Di Pizza e Pizzerie: A Professional Guide to Pizza Making

INTRODUCTION

Why after having worked a lot in a pizzeria does one decide to stop, and the first thing s/he does is write a book to tell all about the pizza in the pizzeria? What is the point?

Let’s say immediately that it takes effort to respond to these questions…

It’s that, also when I was working, I always wanted to tell the secrets from behind the counter.

It’s a fascinating world, made of silent craftsmen, often protective of their knowledge, full of secrets handed down from grandfathers and fathers. Their knowledge is stratified on the job, day after day, test after test, but it never comes to light.

Here, I wanted to bring it to light.

Few know how much work, skill, sweat and effort there is behind a well made pizza. Few imagine how time consuming it is, and how it’s not at all easy to become good.

Moreover, let’s say right now, that you don’t learn this from books.

In spite of this, here inside there is all the information, really all that you need to know about how to make pizza in a pizzeria. But it’s still not sufficient: here, there is no practice which you should provide yourselves.

The role of pizza maker is essentially a skilful craft, in the most beautiful sense of the term. It is never learnt from a book or at school, but by going to the shop as an apprentice, pilfering knowledge left, right and centre, to try, and try and try again without stopping, one starts this profession after a long apprenticeship. Obviously this possibility still exists and surely it is the most valid and that which guarantees a good level of competence.

But for those who don’t have time to wait or have no one to generously pass them all this information?

It’s for those I have written this book. Actually, we have.

In order to write and to have the clarity of speech that I wanted, but couldn’t find, I asked Daniela for help. She has always loved to read and write, and knows how to do it. Moreover, after years of working with me in the pizzeria, she is very good and on many occasions she has replaced me superbly.

She was responsible for the organizational system of the book and the linguistic choices, and many valuable suggestions which I would not have thought of. She was able to give voice and shape to my thoughts and cloudy reasoning. After all, anyone who writes about pizza is never alone. Around us are other pizza makers who give their contribution, sometimes unconsciously sometimes complacently. I, too, must thank those who gave me their recipes and explained work patterns different from mine, in order to offer greater variety. In fact, one of my goals was to collect various experiences, put them together and give them a unified voice, so that you could have not one, but many teachers ready to teach you everything.

Aimed at absolute beginners, those of you who have only eaten pizza, to those who are already working but would like some information, maybe just some tricks for the notorious dough, all the pizza maker assistants who would like their own pizzeria but don’t know how or don’t have anyone who can answer their questions, to all those who want to start up their own business, but also to the housewives eager to steal secrets for a result more similar to professional. It’s for all these people that we start with ABC, looking for maximum clarity. No doubt many will get bored because they already know lots of things, but I hope for them there will be some pleasant surprises.

It’s obvious that, in the space of a few pages, you cannot teach years of practical experience. To all of the true pizza masters – we salute you, we give you our praise and respect, while those who want to start with us, we will give you our advice, everything we've learned and all our best wishes.

We’ve used all our efforts. Now it's up to you.

***

To Chiara, Giacomo and Lorenzo

The best teacher is experience,

under an adept’s watchful eye.

Yet even lacking this,

with a guide such as mine,

and devotion to your labors,

you should be able,

I hope,

to put something decent together

Pellegrino Artusi

Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well

***

Chapter 1

ARTLESS ART

If making pizza is simple, to make it well is an art.

Let's begin by making the concept of art and simplicity clear because these terms will accompany us along our journey, even if the meaning is different to that that we wish to give.

Don’t be misled when we use the term simplicity as we don’t necessarily mean simple. This word comes up often, and can be taken the wrong way. The process of making pizza, for example, is relatively simple and fast, it uses simple ingredients, and anyone can try the task with a fair degree of success in its preparation. We fully agree with this interpretation, it can hardly be denied.

But for a product that should be sold, it’s not enough to knead flour, water and yeast, and add tomato and mozzarella. In the professional workplace, the simplicity is only an appearance, and the adjectives simple and easy sound somewhat superficial and careless.

This is because the profession of pizza maker belongs to the category of craftsman where knowledge is enhanced through years of work. You learn by trying, making mistakes, correcting and trying again and again until your reach the desired goal, which is rarely without effort, but is rather a reward for hard work.

But regardless of this surplus of experience – it is the experience alone that no one can teach you – it is very possible to learn the technique to start with. This is exactly what we will do through these pages.

So what are the key things to know and how do they bring substance to the form of a pizza maker?

The answer to this question has brought us series of choices which have determined the contents of these pages. Stop the anecdotes and curiosity, historical research or customs. Your pizza will not be born in scholarly books, but in your mixer, it will be modified through the choice of ingredients selected with your suppliers, it will be transformed in the rising process and the actions of your wise hands and it will be completed in the oven, to be presented hot and steaming on your customer’s plate. These are the steps you need to learn to see that from simple ingredients a profession is born. Only a housewife can afford to bypass these steps, and to tell the truth not even a good housewife. You no.

This was the main reason that led us to exclude large parts of factual knowledge that can be found in other texts: the chemical processes that verify various stages of work, graphs illustrating how the yeast works, or diagrams to explain what happens during the baking stage.

Instead, all of our space is dedicated to practical explanations, tips and home-made advice used by professionals to double check their effectiveness, in the hope that, at least those who cannot benefit from side by side contribution, can find useful hints for the job.

There is also another reason. In today's market, the name of a professional cannot be confined to a single element, even if they are a master pizza maker. To be clear, if you will have your own pizzeria, it might not hurt to have some vague knowledge of how to increase your market or how to organize your work or how to better manage your restaurant. This knowledge doesn’t replace the main product, but they supplement and complement each other. Since making room for everything wasn’t possible, we’ve chosen the field that was considered more responsive to new demand, even if we can only taste these delicacies as appetizers, and certainly not make a sumptuous lunch.

And what about art?

Even if we sincerely believe that, in front of certain culinary perfection, it’s difficult not to deem them worthy as true artists in their field, one must admit that, if there is art, it’s not as abundant as one would like.

Often, however, it’s over inflated because too many times people use, almost always in common clichés like the real secret of making pizza is art, the secret ingredient is the art or even it is little more than art.

If for some it’s an indisputable truth, it certainly isn’t for everyone. These phrases often conceal a hoax, or more frequently the desire to escape any teaching. We also believe that art is possible - not by chance was our first statement - but we are equally convinced that it is only a stage in the journey that starts with technique, the essential starting point. Giotto went to Cimabue’s workshop, Beethoven did sol-fa and Michelangelo would have also learnt to paint before he was commissioned to a chapel that was judged ugly by a pope. No true artist will deny the base value of each discipline, because the technique is the alphabet of art, its grammar and its syntax.

Learn the language of the business, the automatic gestures that will substantiate your efforts. Learn how to turn a ball, how to pull the disc of dough, how to knead perfectly, and how to cook to show off all your work. If you are novices don’t think of the art because if it comes, it will come later. There are pizza makers who huff and puff when they work, plodding along, shouting and they get annoyed because there is always some mishap that slows down their work. There are others that even under pressure work in perfect calm, with extreme concentration, but at the same time tranquillity. To observe them is enchanting because in their hands everything happens effortlessly and with great simplicity.

The Buddhists, great masters of teaching techniques, call this artless art. If one really wishes to be master of an art, technical knowledge is not enough. One has to transcend technique so that the art becomes an artless art growing out of the Unconscious (Eugen Herrigel Zen in the Art of Archery, p. 8. Copyrights 1953 by Pantheon Books, Inc, copyrights renewed 1981 by Random House, Inc).

This is not only a beautiful metaphor from the vaguely poetic tones, but expresses the concept that art is but a step on the path of apprenticeship, hard work, daily exercise, efforts to continuously improve, and individual skill (even if the meaning of Zen provides other fascinating considerations), and it is with this significance that we understand too.

These peaks are within reach of those rare, true masters who have brought their work to such a high level of craftsmanship, in the oldest sense of the term, before whom we should be enchanted. But they, too, we believe, couldn’t only begin by the technique. It is from here that we start.

ONE TECHNIQUE, MANY TECHNIQUES

The first impression one has in tackling the discussion of technique is the extreme fragmentation of operational procedures. We can affirm that there are many ways to make pizza, just as there are many pizza makers. In filling these pages I was forced to eliminate some solutions and to preserve others. Like any selective activity, even mine can only be partial and subject to criticism, but it was necessary to offer only a few possibilities among all those possible, otherwise it would have turned out unclear and messy.

Obviously I had to make some selection of criteria.

I could not leave out my way to work, even if it would have been elegant. On the contrary, it is an accomplice to all the evidence. The main reason is that this approach is the closest to an apprenticeship where everyone who teaches makes an example out of his/her way of working.

Next to my own personal experience, there were three principles that guided me: effectiveness and efficiency of the operational method, and their transferability.

It was essential for me to make myself understood, and essential for you to understand immediately what I was saying. I met a pizza maker that was very fast when pulling the disk of dough: she had created her own unique way, a strange movement of her arm and right elbow that for her was natural and fast, but almost impossible to replicate, as she himself admitted none of her colleagues had managed to learn her method. Although effective and efficient, it was impossible to pass on, so for this reason, even if reluctantly, it was left out. There are personal ways to work that become difficult to teach and nearly impossible to learn. All these solutions, even though they are present and valid in the market, will not appear in these pages.

In addition, I wanted all of the gestures to be effective and efficient because in a pizzeria a fundamental accomplishment is the speed of execution which unifies a precise result. You cannot permit yourself to replicate over and over again because you made a mistake.

A gesture has to correspond with the desired result, if you don’t obtain this within a reasonable time, you must look for another. The customer will get up from the table and go to another pizzeria if you lose all your time working the dough or laying out the tomatoes or if you cook lots of pizzas before getting it right. In surveys carried out by relevant magazines, the customers expect product quality together with speed of service. Therefore it is imperative to do everything you need as quickly as possible, as well as doing it right.

Does this mean that here you will find the technique sure and guaranteed?

I must confess that the impossibility to tell you do it like this because you certainly can’t go wrong worried me as this could undermine the foundations of my discourses.

The thing is that there isn’t just one perfect and accomplished way of working. Without a doubt some are more ideal than others, more popular and better than others, but there is not only the one universal method. There are base rules that many try to cling onto, but pizza has gone through endless experiments, trying and mixing without losing its personality.

We will see many solutions, all original, in the sense adopted by various pizza makers in Italy, where some basic principles are contradicted without giving rise to unsatisfactory results. Some imprecision or discrepancies in your early results could be due to the fact that many micro factors are involved in determining the outcome: the flour used, the temperature of the room, equipment and skill.

Starting with your variables, we will try together to reach our goal: we will go through vast enough possibilities, formed and of proven success and you will go through your own trials, your own perseverance and ability.

The only rule about technique is that everyone has their own. You should also find yours beyond mine. It is a skilful