Located in the heart of the village of Xewkija on the island of Gozo,
Ta’ Saminu Bakery was founded by Massamino Rapa and his wife Ġanna back in 1963 and was run by themselves and their large family; a total of thirteen children.

Saminu is the local version of the name Massamino; hence the name of the bakery.
Saminu’s ancestors were from the same village of Xewkija and were known for their hand crafted pasta, with his family’s nickname actually being ‘ta’ l-għaġin‘, which roughly translates to English as ‘of the pasta‘. Apart from the bakery, Saminu’s family also ran a small grocery shop and produced homemade ice-cream.

After the sudden death of Saminu in 1966, the bakery’s door was still kept open by his wife Ġanna and some of their children. Eventually, the bakery fell into the hands of two of the Rapa siblings; Indrija and Pawlu, who over the years kept the baking tradition initiated by their father, alive with an abundance of love and dedication until 2010.

The bakery was refurbished and re-opened again in 2014 by the third generation of the Rapa family.
Since the re-opening of our bakery, customers can now enjoy a wider variety of products to choose from, ranging from bread, traditional ftira and pizza, sweet and savoury pastries, party items, cakes, frozen products, baked goods, seasonal items and more.

Our bread is mainly traditional and everything is baked in our traditional wood fired stone ovens, including obviously il-‘ħobża tal-Malti’. Other bread varieties include the ‘ftira’, the ‘kexxun’ and ‘panini’ amongst others, and of course our traditional and most famous item at the bakery; our ‘qagħaq ħelwin’ (sweet seasame rings). Their recipe is a family pride and their dough is the queen of our bakery.

The traditional Gozitan Ftira is probably the food mostly associated with Gozo. We believe that cooking/baking traditional food is a way of preserving our culture and we think it is something to be proud of. In our products, being the Gozitan Ftira, qassatat with Gozo sheep cheese, traditional beef or lampuki pies and many other savouries and sweets, people recognize the warmth and pride we put in them.

To date, Ta’ Saminu Bakery is still a family-run artisan bakery, where you can taste authentic fresh-out-of-the-oven Gozitan food, baked in the traditional wood burning stone ovens.

We run our bakery with the belief that artisanal skill, hard work and effort will bring reward; creating honest, soulful, delectable bites that Ta’ Saminu Bakery has always been famous for. We wish to continue doing so, always willing to learn, improving our skills along the way to continue building and preserving this baking tradition.

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