PizzaUp doubles

From today, Monday 7th November, to Wednesday, the Dubai Speciality Food Festival will take place in the Arab Emirates. Italy will be the guest nation, with the minister for Agricultural Policies Maurizio Martina participating in just the opening day. Hence there will also be the eighth Italian Cuisine World Summit, which will last ten days and will be repeated in Abu Dhabi from 18th till 24th November, also organised by Gruppo Virtuale Cuochi Italiani. The tenth edition of PizzaUp will also be part of this Italian series. For nine years Molino Quaglia organised it at its headquarters in Vighizzolo d’Este in the province of Padua, a miniscule town for a project that revolutionised the world of pizza.

It would take ages to list all those who will be in the Emirates. Hence the spotlight is focused on the stage of PizzaUp, especially on the most significant day, Thursday, when in three different sessions there will be Renato Bosco, Corrado Scaglione, Nicola Cavallaro, Giovanni Marchetto and Gennaro Nasti, together with Reif Othman of Play in Dubai. Then Beniamino Bilali, Massimo Giovannini, Lello Ravagnan, Antonio Pappalardo and Fortunato Ostacolo with Russel Impiazzi of Galeries Lafayette Le Gourmet in Dubai and, finally, Franco Pepe, Simone Padoan, Giulia Miatto and Tony Nicolini, with Gary Rhodes of Rhode Twenty10, also in Dubai.

We asked Piero Gabrieli, who is the maker of a revolution that has lasted for over a decade with his wife Chiara Quaglia, to explain the reasons and the urge that had made their project great: «Ten years ago PizzaUp® was an encouraging sign for all catering professionals. And it encouraged us in the first place to start a journey of quality in terms of ingredients, techniques and communication. to release a large part of Italian pizza from junk food and transform it into an example of a dish that is both popular, tasty and healthy. Starting from the two basic ingredients without which there would be no pizza: flour and yeast.

«Thinking back, ten years later, that task could only be taken by a mill, and with a pinch of pride I’d say it could only be taken by Molino Quaglia, which was already the only one in Italy that could put together a meticulous selection of wheat from the field, the presence of an established kneading and leavening school and the most advanced technology in Europe applied not only to wheat stone milling, but most of all to absolute decontamination from mould and natural toxins that are very dangerous for human health.

«Later, edition after edition, PizzaUp® condensed the enthusiasm of new pizza chefs who, having come into contact with the event and attending the activities organised by Università della Pizza® throughout the year, made the messages and techniques learnt concrete, building together with us an alternative to "soulless pizza" and adopting the rules of the Manifesto della Pizza Italiana Contemporanea, written and shared by the most influential Italian wine and food journalists in the 2012 edition.

«PizzaUp®’s tenth anniversary thus arrives at a historic time, different from when it was born: today Italian contemporary pizza has a very precise look, as proven by the endless imitations, which once again “lack in soul”, of those who misappropriate labels and words so as to identify themselves and their products as gourmet without really understanding the basic idea and sharing the attention to real high quality research.

«This is why PizzaUp® will follow a double track this year: a version open to all, which is to spread the rules of pizzerias that want to acquire the same dignity as the best examples in Italian cuisine, starting from Dubai.

«And a second version, scheduled on 15th and 16th February 2017, at Università della Pizza® in Vighizzolo d'Este, reserved to our Petra Selected Partners, to get them involved in the continuous process of technical and technological development of our school, urging them to become an example of high quality in the world of Italian contemporary pizza». The future is always on the move.