Pizza cooked with Scugnizzo
18-02-2015
Take someone like Franco Pepe, a prophet of the best artisanal philosophy but also a mind ready to accept how things evolve. He says: «The day I went to test Scugnizzo I didn’t expect such a result». Scugnizzo is an electric oven for pizzas created by Izzo forni, a small Neapolitan firm with 15 employees. Scugnizzo is now their top brand: its debut was in December 2013 after a gestation that lasted more or less one year, what with planning and production. If you think about it, it was a rather fast birth, «because it is the evolution of the ovens we’ve always produced, with the goal of getting closer and closer to the performance of a wood oven» says Giuseppe Carlo Russo Krauss, sole director of Izzo forni, the son in law of Salvatore Izzo, who founded the company in 1951. Today the goal seems to be reached, Krauss is enthusiastic. And beside Pepe, he also quotes other "certificates" that can demonstrate the excellence of Scugnizzo, which also pleased Davide Civitiello, 2013 world pizza-chef champion, his successor Valentino Libro, Guglielmo Vuolo, Salvatore Salvo...
With some further advantage: inside the Scugnizzo no place is occupied by embers, all the space is available. Heat is evenly distributed. Finally, there’s no soot, no smoke, no combustion remainders. Pepe: «Krauss has perhaps invented something important, a new frontier for pizza. Of course I am still attached to wood ovens, the act of rotating pizzas because the heat is not even, the cleaning of the soot...». The fact Scugnizzo is one step ahead, however, is clear: «I agree with Massimo Bottura: let’s treasure tradition while looking at innovation». Could one even hypothesize that wood ovens will be one day replaced? «In my opinion, this is a wild card. I still don’t know if the yield will confirm this in the long run». Still, if this were the case...
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journalist born in 1974, for many years he has covered politics, mostly, and food in his free time. Today he does exactly the opposite and this makes him very happy. As soon as he can, he dives into travels and good food. Identità Golose's editor in chief