Gourmet pizzas are increasingly popular on pizzeria menus. Today we are going to explore Gianni Di Lella and Roberto Rossi’s sweet pizza.
If you think of Maranello, the first thing that comes to your mind is that ‘prancing horse’ that has made and is still making the history of world motoring. However, in addition to Ferrari and people working there (who go there to eat pizza in ordinary times), in Maranello you can find also Gianni Di Lella and his pizzeria La Bufala, which is well worth getting to know. Di Lella is one of the most successful forerunners of the sweet pizza, which of course does not mean just any pizza base with something like a delicious hazelnut cream spread on top. We saw him collaborating with Chef Roberto Rossi of Locanda Del Feudo in Castelvetro, another town near Modena. “I wanted to share my thoughts with a chef so they could help me develop my idea. Everyone has to do their own part of the job and I had in mind a fresh and inviting sweet pizza, something extravagant. And so that’s how this pizza was created,” Di Lella says.
Rossi worked on it and developed a topping based on a jam with mango in pieces and strawberries, which has to be cooked quite briefly so that the mango would remain compact and the strawberries would be soft to chew and give a more liquid consistency. The pizza is completed with a lightly sweetened lemon peel and the powder of three chocolates – white, milk and 100% cocoa – which melt due to the heat. When asked, Gianni di Lella explains that there is no substantial difference between a sweet pizza dough and a salty one: “I have always been taught that a dessert should never be too sweet, in order not to be cloying, so I made my neutral pizza base and worked first on leavening and maturation, and then on crunchiness and softness. I used a mix of 00 flour 300W as a binding base, then 100% whole-wheat flour, cold-sifted so as not to overheat the milling wheat and to express the best aromas and flavors, whole rice flour and a small percentage of remilled semolina flour and corn flour. I want the pizza to always have the right browning and a soft crust.
To spread it out, instead, I came up with another mix of rice flour, very fine remilled semolina and corn semolina that is also remilled to give it a crispy texture that pops in the mouth.” Before being stuffed, the pizza is sprinkled with brown sugar, which is caramelized when coming out of the oven – pizza will be well dried but not dehydrated – baking at 360° for about 90 seconds.
Di Lella says there are many colleagues who have also taken this path; unlike others, however, he does not go too far out of the box with overly creative ideas: “I enjoy studying traditional desserts, such as zuppa inglese or tarte tatin, for example, and then finding the right solution to combine them with pizza. This is the way a Neapolitan with an Emilian accent like me sees pizza. I want to make sure you get to the end of the dinner without getting full. Moreover, you have to experience it, because the sweet pizza is a pizza that should be enjoyed in company. Usually at the table you share it among four guests, one slice each. But there is also someone who came here, ate a plate of fried food first and then ordered (and finished) a whole sweet pizza by himself.”
Di Lella learned to roll out pizza at night. “My father used to leave me the boxes and I kept going until it came out properly. Of course, he is still the one who makes the dough, because it is essential that the person who makes it is always the same, to ensure the same quality.” Di Lella adds: “there is no such thing as complicated pizza; maybe there can be a not well understood pizza, but everything starts from us. And here is the importance of people working in the dining room, because if they know how to propose a pizza, they can also be able to transmit emotions to the customer. These days I’m almost afraid that we have to go back to the past; people have reached a limit, balance is needed and it’s better to work on attention and detail first of all. I am a pizza maker and now I find myself making deliveries; I have adjusted. In a difficult moment like this, there is a need for simplicity, for human contact to keep relationships alive; at the same time, you have to offer a good, sincere product that is easy to understand. “This is also what Roberto Rossi thinks, adapting the concept to his restaurant: “In our kitchen we are inspired by tradition, but we never forget our own taste. In the same way we have to simply give everyone the chance to feel good”.
