It’s about time that St. Albert’s pizza palate is rapidly adopting an international flair. Rock-star pizzaioli that once seemed exotic, and were featured primarily in cosmopolitan cities such as Naples and New York, are now regional staples.
With Buco Pizzeria and Vino opening this week at The Shops on Boudreau, master pizzaiolo Carlo Raillo introduces the authentic wood-fired Neapolitan pizza.
“I want customers to understand that when they come to Buco, they eat real Neapolitan pizza. Other pizzas are just a style,” says Raillo.
The award-winning pizzaiolo explains there are several different pizza styles in Italy.
“The southern style Neapolitan pizza is most famous for a soft, thinner crust. The northern pizza is a classic crispy crust.”
He whips up a first-rate margherita pizza in less than five minutes. The base is light and airy, a world away from the greasy slices served at certain regional franchise pizzerias.
Blistered and bubbling from the 800-degree oven, the crust is warm and delicate with a light coating of tomato sauce, fior di latte (cow milk mozzarella), and richly perfumed fresh basil as a topping.
The slightly charred crust is soft and floppy, the flavours perfectly balanced, a true testament to a Naples-style pizza.
For Raillo, producing a good pizza comes straight from the heart. It is an outgrowth of his culture and you can see he loves throwing together flour, yeast, water, olive oil and salt. He has an exacting technique and has dedicated his life to doing one thing and doing it well.
After all, tomato sauce runs as thickly in his veins as blood.
Raillo was born into a long-standing culinary family in Portici, in the province of Naples. His father is a chef and his uncle was at one time the president of the Associazione Pizzaiolo Internazionale (API).
The young teen grew up working summers as a server in the family restaurant and learning the business. However, his dream was to become a basketball star and for several years played professionally in Italy’s third division.
“When I saw that it wasn’t real work for me, I made my work pizzas.”
He enrolled at API and received a pizzaiolo’s diploma. He created pizza delicacies at the family owned pizzeria, Ottimi Motivi and for three years, he whipped into shape the disc-like pizzas at Natura Si, an organic pizzeria in Bologna.
“Everything was organic – the tables, the food, the forks, the beer, the wine.”
But his life in Italy took a sharp turn when a close friend that owned a hostel in scenic Tortora, an ancient town in the Calabria, invited him to an event. There he met his future wife and the two were married in 2010.
However, Italy’s high unemployment rate averaging 12.5 per cent was difficult to overcome and a year later the couple moved to Edmonton.
“It was a better future for my children,” says the happily married father of two.
A month after the well-travelled pizzaiolo’s arrival, Sorrentino’s Restaurant Group snapped up his services and he worked there for close to two years before moving to Century Group’s Parlour Inn.
In the last two years, Raillo has developed a reputation in culinary circles as an inventive pizzaiolo. In 2014 and 2015, he won the title of Canadian Pizza Magazine’s Chef of the Year and a trip to the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas where he placed in the top eight.
“When you compete, you have to have the best idea. It’s not just about taste. It’s about how you can sell the pizza.”
In 2014, the inventive pizzaiolo created a white breakfast pizza using fior di latte, bacon, cherry tomatoes, roasted potatoes and green onions. The following year, Raillo built a cappuccino dessert pizza mixing a cocoa-infused dough with coffee cream, crumbled cookies, shaved caramel chocolate and whipping cream. Not a dish for dieters.
“The cappuccino dessert pizza everyone likes. It is typically Italian. Everyone wants cappuccino in the morning.”
Asked if he would consider adding the dessert pizza to Buco’s menu, he replied, “Maybe in the fall.”
His world-class pizzas are mixed from scratch using “00” flour from a type of soft wheat that is very finely milled.
“I will tell you a secret. Fifty per cent of the wheat we use is from Canada. The best wheat comes from Canada. It is shipped to Italy and ground into ‘00’ flour and sent back to Canada.”
He prefers the brand Polselli that produces five different types of flour.
“Every style makes a different pizza.”
The sauce is simple. The San Marzano hand-crushed tomatoes are a popular brand where demand exceeds supply. Only limited quantities are canned every year making them unavailable to the public.
“They are very sweet and flavourful. You can scoop them and eat them straight from the can.”
Although North Americans think of the stereotypical pizza chef as an acrobat capable of spinning and twirling pizzas on one hand, Neapolitan pizzaioli scoff at it.
“It’s only for show,” says Raillo who stretches and slaps his pizza before adding toppings. The best Neapolitan pizzas are simple, less opulent, a sharp contrast to our loaded pizza slices.
Buco’s wood-burning stone fireplace, fuelled by a 10-foot stack of birch, is so hot it can cook one pizza in less than 45 seconds and five pizzas in three minutes.
The oven’s 800-degree temperature colours the pizza slightly and the birch smoke adds a slightly perceptible smoky essence.
Raillo gives us more than a style of Italian cuisine. He delivers consistency and nostalgia, two elements that speak for hundreds of years of tradition.
Not only is the pizza delicious. It can change your viewpoint on pizza and probably ruin your palate for mega franchises.
