Toss, spin and turn: The art of pizza making

THE PIZZAIOLO: Barbasso says touring the world has opened his mind to multiple possibilities and endless experimentations. “Opening your mind to food in all its variety and colours is amazing,” says Barbasso.                                                                                                                            Photo by the author

Two-time world champion in acrobatic pizza-making Italian Chef Pasqualino Barbasso

was in Doha recently to celebrate La Spiga’s first anniversary. By Anand Holla

Watching Chef Pasqualino Barbasso effortlessly toss, spin and play with pizza dough in the air straightaway makes two things clear. One, the man must be able to juggle pizza dough in his sleep. Two, he puts as much passion into the acrobatics as he does into his pizzas.

“Acrobatics pizza-making is what helped me get an identity and travel around the world. It helped make me and my pizzas famous. It also pushed me into improving the art of making pizzas,” Barbasso says, minutes before he would leap into a cheery performance full of pizza stunts, as he did all through the weekend.

On a quiet Friday afternoon, the Italian pizzaiolo is basking in the refreshing ambience of La Spiga by Paper Moon at the W Doha Hotel & Residences. As the sunny, busy restaurant hums with the chatter of patrons relishing a hearty Friday special Italian A la Carte brunch, Barbasso, who has been brought down to La Spiga as part of its first anniversary celebration, settles for a leisurely chat.

“I don’t like when people tell me, especially older chefs, that you are good with all your pizza spinning tricks, but you perhaps can’t make good pizzas,” he says and shrugs, “But I know I can do both very well. I know I am great at multi-tasking and I am primarily a pizza-maker.”

Although Barbasso is popular as one of the world’s best acrobatic pizzaiolos who makes “top quality Italian pizzas in the most entertaining way,” the coolest of his gymnastics can’t steal the thunder from his culinary calibre. That’s because Barbasso kicked off his career at his family’s pizzeria Falco Azzuro in Cammarata, in the Sicilian province of Agrigento, where he still works when he’s not travelling.

“My signature pizza is the authentic Italian classic pizza,” the 40-year-old explains, “It’s crispy, yet the crust is neither thin nor thick. It is just the right mix of crisp and soft, made with the finest, freshest ingredients. In the North of Italy, people like their pizzas so thin that it is almost invisible. In the south, where I come from, especially in Naples, pizzas are thick, soft, chewy and soggy. I don’t like that either. Most Italians though love their pizzas crispy. That’s how I love mine, too, and I make them just like that.”

Informed by time-honoured Italian culinary traditions, Barbasso makes sure he doesn’t compromise on either taste or quality. “I never use cheap ingredients. And by cheap, I don’t mean it has to be expensive. But it can’t be cheap in quality,” he says, “So I always use fresh mozzarella cheese, fresh meat, fresh sauce and fresh seasonal vegetables, for instance.”

For a delicious pizza, Barbasso guns for “the right rising.” He says, “I never prepare the pizza dough just one or two hours before making a pizza. I always prepare the pizza dough 24 hours before, which is what makes the pizza fluffy and light. For the crust, I use only salt and basil. A nice touch is to add some extra virgin oil after taking the pizza out of the oven because it makes you enjoy just the right smell and brings out the freshness of the ingredients.”

Since Barbasso travels to various countries several times a year, he has grown to adapting the local ingredients into his pizza practices. “While it’s most difficult to find the right flour to make the right pizza dough, I usually figure out the right flour mix of that country in a day or two,” he says, adding that his pizza dough formula mostly is 600 grams of water to a kilo of flour.

“If I am touring a city only for two-three days, then I prefer packing a bag of flour from home, especially for my acrobatics performance. I need high gluten content flour to pull off those moves,” he says, revealing the composition of the dough: flour, water, yeast, oil, and some extra salt for added elasticity.

As for the vegetables, cheese and meat, Barbasso improvises on the go. “I try to use as many local ingredients as possible. I was in Kolkata, India, this August and I prepared an Indian pizza with Palak Paneer. It was strange yet interesting to use spinach puree and cottage cheese, elements of an Indian curry, with Italian-style pizza dough,” he says.

It’s not just spinach puree that Barbasso now has included in his armoury of flavours. “I love to use artichoke puree, pumpkin puree and even white sauce to substitute the typical tomato sauce as the base flavour,” he says, acknowledging his travel experiences for having successfully negotiated with the pizza purist in him.

“Touring the world has opened my mind to multiple possibilities and endless experimentations. Opening your mind to food in all its variety and colours is amazing,” says Barbasso.

That explains why preparing the same pizza the same way each time bores Barbasso. “I like to create all sorts of fusion pizzas. Back home in my pizzeria, I prepare the classic Italian pizza but not without adding a special touch to it. Italians don’t know paneer at all. But I have included it on my menu there because I love paneer. I learnt to prepare paneer and it’s so simple. All you need is cow milk and lemon,” he says, chuckling.

Since Barbasso subjects his tastebuds to local food wherever he goes, he was struck by the peculiarity of the “Indian street pizza.” He recalls, “I tried it and liked it but they make it way too thin out there on the streets. I liked it even though I didn’t quite like the upset stomach it gave me the day after.”

However, if there’s one pizza that gets Barbasso’s goat – or goat cheese, shall we say – it has to be the American pizza doled out across fast food chains. “I don’t like those Dominos and Pizza Hut pizzas at all. Those are all about good marketing and nothing else. In fact, I don’t know why they make them the way they do because they aren’t like Italian pizzas. They even advertise saying they are Italian style, but clearly, they aren’t,” he points out.

That takes us straight to the problem of pizzas getting a bad rap as junk food because of such variants becoming the standard. “These American pizzas have been responsible for the real pizza getting a bad name because they use the worst kind of cheese I know. It’s all the old remnant cheese that is stashed into these pizzas and it’s so unhealthy. Why should one do that when preparing a pizza in the right manner is so easy? In La Spiga, for instance, we use the finest mozzarella and the taste is proof of it.”

An acrobatic pizza-maker for 15 years and a two-time World Champion (2001, 2002) in acrobatic pizza-making where contestants compete on their techniques and art of authentic pizza-making by tossing and juggling dough, Barbasso sure has come a long way from spinning discs during his teenage DJaying days to spinning pizza putty across the globe.

“People look almost hypnotised when they see me perform or the way I prepare a pizza. That’s perhaps because I channel my complete focus into it,” he says. That’s also part of the lessons he teaches at his pizza-making school in Italy or the many training courses he holds around the world.

Does he feel comfortable sharing his secrets? “I don’t keep secrets,” Barbasso says, “People always ask me for secrets to preparing the right pizza and I tell them every single thing. Life is too short to keep secrets.”

For all his globe-trotting, Barbasso is content with genuine feedback as his reward. The best compliment for him, he shares, is when he comes across Italians living in a place that doesn’t have an authentic pizza joint around. “Then, I make them a good pizza. After finishing it, they thank me and say: I haven’t had the right pizza in the longest. Finally! Finally, I could,” he says and laughs.