Hello Southpaw

My name is Michael Fairholme and I work with James at Forno Bravo. In January and February of this year I spent 4 weeks with a Master Pizziolo in Napoli to perfect my techniques and I think I can answer most of your questions.

First, I've only found one trainer in Napoli that takes foreign students, all other pizza training courses are designed and run for the local talent and you must speak Italian. My trainer was Enzo Coccia and his business is called Pizza Consulting and it's run from La Notizia, his pizzeria in a suburb of Napoli. The course in 3 weeks long and will cost about 1500,00 euros. He sometimes allows students to extend for a week if other students have started their training somewhere in the middle or end of yours. The classes are only taught in Italian but he has a young lady that will act as an interpreter for 60,00 euros per day. Enzo suggests you have her for the first four days of your training, because after that a 'pizza' vocabulary develops and you'll can get most of what he's trying to teach by sign language and a lot of shouting.

The best time of year is any time...Napoli is beautiful and if you get out and explore it is a great place to visit. Bare in mind Enzo closes the month of August.

How you register is through his website: pizzaconsulting.it
He is a bit slow to respond and it will be done through Nika his interpreter.

I found a very nice, clean hotel about a 25 minute walk from the pizzeria that cost 30,00 per night (bathroom down the hall), Enzo has a friend that can supply a room in his house for about the same money but it's miles away and you will not be able to see any of the City living so far out of town. There are two other 2 star hotels a bus ride away that charge 50-60,00euros per night - I can give you more specifics later.

Now, what will you actually learn? This my second visit to Enzo, the first was April of 2006 and I only stayed for 6 days. My purpose then was to gain enough knowledge to help a client open a Vera Pizza Napoletana restaurant in Athens, Greece. I had recruited a young man with good wood-burning oven experience, I just wanted to bend his skills toward what my client wanted...true, thin crusted pizza Napoletana. In the end, my first few days gave me enough information to get open and make a very good pizza, but when time allowed, I went back for the full three weeks to perfect my technique. I'm glad I had a chance to go twice with a break in between, because we had moved off center a bit and the second three weeks brought me back on course. You will definitely learn how to make Vera Pizza Napoletana. The initial focus is learning about the dough...the most important part. Everyday you will make dough, at first it's a 2kg batch made by hand, then you move up to the automatic mixer making 10kg batches. Then you'll learn how to form the "pignotte" , the pizza ball which will later be formed into the pizza round. Next you'll learn how to form the pizza round, probably the most tricky part - everyone struggles with this. Then you'll learn pizza peel techniques, control, placing the pie, pulling, placing in a take-away box, placing on a plate. Then you learn how to fire the oven and get it to temperature and then manage the fire. Next you learn how to make sauce and cut cheese. Now you learn to make pizza Margherita and pizza Bianca. And that's about it, anything else you learn will be from watching Enzo and his staff during evening service and any other visits you can make to VPN pizzerie around Napoli and there are several hundred to choose from.

Now for the drawbacks. First, the class is only four hours long, 3 1/2 really because he never arrives on time, we take a 20 minute coffee break to give the dough a chance to rise, and he always stops at least 20 minutes early so you can clean the pizzeria for evening service. You need to learn a lot in this small amount of time and there just isn't enough time to practice each of these very important skills, especially if there are 3 or 4 people in the class...you get even less one-on-one. The place is so small there can only be one student in the pizzeria during evening service, so even being able to watch people doing what you so desperately want to learn is tough. For at least 5 days of the 3 weeks course, you'll come back to the pizzeria to chop and dice ingredients for that nights service. After a while you get the feeling that you're just free labour as they tell you to sweep the floor, or go get wood from the storage unit. But it does give you a good understanding of how you'll organize your own place so I shouldn't grumble. You don't actually get to make a pizza until the last day of the last week and then it will be a Margherita, a Marinara and a Pizza Bianca. As a result, from lack of any practice time, you struggle with your turning technique, your rounds are more oval and thinner than they should be...in general, you just don't get enough oven time to prepare you for your own place. Considering I paid 1500,00 plus 240,00 for the interpreter, airfare was 975,00, hotel, food and tickets for the bus and taxis was an additional 60,00 per day ( and that was done on the cheap) which adds 1260,00 to the total, I had 4000,00 euros/$5400.00 invested before I considered my loss of income for 5 weeks; that's a lot of money for a 52.5 hour training course.

The positives: I really feel like I understand the dough and have a good knowledge of the water to flour ratios, I understand and respect the traditions behind Pizza Napoletana, I know what is required to make this style of pizza, and I understand the rules and have experienced how the quality of ingredients makes this pizza so special. If you get it right this pizza is magic!

So, 1000 words later, I love this pizza and I'm sure I know how to do it, but only because I had an oven and mixer in Athens to return to so I could continue to practice, practice, practice. As for being able to come back and run a pizzeria, I only gained that by visiting 35+ pizzeria in Napoli, Roma, Firenze and Milano, watching how they did it, took notes on how they laid out there make table and positioned their ovens. I watched as staff handled a 30 pie rush, worked as a team (or didn't, which was often the case) and took notes on where to put the fridge units. Combine all this with my time at La Notizia and now I feel I can open a pizzeria...or yours if you want some help!

I hope you've found this helpful....

Michael Fairholme
michael@fornobravo.com
800 407 5119 ext.2