Da Vinci pizza makers successfully passed Italian professional qualification exam for pizza makers!
2016 is soon over and it is time to make conclusions. Da Vinci’s aim in 2016 was to make even better pizzas. We dreamed that the pizzas made here would taste like those in Italian pizzerias, and that Da Vinci restaurants would become the favourite spot for Estonian pizza gourmands.
Now we can say that we have taken a big-big step towards achieving our aim. At the end of this summer, five excellent Da Vinci pizza makers successfully passed Italian professional qualification exam for pizza makers! We are very proud of our pizza makers and we invite you to our Da Vinci restaurants to taste their freshly obtained qualified skills!
Actually we started our quest towards a perfect pizza already in the beginning of this year when we got hold of our Italian supplier Molino Pasini, who supplies Da Vinci restaurants with pizza flour. We asked their head of export whether besides good pizza flour they also know some good local pizza guru who could train Da Vinci pizza makers so they would be compatible with Italian professional standards. Immediately it appeared that Panini cooperated with Alessandro Negrini – a multiple Italian champion but also the best pizza maker in Europe and in the world! This was a chance that could not be left aside!
Thought and done. The first time Negrini came to Tallinn was in February 2016. While here, he conducted a thorough pizza training for the Da Vinci team. Since every perfect pizza starts from perfect dough, the master spent a couple of days with our pizza makers to tune our pizza dough to perfection. We mastered the skill and found the perfect combination of ingredients suitable for us. The master also told us what to do next and how to work with the dough.
In order to make soft and pleasantly crisp pizza, there is more than one thing to keep in mind. We were very careful and developed instructions for making our pizzas as neatly we could. In order to have the best results, it is important to follow the order you put the flour, water, yeast and other components into the dough machine. You also have to consider how long you let the dough rise, how long you let it sit at room temperature before you put it in the oven, etc.
After the training session the master gave us instructions for the next steps and promised to be back in the beginning of June in order to conduct another workshop. We practiced hard already in spring. If in the beginning the master told our pizzas were a strong 5 on a scale of 10 (that is, a good average), then during the June workshop the quality of our pizzas was already worth an 8!
The grande finale of our pizza training session was the final exam that was held at the end of August in Mantova, Italy. In the local pizza class our five pizza makers took a professional qualification exam that consisted of preparing five different pizzas. From this autumn, our excellent pizza makers have all the rights to consider themselves as qualified Italian pizza masters.
We invite you to our Da Vinci pasta & pizza restaurants in Tallinn, Tartu and Pärnu to taste our new wonderful pizzas!
