Three super-chefs for PizzaUp 2015

PizzaUp 2015, the traditional symposium on pizza scheduled this year until Wednesday 4th November, always in Vighizzolo d'Este (Padua), in the headquarters of organiser Molino Quaglia is to start tomorrow. Sixty participants are expected, who will be part of three teams matched with as many speaker chefs, real giants: Heinz Beck, Nicola Portinari and Piergiorgio Parini. This year, the themes will be nutrition (Beck), energy (Portinari) and earth (Parini). The most important novelty will be the practical sessions that the chefs will hold to introduce pizza chefs to techniques that can also be used in pizza making. There’s more: the professionals who will participate in the symposium will also be involved in a project that Università della Pizza – of which PizzaUp is an emanation – conducts with Università di Milano to build the first map of living mother yeasts used in Italian pizza.

On Tuesday 3rd November, professor Ambrogina Pagani (Food science and technologies) and microbiologist Laura Franzetti, both from the faculty of Agriculture at Università Statale di Milano, will collect and catalogue – with the technical support of Federica Racinelli – the samples of mother yeast given by the pizza chefs. These will be tested in the lab in the next few months and their microbiologic profile will be described: each yeast will thus have his passport and all together they will form a biodiversity map. The presentation of the results will be divulged with the names of the participating pizza chefs.

Each team will then participate in a practical session on new techniques to give pizza a better nutritional profile, reduce waste to a minimum and work on fresh ingredients preserving their qualities. Two journalists per day (Paolo Massobrio and Francesca Barberini on Monday, Paolo Marchi and Lisa Casali on Tuesday, Federico de Cesare Viola and Eleonora Cozzella on Wednesday) will be coupled with each chef and express their critical judgement and lead the dialogue with the audience. Works will be opened by Chiara Quaglia and Piero Gabrieli (Monday), Dario Bressanini (Tuesday) and Enzo Vizzari (Wednesday).

At the end of each day, one team in turn will serve a tasting of 4 pizza recipes made under the supervision and with the ingredients and techniques chosen by the chef. Grand finale with Corrado Assenza’s dessert made on spot with the same ingredients.

Piero Gabrieli, Marketing director of Molino Quaglia explains: «PizzaUp’s work and the courses at Università della Pizza led to the emerging of a new category of pizza chefs who can be immediately recognised thanks to the care they use in the choice of ingredients, in their working with dough and yeast, in the baking, respectful of flavours and nutrients, in the way they approach and serve clients. Earth, Energy and Nutrition are the pillars on which to build a more responsible daily diet. We will discuss these in the next PizzaUp, to reinforce their circulation using the popularity of pizza and the maturity of those pizza chefs who, with a term invented by the industry press, interpret pizza with a gourmet approach».