Doro Gourmet, zero-meter pizza

The province of Caserta proves to be a land as fertile as ever for pizza, which here is often a meeting of the truest tradition of Campania and of innovation and modernity. The story of Luca Doro and his “gourmet” pizzeria in Macerata Campania, a few km from the Royal Palace of Caserta is a story of passion and resilience.

Third generation in a family of bakers and farmers – growing hemp, tobacco and fruit– Luca found his opportunity for accomplishment in pizza. In 2000 he opened a taka-away pizza place but then realised that in order to make a difference you need research, inventive, experience. So he attended courses and completed internships, researched in detail, then closed the restaurant and started travelling and working around the world: Europe, South America, United States and beyond too, on board cruise ships. He came back home six years ago, and opened a new restaurant called Doro Gourmet in Via Trieste (tel. +39 0823 693157). At first it was only a take-away place, but since last summer it’s become a welcoming real pizzeria.

«I used all the ideas and all my travelling as inspiration for my pizza», he says. While many of his pizzas are inspired by his memories and homeland, he joined the Alleanza Slow Food project and included over 50 Presidia from all around Italy in his menu. The base is an “evolved” take on Neapolitan tradition, with a dough that starts from poolish (with Petra 1 from Molino Quaglia) to which he adds Petra 3 and the Allegra blend. The result is a soft disc but slightly thicker than the standard Neapolitan one (and on Fridays there’s the one made only from Evolutivaflour).

The creative seasonings instead draw from the family vegetable garden or from small local producers, but most of all they draw from local and personal memories, matching them with more recent episodes: as in the Marinara dell’Alleanza, a tribute to the family, with self-produced yellow and red Piennolo tomatoes, capers from Salina, menaica anchovies, hill oregano and garlic from Nubia, pine nuts and sultana, which his grandmother would make herself, and then would add to the pizza as a snack for her grandchildren when they returned from school. And then there’s the pizza with endive, the one with annurca apples (with a cream of fruits and spices baked in the wood oven, served with buffalo milk mozzarella from Latte Nobile and Conciato Romano), the one with octopus carpaccio (inspired by his grandfather, who sold brodo ‘e purpo at the fish market in Porta Nolana in Naples) or Pizzellessa, inspired by a typical recipe – pastellessa, pasta with boiled chestnuts – but served on pizza, with guanciale from Nero Casertano pigs, Conciato Romano and powdered Columbian coffee: «an aroma of South America that recalls my travels and is a homage to my Mexican-Colombian wife».

Luca Doro is a Petra Selected Partner.

Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso