Video: Let's talk about pizza alla pala: the Valerio Valle method
2024 Author: Cody Thornton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 12:26
I've been to Roseto degli Abruzzi to try the " shovel pizza" from Valerio Valle.
As fans know, Roseto is the home of the basketball team that played in Serie A1. Still not infected by gastrofanatismo, I used to come there for epic fights on the edge of the last basket, today the reason is more reassuring: to get to know Valerio Valle's new pizzeria.
It is called “f.lli Valle, the homeland of pizza in pala” because Valerio's right arm is Luca, very young, who grew up alongside his older brother and now an expert pizza chef.
Valerio Valle is a well-known name in the world of pizza, he has been doing this job for over 20 years, and he shared his passion online when there was still little talk of pizza on the internet: these were the heroic times of small sites such as Compagnia della Pizza (from him open and today no longer online) or the Pizza.it forum, then one of the few ways to discuss and train.
Then the opening of the first take-away pizzeria, " Pizza company", A laboratory of ideas that allows Valerio to increase the experience and the place to be included among the the best pizzerias in Italy del Gambero Rosso, including the guide dedicated to "Street food".
The resonance of the numerous championships won around Italy also reaches abroad, Valle flies to Tokyo and Yokohama to export the message of his pizza alla pala.
An experience that, like the call of Confcommercio of Pescara for a teaching, allows him to train hundreds of new pizza chefs, and to meet an entrepreneur who has landed in Giulianova, Sergiusz Urbaniak, who, impressed by that pizza, decides to export it to his native Poland.
The pizza chef accepts and together they develop a new project, the first Italian classic pizza franchise in Poland. To date, there are 7 openings and a new headquarters will arrive in September.
But where does such a passion for pizza come from?
It all happens quite occasionally.
Valle was convinced of becoming a computer programmer, but he needs to gain economic independence, and so he finds himself in a pizzeria (and he is immediately in love …).
A period of training and confrontation begins with exponents of the so-called "old school", pizza chefs who taught only what was necessary to work, jealous of the doughs and the secrets they hid. But those who are determined to learn learn how, a good way is to devour many books on bread-making, sacred texts on which the Abruzzese pizza chef carries out his training.
In the end the choices are simple: apply the right maturation and cooking to doughs made only with flour, water, yeast, salt and oil, combining seasonal ingredients and patiently pursued, in order to obtain a pizza that is always very good but within everyone's reach..
Because even if "a figure like that of the pizza chef, considered humble until a few years ago, today is often compared to that of the chef, especially abroad, pizza must remain a street food, especially the sliced one".
Perhaps inserting in the rich scenario of the tricolor pizza, which includes Neapolitan pizza, the round one (from other areas of Italy), gourmet pizza and the one in pan (Gabriele Bonci to be clear), also the shovel version, marked by a good lightness but above all it gives an incredible crunchy effect.
Which I invite you to try in the pizzeria in Roseto degli Abruzzi, as I did.
Suggestions: try the “margherita with confit tomatoes, stracciatella and artisanal pesto”, it has surprising digestibility, spongy texture and an ultra crunchy base.
Pizza with "stracchino, mortadella and pistachios" will also be fine: here the secret is to modulate the ingredients, some are added only at the last moment, others after cooking, for a final result that refers to a delicate focaccia.
Last taste: "mozzarella, asparagus, fried carrots and bacon" has the originality of one-of-a-kind pieces, with a nice game of flavors that dares propose carrots ("otherwise nobody eats them, but frying them they are more palatable").
The croc effect rings in my ears when I leave Roseto degli Abruzzi, and I also have a question for you: why has so far little been said about pizza alla pala and its protagonists?
I am convinced that we must do, as well as deepen the theme to discover flours, yeasts and doughs, in practice the behind the scenes of this particular pizza.
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