Neapolitan pizzaiolo Angelo D’Ambrosio talks pineapple on pizza and why it’s all about the dough’s fermentation
- The Naples native, pizzaiolo at Gustaci in the PMQ creative hub in Soho, Hong Kong, loves the complex chemistry involved in perfecting pizza dough
- As for toppings, choosing the right cheese and tomatoes matters, and if you use pineapple, add it to a pizza margherita but don’t burn it, he says
How did you get interested in making pizzas? “I’m from Naples and my father worked in a bakery. When I was 12 years old, I started working with him. I really liked working there because I liked to eat what I baked and, later, I was curious about how they make it. Every day I ate a lot of carbohydrates.
“I tried working in the kitchen, but I prefer being in a pizzeria. Pizza is part of Neapolitan culture, I grew into it. Over the past several years there has been more experimenting with how to make pizza lighter and easier to digest because people love it so much and want to eat a lot, so you need to make it digestible.
“In cooking, it’s about putting ingredients together to create food, but with pizza it’s more complex, it’s a chemical process – from nothing it becomes something completely different. It’s a transformation that intrigues me.”
Where did you learn to make pizzas? “I started at the age of 16 in Bologna, washing dishes in a pizzeria. I watched the pizzaiolo working there, and he saw I really wanted to learn. Eventually he decided to teach me. Usually a traditional craft like that is not taught, with people keeping the skill to themselves. So the way to learn normally is to work for free and watch how they make it, but no one teaches you. I was still paid as a dishwasher from 2008 to 2009, even though I was promoted to a pizzaiolo.
“Then at 18 years old, I went to Milan and every year changed jobs to work in a different place to learn more about pizzas. I was there for nine years.
“Last year, I went to London for three months until Covid-19 arrived. I didn’t know what to expect so I decided to go home. Soon afterwards this opportunity to go to Hong Kong to open Gustaci came. I have been here for a few months.”