Federica Racinelli

By reading the titles and programmes of her courses, you would expect super-technical, complicated – and even a little boring - lessons on the chemical and physical aspects of leavening and bread making. This, in fact, is not the case because Federica Racinelli unites a great technical background on all that is linked to bread making and leavening with a great passion for the topic and for the final output (whether it’s bread, pizza or cakes) and besides being a good teacher, she’s also an excellent populariser.

So, even during presentations to a non specialised audience she manages to explain complicated concepts and formulas in a clear, simple and even fun way, making the difficult task of managing and taking care of mother yeast, something within the range of home-bread-makers (among whom she includes herself) even if newbies. Behind such an open and communicative attitude, however, there are years of work in the R&D department of important companies in this sector, of researching at university and lots of fieldwork both as a technologist and researcher and as a teacher and educator. Especially within the activities of Molino Quaglia’s Università della Pizza, Federica Racinelli has collaborated with many among the best Italian pizza and bread makers conducting interesting experiments on specific topics such as gluten-free pizza (with Beniamino Bilali) or participating in more pleasure-loving events such as Bread Religion, a meeting with signature sandwiches, together with Renato Bosco.

On the occasion of the 7th edition of the Pizza Up symposium, which took place in November 2013 in Vighizzolo d'Este, she presented her research “Viaggio al centro della pizza” (Journey to the centre of pizza), created in collaboration with Professor Ambrogina Pagani of Distam at Università degli Studi di Milano. During Identità Milano 2014, instead, she will speak of bread making together with Roberta Pezzella, the excellent chef-boulanger of La Pergola.