Time, patience, precision, and passion are the four main ingredients you need to become a master pizzaiolo. Of course, you’ll also need flour, water, yeast, and salt—but when it comes to performing the art of Neapolitan pie-making, we recently learned that first four ingredients might be more crucial.
Chef Luca Zamboni is a master pizzaiolo. He lives, breathes, and (possibly) dreams about dough and how it grows and forms to become the ideal combination of crispy and chewy when it finally hits your plate. Born in Tarquina, north of Rome, Zamboni worked for four years under the tutelage of Gabriele Bonci of the world famous Pizzarium in Rome, then brought his passion for dough to the United States. Now operating the Buona Forchetta restaurant group in San Diego, with owner Matteo Cattaneo, Zamboni uses time, patience, precision, and passion on a grand scale—as we saw when we followed him on a typical day.
Chef Luca Zamboni
All About the Dough
The chef starts his day with a strong shot of Italian espresso and immediately feeds his “pet” – the dough starter he’s been growing for years inside Buona Forchetta. Zamboni actually has two starters—one for the pizza and the other for bread; the latter is over 200 years old, and was gifted to him by Bonci back in Rome.
With the ovens still warm and dough leftover from the previous night, Zamboni makes bread and gives it away to staff and friends while he adds new dough for the batch he’s about to make. Zamboni feeds his dough starter every day—once in the morning and again at night. But once that pet is fed, there’s a 48-72-hour fermentation process to get it the right consistency, so that dough is put away for time being.
Next, Zamboni takes out his fermented dough that he made three days ago and slops it onto a giant counter, while at the same time firing up his Italian-made brick oven (crafted by the master oven builder Stefano Ferrara) with chunks of wood to prepare for the day’s lunch. Zamboni and his team then start forming dough balls that will account for the day’s hoard of pies. On a typical day, the team will fire up about 200 pizzas. On weekend days, it can be as many as 400.
After the dough balls are formed, Zamboni goes back to his starter, which now gets processed into a giant mixing machine that churns and rests in a loop. Over time, Zamboni adds more flour, then salt (once the gluten starts to form and the yeast can’t be killed off), and then more flour again, until he achieves the ideal dough consistency.
Officine Buona Forchetta
Ingredients and Inspiration
Taking a break, the master pizzaiolos make a couple pizzas for themselves, fueling up before feeding the frantic lunch crowd. During the lunch rush, the dough is continuously attended to, while dough balls are flipped and topped, and chefs rush back and forth trying to avoid the 900-degree oven just feet from their faces.
After lunch, Zamboni will often cruise up to Chino’s, a farm stand in North San Diego that’s renowned for their unmatched produce (including hard-to-find mushrooms and legumes), to get inspiration for new pizza toppings. With new products in hand, Zamboni will flit between the multiple restaurants in the Buona Forchetta group, making sure the consistency of his dough is exact and that each pie has an identical taste, regardless of which restaurant his fast-growing fans are eating in.
Augusta, the pizza oven
Feeding the Fans
At night, it’s another rush. Zamboni chooses one of his restaurants at which to ply his craft, shaping, topping, and firing up more pizzas for the hungry crowds. Later that night, he’ll feed his dough once again, ensuring that it grows in just the right way so he can repeat the process tomorrow. Time, patience, precision, and passion – and the end result is perfection.
Pizza al taglio
