Florence Cooking Class & Tuscan Home Meal with Maria

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Free cancellationExcellent quality

1/9

Duration4h

GroupPrivate

LanguagesEN · IT

Mobile ticketAccepted

Learn Your Grandmother's Pasta Recipe in a Tuscan Kitchen

You're picked up from downtown Florence and driven to Maria's countryside home, where you cook two or three traditional Tuscan dishes from scratch — handmade pasta, bruschetta, tiramisu — in her kitchen. You learn techniques you can take home, choose your pasta sauce, optionally tour San Lorenzo Market with her, then sit down to eat what you've made with local wine and views of the hills. Round-trip transport, the class, the meal, and wine are all included for up to six people.

Step-by-step itinerary

Tuscan cooking class and meal

Pickup from Florence city center
Drive to countryside home with Maria
Learn to make bruschetta starter
Prepare spinach and cheese stuffed pasta
Make tiramisu dessert
Enjoy meal with local Italian wine

The Experience

You're sitting in a car leaving downtown Florence, and Maria is already telling you something about the city that the guidebook missed — a story that lands differently when it comes from someone who's lived here her whole life. The drive to her countryside home is short, maybe twenty minutes, but by the time you arrive, you're not a tourist anymore. You're a guest walking into her kitchen, where the real work starts.

Maria, a recently retired architect who cooks the way she used to design — with intention and a little bit of joy — teaches you two or three traditional Tuscan dishes in her home kitchen. You'll make handmade pasta from scratch, learn how to shape ravioli or cut tagliatelle, choose your sauce (ragu, broccoli pesto, arrabbiata, or butter and sage with parmesan cream), and understand the techniques well enough to replicate them in your own kitchen back home. There's bruschetta, there's tiramisu, and there's the kind of instruction that doesn't feel like a class because you're standing next to someone who actually knows what she's doing, not performing for a group. If you want to add a market tour, Maria walks you through San Lorenzo Market — Florence's historic food market — and shows you how Italians choose seasonal produce and build a meal around what's fresh that day.

After you cook, you eat together. Maria opens local Italian wine, and you sit down to the dishes you just made, looking out over the Tuscan hills. It's not a restaurant experience dressed up as a cooking class. It's a meal in someone's home, with someone who invited you there. The whole thing — pickup from central Florence, the class, the wine, the food — is included for up to six guests in Maria's car. Vegetarians and guests with dietary requests are welcome; just let her know when you book. One small note: her home doesn't have air conditioning, and there's a cat, so if either of those things matters to you, know it going in.

If you're thinking about adding the market tour, remember that San Lorenzo closes on Sundays and public holidays. Groups larger than six can arrange their own transport to the house — Maria's car seats six, and that's the limit. For anyone on a gluten-free diet, Maria runs a separate dedicated class, so check that option instead.

What’s included

Round-trip transport from central Florence in Maria's car (for up to six guests), a private hands-on cooking class where you learn to make handmade pasta, bruschetta, and tiramisu, a meal together with Maria and local Italian wine, and the choice to add a guided tour of San Lorenzo Market (closed Sundays and public holidays).

Good to know

Stroller friendlyPets welcome

Operated by Traveling Spoon

Is this one for you?Right for couples, small families, and food lovers who want to cook in someone's actual home kitchen rather than a commercial cooking school — the intimacy and the ride with Maria are what make the recipes stick.