Beniamino Bilali

Trust me, it's all a matter of osmosis. If high cuisine now tries to stretch out its hand, towards bistronomy, pizza is also standing on its toes, perhaps leaning on a molecular crutch: there's no exception. You can understand this perfectly when you enter Berberè, a pizzeria opened in 2010 in Castel Maggiore by Matteo Aloe and Beniamino Bilali, respectively chef and pizza chef, or, better still, topping and yeast specialists. Theirs is a laboratory of experiments from which the renaissance of our most humiliated symbol has began, through creativity and science.

Born in 1985, Beniamino comes from Durrës, where his parents, bakers, used to make bread according to ancient traditions. These gestures and scents, after being dormant in his subconscious, were awakened in Italy, when, in order to pay for his studies (high school first, and then the Faculty of Chemistry) he wore the apron in some restaurants and pizzerias of the riviera. After the low enthusiasm felt in Albania, he found a new passion for the shovel, and was soon noted by critics and journalists. The doughs, however, were still the standard ones, and didn't satisfy his ambitions. This was until the deus ex machina arrived, namely Andrea Muccioli. After a chat, he rediscovered the childhood scents of mother yeast in the pizzeria of San Patrignano, with the corollary of a unconscious knowledge and the analysis of the best ingredients. The waist measure of the client shortened while the audience grew wider thanks to a new lightness.

His revolution, however, exploded in Castel Maggiore. «I asked myself: how come when rivers overflow, wheat starts to germinate? It is the sign of some almost magical properties, something that can give you goose pimples, which my studies allowed me to master. So I can make flour leaven without any other ingredient apart from water and salt, thanks to a process of hydrolysis and gelatinization that makes the dough lighter, easier to digest, and more alveolar». Pizza thus goes back to the ancient paradigma of the Medieval chopping board: the mere basis for the composition. Both the dough and the topping are made on spot, to seize Marchesi's timber phase.