Stefano Vola

Credits Brambilla-Serrani

Credits Brambilla-Serrani

Bontà Per Tutti

corso Piave, 76
12058 - Santo Stefano Belbo (Cuneo)
Tel. +39 0141 840626

Stefano Vola, born in 1991 in Piedmont, has a great passion for pizza. He was born and raised in the Langhe, in Santo Stefano Balbo, Cuneo, a small village where Cesare Pavese was born and where Stefano’s pizzeria/workshop Vola - Bontà per Tutti is located.

Before him, nobody in the family had ever worked in restaurants even though this is a land whose wine and food culture is celebrated all over the world. Vola - Bontà per Tutti was born six years ago when mamma Marisa, who’s in charge of the wine, opened a small food store selling organic and alternative products. Stefano is still in school but takes this new role with lots of enthusiasm and works in turns with his mother: she’s there in the morning, he in the afternoon. After graduating, he works there full time.

Meanwhile he prepares his grandmother’s old recipes and becomes more and more interested in pizza. This young 2.0 shop owner uses Internet to study the pros, looking at their videos on YouTube, reading online forums, watching every TV programme on the topic. He’s charmed by Gabriele Bonci. He copies and experiments with the recipes and dough of “the master”.

Thanks to the historic friendship with brothers Fulvio and Fausto Marino, third generation of producers of organic flour and suppliers of his, he receives a gift on his 19th birthday: a ticket to Rome, with the chance to participate in a course given by his idol. A whole world opens up: sleepless nights between different types of flour, water and yeast, new types of dough and poolish and the discovery and use of high quality raw materials, simple or daring toppings... But most of all, a new respect and attention to food and people.

Once he’s back home he starts to practice. His pizzas are appreciated so in the morning he offers pizza in a baking tin, Roman style, with coffee or cappuccino; and at lunch time round pizzas or served by the slice. He improves, trains and travels to discover his colleagues, the great masters of pizza from North to South, to learn from them. Pizza amatriciana – pork jowl, tomato, pecorino and black pepper – marks his success among his clients who were diffident until then.

Tireless and always on the move, he experiments and presents local seasonal products on his pizzas– potatoes from Alta Langa, raschera mountain cheese, meat from Alba, drops of bagna caoda, leeks from Cervere, Tonda Gentile hazelnuts – conquering a larger and larger audience and winning many prizes.

Has participated in

Identità Milano


by

Tania Mauri

A food writer and a traveller, she was born in Torino, but now lives in Rome. She's always worked in the communication industry. She writes of wine and food "by chance" and by passion for various Italian publications