Fusto and a poker of winning itineraries

I almost know Gianluca Fusto since he was in kindergarten in Cesano Boscone, on the outskirts of Milan. He was born on 16 May 1975 of parents who had quite different vocations in their mind. In his own head, however, there was already the predisposition to pastry, so much so that he first attended the Carlo Porta catering school, in the Bonola neighbourhood, and at 17 he was in his first kitchen, that of Cortile in Paris, and then at Harry’s Bar in London. Without wasting time, and thus arriving at the theme of this article, in the career of this pastry-chef the world envies us the main steps are the experiences with Aimo Moroni, Piero Selvaggio, Carlo Cracco and Valrhona. Since 2008 he’s his own master, a globetrotter who, when he stops by in Milan thanks to the friendship with Andrea Besuschio, pastry-chef in Abbiategrasso, he manages to find the time to study new shapes and design new cakes.

Not only that, luckily: in the last two years he has completed – and just sent to the printers – an extraordinary book titled Percorsi; he has become a member of the Accademia dei Maestri Pasticcieri Italiani and has trained the Italian team which won the World Junior Championships in 2011, the same year in which we, at Identità, awarded him as Pastry-chef of the Year.

Other awards will follow, thanks also to the book which the publisher ReedGourmet will present at Identità Milano on February 12th. First come Carla Icardi and Gianluca’s thanks to three people without whom the book perhaps would have never been published or would have been very different, namely Linda Massignan, Marina Bellati and Marina Bonanni. Then there’s a portrait of Gianluca Biscalchin, the dedications of Aimo, Nadia and Stefania Moroni, Iginio Massari, Massimiliano Alajmo, Christophe Michalak, Luigi Biasetto, Emanuele Scarello, Roberto Rinaldini and myself, the people whom Fusto considers essential in his professional journey.

And now about the book: it’s a masterpiece. A note for all his pastry-chef colleagues: for at least twenty years it will be impossible to do something as profound and full of truth. There are dozens and dozens of techniques, ideas, passages, pairings, brilliant ideas. It will be a problem for the publisher too. If Fusto is not a one and only, even as far as generosity goes, we’re not far off.

To complete a book like this one, it’s not enough to be a master pastry-chef, a starred one, a young champion, an experienced professional: you need the extra touch that makes the star stand out from the mass. And forget professional secrets, which often hide the void of those who invoke it. There are three-hundred and twenty pages, four visions of the sweet universe (restaurant, boutique, chocolate and ice-cream), 54 creations (from which over 300 recipes derive), three main ingredients in each preparation, two technical parts and the certainty that Italian pastry makes a leap ahead.

Before returning to speaking about the book in a more technical way, it is important to stress how everything is classified according to numbers that allow to travel around the book itself. An example: at page 155 there’s Summertime, an almond tart with ginger jelly and summer fruit, both fresh and dried. Next to it there’s a code: DUE.3.2. “Due”, the number two in Italian, stands for the section, which in this case is pastry-boutique, 3 stands for tarts and 2 is the second recipe of the tarts section.

The final applause, looking forward to having a printed copy at hand, goes to the photographer, Carlo Baroni, whom Fusto calls “Occhio e luce” (Eye and light). Desserts are placed on various pieces of carbon and the definition of each shot is such that you can distinguish even a salt grain.