The history of pinsa is a fascinating combination of research, skills and, above all, deep passion. It is precisely this passion that motivated Corrado Di Marco, founder of the company and descendant of one of the oldest families of Roman bakers, to create a unique product capable of combining taste, authenticity and well-being in a single solution.
TASTE, BUT ALSO LIGHTNESS
But let's start from the beginning. The history of pinsa begins at the end of the 70s, in a market that was profoundly different from the current one. The pizza of the time was indeed a tasty and appreciated product, but also rather heavy and poorly digestible.
The trend towards light and healthy cooking, attentive to calories, nutritional data and low in fat would be born later, but right from the start Corrado Di Marco he saw the opportunity to innovate by creating a lighter and more digestible product, but without compromising on taste.
It was born like this the company's first successful brand, PizzaSnella, which still today represents one of its most successful brands. For the first time, it was used a mix of wheat and soy flours, which will be the basis on which the development and production of Roman pinsa will be undertaken.
THE HISTORY OF PINSA: THE MIX OF FLOURS AND FERMENTATION
Research and experimentation continued without stopping. The focus was mainly on the fermentation process, in an attempt to overcome the simplification of brewer's yeast to return to a more natural, slow and healthy leavening. From over 2,000 experiments that same Mother Dough of dried wheat which is one of the distinctive elements of the Di Marco pinsa.
Always on the lookout we must mix of three flours which represents the innovative essence of the product. Corrado Di Marco's initial intuition was to want to eliminate lard, since it was aware that animal fats would not have supported the changes in consumer needs and would therefore not have had a great future. The objective, certainly challenging, was use different techniques to achieve a similar effect.
For wheat, we looked for products that could guarantee good leavening and, above all, that had flavor, a normal feature in ancient products but far from a given in today's ones.
Soya flour, already used for PizzaSnella, was then introduced and played a key role. essential when replacing lard and giving the pinsa lightness, friability, flavour and also an attractive colour. Last but not least, it was added cooked rice flour. Once crystallized, in fact, the rice does not absorb water and swells slightly when cooked. forming a crispy surface layer, which is still today the distinctive feature of Roman pinsa.
FROM 2001 TO TODAY AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
The official birth of pinsa, dated 2001, was the response to a growing and heartfelt need for a product that was not only tasty, but also light and easily digestible.
Since then, research, experimentation and the constant evolution of the mix (which remains a well-kept secret) have been directed to the perfection of the product, with the aim of always better satisfying these requirements. Its name derives from the Latin pinsere, what does it mean press, and identifies the gesture that the pizza chef performs on the dough to obtain the typical elongated oval shape. Pinsa, however, does not date back to the era of the ancient Romans: it is a modern product, created to meet the needs of our times.
For many years, the pinserie could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Every innovation needs a period of consolidation and adoption, but if the assumptions are solid, the only possible outcome is success. Today the Di Marco gripper is a product exported all over the world, from the United States to Japan, and there are more than 7,000 active pinseries, growing every day. The Di Marco pinsa is available both for the HoReCa channel, and in particular for catering, but also in GDO stores with the Cloud brand.
The future looks promising. Consumers recognize not only its innovative character, but also its versatility: pinsa adapts to everyone's tastes and is also suitable for vegetarian diets and vegan. The product is constantly evolving, with daily experiments, and new products will also arrive able to satisfy ever-evolving tastes and needs.
