Furnaces are of all times and places. From tandoori ovens in the Far East, to clay ovens at Nomads before Columbus set foot in America. The most famous ovens, however, are the Italian stone ovens, which have given rise to pizza variations all over the country: from the fluffy, difficult to digest, but delicious pizzas in Naples, to the crispy Romanesque variant in Lazio or the Sicilian thick crusts that many of the American capitals enjoy. flooded in the first quarter of the last century and seep into what people today call the cheesy Detroit or Chicago pizzas.
But Belgian variants of pizza? It exists! Dirk Wynants, the well-known designer and the man behind the successful Extremis brand, is crazy about the Italian Gioia di Vivere and regularly stays in the proud North where the fertile fields in the Po basin merge into the foothills of the majestic Alps, dotted with forests , lakes and picturesque villages. There, on Lake Como, Dirk Wynants bakes pizzas for Italian workmen who look in amazement at the Belgian oven that he dragged along in the car to the shores of Lake Como. “I like to take risks”, is how Dirk Wynants puts it. After making tempura for a Japanese group, he was ready for an even bigger test piece: baking pizza for Italians.
Barely half an hour after sanding the first match, a delicious pizza slides into the workmen's plates of some Italians. A delicious pizza, brought by a Belgian, in a Belgian oven, on Italian soil, for Italians, and of course on Belgian pic-nic tables. Mission accomplished!
