Alessio Marasca Alessio Marasca

Alessio Marasca has a degree in economics, comes from a family involved in construction for generations and spent years working between offices, building sites and real estate transactions. Then came France, the restaurant business, bread, pastry and, finally, pinsa romana. “You’ve already lived at least three lives,” I tell him at the end of the interview. He smiles. Because, at just over forty, his fourth may already have begun. Alessio comes from Genzano, in the heart of the Castelli Romani. He grew up in a family well known in the area for the construction business founded by his grandfather, and it seemed almost inevitable that his future would lie in the same sector. First, however, he decided to study. He was the first in his family to attend university: at LUMSA University in Rome, he graduated in business and banking economics, with a focus on management and stock market techniques. Yet he did not choose finance. After completing his studies, he joined the family business and decided to learn it properly: first the bureaucratic and organisational side in the offices, then the practical work on construction sites.

These were the years between 2006 and the following decade, marked by a difficult economic climate and profound changes in the real estate sector. Alessio did not abandon that world – even today, he admits that his passion for it remains – but he began looking for other possibilities. He qualified as a real estate agent, worked professionally in property sales and, when the family felt the need to diversify its activities, turned his attention towards France. They owned several properties in Nice. The initial idea was relatively simple: rather than opening a full restaurant, which would have been too demanding, they would open what in France is known as a snack, a quick-service establishment where they could introduce an Italian touch. After all, a passion for cooking ran in the family, from his grandmother to his mother. They bought an existing business and Alessio began transforming it. Bread, brioche, sandwiches and traditional French pastries gradually made way for a more distinctly Italian approach. The public responded well.

But this was also where another decisive change took place. Alessio entered that world without really knowing the trade and soon discovered one of the fundamental rules of the restaurant business: if you do not know how to do yourself what you ask others to do, you end up completely dependent on them. So he learned. First out of necessity, then out of passion. He found himself simultaneously entrepreneur, salesman, accountant, baker and pastry chef. The man who had worked on construction sites became a boulanger-pâtissier. Not through a carefully planned decision, but simply by doing the work. In Nice he also met Élodie, the woman who would become his wife. Originally from the area around L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, she introduced him to a Provence very different from life on the Côte d’Azur: more intimate, more family-oriented, closer to his idea of a place where one could build a home and raise a family.

“The dough is guided rather than forced.”

Meanwhile, however, Nice was going through dramatic years. The 2016 terrorist attack profoundly changed the market and the business suffered. Alessio eventually decided to sell, even accepting a loss. Three months later, Covid arrived. Sometimes an economic setback can, with hindsight, reveal itself as an unexpected stroke of good fortune. During his years with Élodie, he had often told her about an unusual Roman product that was attracting an ever-growing following. It was not exactly pizza: the dough was different, the shape was different and it had a distinctive lightness. One day he took her to Rome and decided she had to try it at a place he considered a fundamental reference: La Pratolina. Getting a table was virtually impossible. In the end, they ordered their pinsa to take away at around ten-thirty in the evening.

Élodie tasted it. Her reaction was immediate: “Damn. We have to make this in France.” Pinsa was already present in Paris, but in southern France it was still virtually unknown. Paradoxically, Alessio was the more cautious of the two. He already knew how completely the restaurant business could consume time and energy, and how difficult it was to reconcile it with family life. Élodie, a home-care nurse, also had a demanding profession. Yet the idea remained. Eventually, they decided to give it a try. Before opening, Alessio did what probably came most naturally to him: he studied. He searched for references, explored the product in depth and eventually arrived at the Pinsa School, where he met Marco Montuori, whom he still considers his mentor today. The course gave him the foundations, but Alessio is the first to dispel any illusions: four or five days can teach you a protocol, not a profession. “There is no better school than the real world.” Everything else comes from working, making mistakes, observing doughs and exchanging ideas with other professionals.

The project was ready. The premises had been found, the equipment ordered. Then Covid arrived and everything stopped. Some suppliers ran into difficulties; purchases and building work had to be reorganised, deposits recovered, and they had to wait. La Pinsa di Anton finally managed to open on 24 November 2020 in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Provence. The beginning was almost a second apprenticeship. This time, the challenge was not learning how to make pinsa: it was teaching customers what pinsa actually was. Some people read the name and even thought it was an Italian grocery store. Others came in without understanding how the product differed from pizza. Alessio, Élodie and her mother, Cristine, constantly explained the product, the flours, the production process, its lightness and the ingredients. It was a cultural task before it was a commercial one. Gradually, scepticism faded, word of mouth grew and La Pinsa di Anton built a clientele that began arriving from other parts of Provence as well.

Its Italian identity remains very strong. But Alessio does not turn that Italian character into a constraint. If he finds an outstanding French ingredient, he uses it. At Christmas, for example, he creates a pinsa with foie gras. For him, respecting a product’s origins does not mean rejecting the territory in which you live. It is when he begins talking about the dough, however, that the rhythm of the story changes. Alessio is no longer the economist who became a restaurateur: he is a technician. His definition of the perfect pinsa begins with an apparently simple rule: “It has to be the pinsa you yourself would love to eat.” Every product he prepares for a customer, he says, must be treated as though he were making it for himself. Then come the technical parameters: high hydration levels, even above 80%, correct temperature management, long fermentation times, a blend of flours and, above all, experience. Anyone can mix flour, water, oil, salt and yeast; knowing how they will react together is another matter entirely.

Over time, his dough has changed. He continues to use the flour on which he originally trained, but he has developed his own recipes and introduced the use of biga, seeking even greater lightness and digestibility. Above all, he has learned not to force the raw material. While we are talking, he is working. He picks up a dough ball and shows it to me. He places it on the rice-flour dusting and begins to stretch it. The oval shape appears almost spontaneously. It does not have to be artificially imposed: it is the natural consequence of the movement. It is an interesting detail because it also explains why the shape of pinsa is more than merely an aesthetic signature. Alessio refers to the etymology linked to the Latin pinsere, to press, to stretch, but what matters most is what happens beneath the fingers. The dough is guided rather than forced. Press it too hard and you destroy precisely what you have spent the fermentation process trying to create: the open crumb structure.

For Alessio, this is one of the essential secrets behind the sensation of lightness. “When you bite into it, you’re biting into air.” It is an extremely simple image, and perhaps for that very reason an effective one. A flat pinsa may be crisp and enjoyable, but it will never deliver the same sensation as a dough filled with air pockets, capable of alternating structure and emptiness. Air becomes an ingredient. Experience has taken Alessio beyond the counter of his own restaurant. Over time, he became the first official pinsa romana trainer in France. Perhaps this is the moment that brings the story full circle: the man who, in 2020, had to explain to French customers even what the word pinsa meant now teaches other professionals how to make it. And this may be where his next life begins.

Today, in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, La Pinsa di Anton brings a piece of Rome to the heart of Provence. Tomorrow, Alessio may be somewhere else, teaching others what he has learned over these years. But perhaps this is precisely the thread connecting his many lives: never being afraid to change profession, provided you first learn how to do it properly.