Re Panettone 2022: the prize for the best artisan panettone of the year goes to a Salerno native

The jury awarded the first prize to Fiorenzo Ascolese for the craft category and to Allessando Marigliano for the innovative category. Campania is plundering prizes. Lombardy obtains two medals in the innovative fields.

Il Panettone is historically a Milanese icon, prize is meneghino, born fifteen years ago to showcase artisan panettone and many other leavened variants of excellence, all united by the use of only natural ingredients, starting with mother yeast, but the South this year in the national competition Re Panettone staged at the Palazzo del Ghiaccio, with the participation of authoritative pastry chefs representing all the Italian regions has won awards for the best artisan panettone, both traditional and innovative.

La jury chaired by master pastry chef Salvatore Tortora, winner of the Panettone World Cup 2021 awarded the first podium for the artisanal panettone of the year to Fiorenzo Ascolese of the pastry shop of the same name in Via Gian Battista Vico in San Valentino Torio (Sa). “Ours – commented the Ascolese master pastry chef on the award – is a commitment to quality: selected raw materials, imagination and dedication are the ingredients of our trade. We are convinced that the flavors and aromas that nature offers us, if skilfully processed, and without the addition of chemical additives, best express their goodness”. Second prize for Alexander Slama of the homonymous Ischia pastry shop which has collected numerous gold medals in various competitions in its career. Third classified Nicholas Guariglia of Salerno founder and President of the "Association of Bakers" of the province of Salerno, councilor of the "Italian Federation of Bakers and Affini".

Moving on to the innovative panettone, the jury chaired by the journalist Alberto Paolo Schieppati, director of the magazine So Wine So Food awarded the gold Panettone with seaweed and Cantabrian anchovies by Alessandro Marigliano, a family of pastry chefs from San Giuseppe in the province of Naples who, since 2006, have launched an innovative project in terms of artisan panettone, linking them to the territory. To hold up the flag of the north fell to Pietro Cartabia chief pastry chef of ELITE di Vimercate with pepas- and ad Andrea Rampinelli of the Mac Mahon pastry shop in Milanor who conquered the bronze.

The King Panettone contest, since its debut in 2008 has contributed greatly to raising the image of the panettone, focusing the public's attention on its artisanal version and imposing it as an Italian excellence and is now an unmissable event in the Milanese city, in support of creativity of pastry chefs, who propose new products year after year based on the sourdough dough typical of panettone with ingredients inspired by the philosophy of naturalness.

During this edition, PAART was also presented to the public, a Movement for Art Pastry which has the aim of promoting pastry produced with only natural ingredients and not with semi-finished products. His goal is that the knowledge and skills needed to make pastry specialties from scratch should not be lost, knowledge that is now seriously endangered by the ever-increasing diffusion of semi-finished products.