control over the fermentation process without leaning on additives.

The flour was co-created with Giovanna Chen Shih-chieh, the Taiwanese panettone artisan behind I Love Italy, whose name gives Opera a cultural weight as well as a technical one. It is the first flour in Molino Colombo’s history to carry a female creative signature, a detail that sets the launch apart in a category where branding usually stops at protein percentages and handling notes. Chen described Opera as a clean-label flour that can support everything from sourdough starter maintenance to panettone, pandoro and rustic breads.

Behind the marketing, Molino Colombo is leaning on process. The company says it uses a soft milling method designed to preserve protein structure and aromatic complexity, while keeping the flour additive-free. For serious sourdough bakers, that combination points to a flour intended to hold up under high hydration, repeated refreshes and the slow fermentation rhythms that define an active starter. For panettone bakers, it signals a flour meant to support the strength and delicacy required in a dough that is famously unforgiving.

Opera arrives as premium baking continues to travel well beyond Italy, especially in Asia, where more consumers are learning to make traditional Italian breads at home. That gives the flour a clear place in the market: not as a curiosity, but as a tool for bakers who care about starter health, fermentation stability and flavor depth. If your flour choice is already shaping crumb, rise and aroma, Opera is aimed squarely at that level of attention.