Baking & Snack - March 2019 - 100

featured innovation center

LESAFFRE: ENDLESS OPPORTUNITIES
Just seven months after the July 2018 opening of the North
American Culinary Academy, which includes Lessafre Yeast
Corp. and Red Star Yeast's Pizza Innovation Center, the business
crunched its numbers: The total visitor count was more than 800
people. From amateurs to professionals, individuals to large corporations, people come to the center from all over the world for
classes, R&D sessions and consulting services.
Located in the Chicago suburb Lisle, IL, the North American
Culinary Academy was founded by Chef Leo Spizzirri, Maestro
Instruttore, PFC, and Anthony Iannone, a formally trained chef.
Not only is it a school with classes, but the innovation center allows it to serve as an R&D center that's fully functional from concept to launch. It has four working spaces: a dough room, an oven
room with seven different ovens, a classroom setup for courses
and a demonstration area. "We're able to show everything to everyone in one spot," Mr. Spizzirri said. "This is the real charm of
the school and what has resonated really well."
In addition to providing a space for mixing dough the traditional, freestyle way, the dough room has four mixers, including a
planetary, fork-style, spiral and diving arm. Each mixer affects the
dough in different ways. To demonstrate this variance, the chefs
mix one base formula in each machine during classes, then bake
the dough in the same oven so that the only variable is the mixer.
"To be able to see what the machines do to the structure, and ultimately the crumb, is pretty amazing," Mr. Spizzirri noted.
The dough room is temperature- and humidity-controlled

100 Baking & Snack March 2019 / www.bakingandsnack.com

to recreate any ambiance. "If I'm teaching a Neapolitan certification course, I can recreate the conditions of Naples, Italy,"
Mr. Spizzirri said. "The traditional style of that dough is that it
never gets refrigerated, so it would get made in the dough room
at that temperature until the dough is ready, then we would bring
it into our oven room."
Much of the center's success can be attributed to Mr. Spizzirri's
vast amount of experience in the industry. Born and raised with
Chicago-style pizza, he went to Italy to learn the craft at the oldest
pizza school, Scuola Italiana Pizzaioli. "Once I realized the difference in the way pizzas were being made in Italy and then seeing
all the American styles translated from those original styles, it was
kind of like a Willy Wonka moment," Mr. Spizzirri said. "There's so
much behind the curtain, so I needed to learn more."
After receiving his pizza-making certification, he went back and
forth to Italy for 15 years to get his master's certification in each of the
five styles. During this time, Mr. Spizzirri was also working as a dough
specialist for a large frozen pizza company. In 2017, he completed a
series of tests to become a master instructor and is now one of fewer
than 100 people in the world to receive this high-level certification.
Mr. Spizzirri can create all types of pizza, whether it's an Italianstyle or an American translation, frozen from a store or fresh at a
restaurant, a product with a yeast crust or one that's low-carb or
gluten-free. In fact, many students come to learn gluten-free pizza
processing; not only is there a class on the topic, but the center also
has a separate oven, mixer and tools for making gluten-free pizzas.

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Baking & Snack - March 2019

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