FARM. Pizza Night.
I am unearthing writing and reflections from ten years ago when I had just graduated college. With great fortune, I ended up on a farm in Tuscany for the Fall season of 2014. I had sent out emails while there to my family and my few closest friends that Fall. I just found out these emails I shared had been forwarded and actually inspired someone to come on my first Bella Vita retreat a decade later to this same farm and experience that was so impactful for me ten years ago. In that light, I have found and am sharing my writing from that Fall, as both a reminder to myself and perhaps something of use to others. These posts are unedited - double spacing after periods and all.
Written: September 10, 2014 / Part 6 of working on a Tuscan Farm
Pizza night in Italy seems almost too cliche to be authentic, right? At least I always thought the speciality thin crust pizzas made by “Italian” restaurants in the US with names like Il Forno or The Brick Oven were just a skewed interpretation of Italian food; just like how a burrito is not a common find in Mexico. The US seems to do a pretty good job at coloring the general population’s vision of the rest of the world’s cuisine. For example, at Chinese restaurants, there are two menus - one for those of Asian ethnicity comprising food items they normally eat and one for “others” of non-Asian heritage that usually consists of greasy sesame chicken. Don’t get me wrong, it’s crispy and delicious and artery-clogging goodness, but I also think it’s a shame that the first association that comes to mind with Chinese food is General Tso. But, I digress.
Pizza night at Spannocchia is no Pizza Hut, I tell ya. The pizza’s thin crust and loaded with fresh ingredients, and the tradition of Wednesday-night pizza seemed too fanciful to be reality. I was sure that camera crews were about to pop out at any moment or that someone was going to yell “cut” and end the scene. As one half of the pair of designated pizza makers for the night, I was able to witness every moment of this pinch-me-it’s-not-real experience.
Zach, the Fire Master for the special night, started stoking the fire in the brick oven - yes, there is actually a brick oven for pizza at Spannocchia- at 3 in the afternoon. Considering we didn’t start putting pizzas in the oven until 7:30, the fire was plenty toasty around 800 degrees when Angelo, one of the workers on the farm and, unbeknownst to me, pizza master extrodiniare, dragged in two huge slabs of marble to roll the pizza dough out. Italians love their pizza, and I could tell Angelo meant business the way he confidently stoked, cleaned and prepped the oven. Next, Pietrina arrived with two stacked trays of prepped ingredients fresh from the farm: olive oil, tomato sauce, basil, capers, grilled onions, zucchinis and eggplant, salumi, pears, garlic, anchovies, gorgonzola, mozzarella, elemental… all generously soaked in Spannocchia’s olive oil.
As Pietrina rolled out the dough to a layer as thin and round as a CD, fellow pizza-maker Michael and I got to work. The steps of an incredible pizza are simple here. First, every pizza must be layered with olive oil, just like everything else in Italy. Depending on if it’s white or red pizza, add sauce and whatever fresh ingredients jump out at you. As Angelo skillfully and gingerly loaded, rotated and unveiled the pizzas at a steady rate, I quickly learned that the tenuous crust serves only as an edible palate for whatever melange of ingredients and olive oil Michael and I decided to put on there. In Italy, pizza making is an art form, and tonight, Michael and I were the artists. My personal favorite was a pizza bianca with olive oil (of course), slices of pear, walnuts and a few globs of sheep’s cheese so soft and fresh you could mistake it for mozzarella. Crowd pleasers that received encore requests from the guests were slices of grilled zucchini and lots of garlic. Each crust was buoyant and crispy, and every slice ended with a satisfying and airy crunch.
As Pietrina and Angelo playfully bickered in Italian, Michael and I enjoyed our pizzas outside alongside them next to the warm oven and the full moon slowly rising above the tower. Yes, pizza night in Italy may seem commonplace, but tonight, there was nothing common about this incredibly Italian experience.
