To be a good pizza maker, you need more than just quality raw materials and a state-of-the-art oven. To be a good pizza maker requires hard work, study, dedication and, why not, even a pinch of luck! And when this does not come, it is right to look elsewhere. Chef Gianluca Marotta left Naples in 2005 and, after a short parenthesis in Indonesia, he chose to put down roots in the heart of Catalunya, in Barcelona. “Here I found a large group of fellow countrymen, all united by a single goal: to realize their dream,” he says. “After several years (and a lot of hard work) I too have finally crowned mine, opening Mister Bakery 081. It is a small family business (Salvatore, besides being my partner, is also my brother) that has brought Italian white art to Spain.
High-hydration focacce and pizzas, bread, and other leavened products are typical of our tradition and represent the heart of our production, which is strictly artisanal. But why did we choose to focus on bakery production? That’s simple: because the Spanish love our bakery products! Thanks to the Atm packaging, which guarantees high quality and longer shelf life, we reach with our bakery products every end of the Iberian Peninsula and not only, as we will soon land in Portugal as well. Our fresh products, on the other hand, appear every day on the shelves of large Spanish retailers, as well as on the tables of the best cafés and restaurants. As you can imagine, I hesitate to call myself a pizza maker or a baker. Rather, I prefer to call myself a total white art addict, and I owe this dedication above all to my experience at Baluard, a well-known bakery located in the heart of Barcelona’s movida.”
However, the Italian panino trend is also starting to carve out a new and unprecedented space for itself within the city’s Italian culinary offerings. On the calles’ corners, there are now small places offering sandwiches and stuffed focaccias for around ten euros. The Italian-style panino thus becomes pop not only in terms of price but also in terms of service (it is enjoyed strictly on the street) and raw material (which, however, winks at typical Italian food). Among the things I am most passionate about, consulting stands out: researching and devising new flour mixes for pizza and baking is now a real mission for me. Proof of this is the collaboration undertaken a couple of years ago with a Spanish mill, which led to the creation of a line of flours dedicated to professional pizza production and derived from the processing of grains grown in Spain. With this activity, the mill not only holds the record for production (soft wheat cultivars for pizza and bakery products are not widespread in Spain), but has also obtained important recognition from the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana – the body that promotes and protects the authentic Neapolitan pizza – consecrating itself the first foreign mill to receive the seal. Now, when someone asks me what my next challenge will be I answer: to open a workshop in the south of Spain, bringing a little bit of Italian spirit to the heart of Andalusia.
