Gold medals are raining down on Italy on all fronts. After the European Football Championships, the Olympics, the Paralympics, the European Volleyball Championships, now the Italians conquer the podium of the World Pastry Championships. It's not the first time and it won't be the last. Italian Pastry has now reached peaks of quality recognized on all continents. The verdict that assigns the gold medal for world pastry to Italy for the third time came from the Championship that has just concluded at the Sirha arena in Lyon.
Representing the Italian flag is a team made up of Lorenzo Puca, Massimo Pica and Andrea Restuccia trained by Alessandro Dalmasso, president of the Club of the Coupe du Monde de la Pâtisserie Selezione Italia.
The challenge was on three levels: a chocolate dessert to share, an ice cream cake, a restaurant dessert. The latter was this year's novelty instead of the ice sculpture of past editions, with the clear intention of strengthening the bond between restaurants and pastry shops, a bond that has been increasingly completing in recent years. The teams had 10 hours to create the three compositions. The Italian one was a masterpiece of taste, architecture and technique, a monumental sculpture 165 cm high. “The objective – explained the president of the competition Pierre Hermé – was to promote the profession of restaurant pastry chef and the collaboration between the chef and the pastry chef. The jury paid particular attention to the combination of flavors and textures chosen, to the preparation: everything was served “à la minute”, like a dish sent to a restaurant”.
And the international judges (among others Giuseppe Amato, pastry chef of the three-starred La Pergola in Rome, Sébastien Vauxion, Brandon Dehan, Jordi Roca, Eunji Lee, Glenn Viel, Sang Hoon Degeimbre, Dominique Crenn) did not hesitate to award the team Italian who obtained 7744 points., ahead of Japan (7440) and France (7364 points). All other teams placed under the 7000 points ceiling: England (6676), Switzerland (6552), Chile (5444), South Korea ((5368), Mexico (5024), Russia (4948), Algeria (4360 ) Egypt (3056).
The architects of this success are, as mentioned, Lorenzo Puca, 32 years old, sugar artist, the twenty-eight year old Andrea Restuccia, a great ice cream professional who in 2019 had risen to the third step of the world podium and Massimo Pica, 36 years old, a new entry from Milan who he had to measure himself against chocolate.
For the record, this is the third gold medal won by Italy (it had already won the championships in 1997 and 2015 under the guidance of Iginio Massari.
A feature to underline of this edition of the world pastry championships was the attention to sustainability: among other things, the use of additives, dyes, titanium dioxide and glitter powders was not allowed. The desserts, therefore, in addition to being beautiful, were also genuine.
For the record, the world championships were preceded by 50 national and 4 continental selections.
