Man v machine. A pizzeria in Naples, Italy. Photograph: Massimo Borchi/Atlantide Phototravel/Corbis
Paduan engineer predicts high-quality vending machines using fresh products will become ubiquitous but traditionalists are dismissive even before unveiling.
You can already get pizza delivered to your house or pop a frozen one in the microwave, but soon there will be an even faster way to get your hands on a slice of margherita, and it is making purists wince.
Pizza twirlers and pizzeria owners in Italy have reacted with incredulity and disgust after an engineering professor in Padua announced he would unveil a vending machine that made the Italian staple from scratch in less than three minutes.
“I will not eat this pizza,” said Enrico Famà, the director of Accademia Pizzaioli, a school that trains pizza-makers. “It is not something that is really a pizza.”
The vending machine, to be unveiled on Saturday, is a collaboration between the engineering department of the University of Padua and a company called Sitos, which already has an automated pizza-maker on the market.
The firm’s website says it is the only maker of a pizza vending machine that kneads the dough on the spot and uses fresh ingredients, unlike models that simply heat up an already finished product.
“I can’t speak in details – there is some confidential stuff – but my group deals with the research of electro heat technologies,” said Fabrizio Dughiero, the professor behind the project.
“It uses all fresh products, but to accelerate the process they have to use some other things. In any case, the flavour is very good,” he said.
Dughiero predicts that such “high-quality vending machines” using fresh products will become ubiquitous.
But, while engineers might like the idea, pizza experts are less enthusiastic.
At Verbano Ventitre, an “enopizzoteca” that sells pizza by the slice in Rome, owner Alessandro Magnifico said the idea of automatic pizza went against nature. He added that he was fairly sure his grandmother would not approve, either.
“We wait 72 hours for the dough to rest here,” he said. “We don’t use chemicals. The dough becomes full of air to make it light.”
Now that spring had sprung and the temperature was rising outside, the restaurant would adjust its use of water and use ice to stop the pizza dough from rising too fast, he said.
Magnifico added: “A machine like this will be wonderful all around Europe, but not in Italy. We are spoiled. We want to see the men massaging the dough.”
At the Accademia Pizzaioli, Fama agreed, saying that 70% of a pizza’s “goodness” could be attributed to its dough.
“If you let the dough rest for at least 24 hours, the pizza will be better, tender, more digestible,” he said. “When you mix flour and water it is like fresh meat, you can eat it after an hour but then your stomach has to do 100% of the work.”
