Claudio Bakehouse, Abbey, a tasty treat

It was customary as he spent time with his grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, that he would also enjoy home-made biscuits native to the particular region in which they lived.

As he was treated to the amazing array of variety in the cuisines of the numerous provinces, little did Mr Tallarico know that one day he would be drawing upon his rich gastronomical heritage as he looked to make his mark in a small town half a world away.

And make his mark he most certainly has, firstly with a stall at the Margaret River Farmers Markets for 10 years, Claudio Biscotti, that had an almost cult-like following, to now opening his own premises, Claudio Bakehouse in Abbey, just south of Busselton in May.

A career in food, let alone in pastries, wasn't always the direction he expected his life to take.

But from a young age, Mr Tallarico's father was working long hours to provide for him and his brother, which meant he wasn't getting home to cook dinner until late in the evening.

"I was about nine or 10-years-old when I decided to start cooking for my father - it was a passion of his, but he was coming home very late from work, and we wouldn't eat until 9-10pm," Mr Tallarico said.

"So instead, at about 6-7pm I would start to get a meal ready for him so we could eat when he got home.

"That was when I started to like cooking."

This like for cooking continued to grow, and he eventually went to catering school, during which time he competed in regional competitions around Italy, as well as international ones in London and Amsterdam among other locations.

Training for the competitions helped him to hone his skills, as he needed to know how to do everything from making a whole range of entrees, mains and desserts, to baking bread, dealing with cheeses and dairy products and butchering animals.

And these skills were also essential when he went on to work in hotels, where staff needed to be able to move from one section to another.

In 2008, at the age of 38, Mr Tallarico took a leap of faith and packed up his wife Milena, 10-year-old daughter Anastasia and home in Italy in pursuit of a four-year sponsorship arranged by an Australian sous chef colleague then working at the same restaurant in Rome.

"I wanted a change of lifestyle - Italy was so busy, it is very fast, everything is too fast," he said.

"I was used to working hard, and I wondered if it was possible to try a different lifestyle."

They moved to Margaret River for Mr Tallarico to begin his new job, and while that was going well, the family began to question the move as their daughter struggled to fit in at school.

"After six months we were just about to leave when she made a new friend and was much happier, and so we decided to remain and for me to finish the sponsorship," he said.

His hugely successful farmers market stall came about almost by accident.

Mr Tallarico said he had finished his sponsorship and was at home without a job, when he decided to bake some biscuits for fun.

He took them to the markets and they sold out.

"I thought 'wow, people love biscuits'," he said.

So he continued to bake, initially making six different types of biscuits, and started going to the markets weekly to sell them.

Such was the demand, Mr Tallarico eventually built up to a repertoire of 180 different types of typical Italian biscuits which he would bake and sell on

rotation, offering 23 varieties at a time.

These included cantucci, assabesi, ungheresi, amaretti sarid, napoletani, chaicchere, cannoli, ciambelle romane and the ossa da mordere.

"There are 20 regions in Italy, and each one has its own culinary treasures, and I wanted to make as many of the more than 400 biscuits produced in Italy as I could with the same love and care that our mothers and grandmothers used to make them," he said.

He later expanded his offering to include a range of pastries, such as croissants and foccacias.

After five years of working out of his home kitchen with his trusty Kitchen Aid mixer, Mr Tallarico moved production to a big commercial kitchen in Cowaramup, which enabled him to fulfill wholesale orders while also continuing his market sales.

"Working from home took a lot of dedication, but if you work hard you can do anything you want," he said.

But after selling at the markets almost every weekend for 10 years, Mr Tallarico decided it was time for a change.

"I was getting up at 3am every Saturday morning to go and set up the gazebo at the markets, whether it was cold, or raining," he said.

"As the years went on it used to take me 2.5 hours to set up my stall, I would be the first to get there and the last to leave because I used to bring so many products."

Mr Tallarico said he barely missed a weekend because people would come to the markets for his stall.

"It was one day a week and people wanted to go and you had to be there, or they would get upset," he said.

"So if I wasn't going to be there I would make sure I told my customers in advance."

Mr Tallarico said even with the commercial kitchen they got to the point that they either had to expand on a big scale, or shut down, because they weren't making enough of a return.

"We could have sold all of our equipment, but we had built up a good reputation in the 10 years at the markets, so we scraped together our small amount of savings from making the biscuits and decided to try a big investment," he said.

In May, Mr Tallarico achieved a long-held desire to open his own shopfront, with the opening of Claudio Bakehouse at Abbey.

As well as good Italian coffee, he has selected his best-selling products from the markets to offer at the business, which surprisingly does not include any biscuits.

"I had 10 years of being able to test the market and I knew that when I put certain food out that people would buy it," he said.

"It was always the pastries and foccacias that would sell out, although it would have been impossible to sell all of the biscuits that I would take to the stall."

So the bakehouse menu includes an ever-changing selection of freshly made croissants, often including one of Mr Tallarico's favourites, pain au Swiss, a croissant dough combined with a brioche feuilletee dough and filled with custard and chocolate chips.

It also features pinsa romana - freshly baked Roman focaccia filled on the spot with fillings that could include a combination of rosemary, roast potatoes, prosciutto and stracciatella cheese, or mortadella, burrata and pistachio pesto, or even the pinsa tiberio of rochette salad, broccoli cream, sun-dried tomato, crumbled feta, grilled eggplant and roast onion.

Unsurprisingly Mr Tallarico has been proven right, with the daily selections selling out and the five-star online reviews rolling in.

He also loves the location, right at the intersection of Bussell Highway and Caves Road, and with easy access to Busselton, Dunsborough and Margaret River.

"The spot is perfect, I always wanted to come here but it took time," he said.

"Things happen for a reason and it was funny how it started just for fun, and now is serious as a job, and I am very busy every day."

Mr Tallarico is quick to acknowledge that while his name is on the business, he couldn't have achieved what he has without his wife's support, as she has been by his side every step of the way.

"I am so proud of her, we have worked together and I could not do it without her, she has encouraged me and supported me," he said.

But it hasn't been without its challenges.

Originally the store was open from 6am-2.30pm, Thursday to Monday, but despite being extremely busy Mr Tallarico had to cut back their opening hours due to staffing issues, which are affecting many regional businesses.

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"I was working out the back by myself from 3am to 11pm every day for about eight weeks, and I just couldn't keep it up any longer, I needed a rest," he said.

So he closed the business on Mondays and also began opening at 8am on the other days.

Fortunately at the time of talking to Ripe, Mr Tallarico had secured two extra staff and was ready to re-open on Mondays.

He was also starting to prepare his artisan panettone in preparation for Christmas - a three-day process for each batch.

"It's been a long six months working seven days a week, and I won't have any days off until the end of January - but I'm used to it," he laughed.

Mr Tallarico said in a way he missed his market stall and the people that supported it, but he has a wonderful reminder of it every time he goes to his shop.

The image he used in his shop signage was taken from a photograph taken on his busiest day at the markets.

And it was taken with one of his chef idols, renowned Italian chef Antonio Carluccio when he was in the region in 2015.

Mr Tallarico said the late Carluccio, of the television series Two Greedy Italians fame, had inspired his decision to head to London as a 16-year-old after finishing his studies at his cooking school, where he remained for four years.

"I could choose to either go to France or England, and I chose England to improve my English, but also because Antonio had lived there and opened restaurants and written cookbooks,

which I had collected," he said.

"He fascinated me as a fellow Italian, and demonstrated what you could achieve if you worked hard."

Mr Tallarico said it was a very hot day at the markets when their paths crossed, but Carluccio came and sat under his stall for an hour and talked to him and his daughter, and they had a photograph taken together.

"I was so happy he came to my stall, and using that photograph for my signage means it always reminds me of him and that day," he said.

Mr Tallarico has always sought to learn as much as he can from other chefs, which has included collecting cooking books from all over Italy and around the world for research.

"When we moved to Western Australia 14 years ago, we packed 54 boxes - 52 of those were my cook books," he said.

He said they weren't any one type of recipe book - he had a huge variety including pastries, cheese, meat and even ice and vegetable sculpting, which is another passion.

"I like everything to look good, I have done a lot of work on buffets and presentation is so important, you can sculpture butter, vegetables and ice," he said.

He also loves to talk to other chefs and discuss recipes and how to develop them, which he likened to surfers talking about where to find the best waves.

"At the base of it is driven by passion, and if you don't have passion for what you do, you have nothing," he said.

"Everything is about passion for me, and if you have it, you do it well or you don't do it at all."

It is not hard to see the effort that Mr Tallarico puts in to perfecting his art - one look at the bakehouse Instagram account ge shows photograph after photograph of mouth-watering pastries that almost look too good to eat.

And while he misses the stall and the people who came to support it, he is enjoying his new challenge and would continue to learn from it.

"I love what I do - people say do what you love and you will never work a day in your life," he said.

"I love details and if I do something it always has to be better next time.

"It is the only way to improve and I actually see making mistakes as a challenge.

"I like to make mistakes, I try to change and develop recipes until I like them - I get that passion from my father."

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