Check into your hotel in Bologna's Historic Center. Late afternoon Insider's Walking Tour exploring the heart of the city. Learn about Bolognese daily life and customs, shopping, museums and nightlife so you enjoy your stay in great Italian style. We'll dine at Bologna's best traditional restaurant for our Welcome Dinner.
Shopping in Bologna's outdoor food market and its best stores for Italian cookware is fascinating and offers important additions for your kitchen! In our first class at the pizzeria, you'll learn how to make supple yeast dough for traditional Italian thin crust pizza, special pizza sauce and toppings.
These recipes and techniques are usually reserved for only professional pizza chefs but are taught to you as part of our cooking school course. Not only will you help the chef make this dough, he will teach you the essentials of making a good pizza, how to shape it, let it rise slowly, then shape it again. You'll practice this with him for two days to develop your technique. You'll practice sliding onto the peel and off, and baking in the wood-burning brick oven. Detailed instruction for building and maintaining the wood fire will be given throughout the course as well as alternative instruction for gas and electric ovens.
In another class, cook alongside the Amalfitano chef making light gnocchi, Mediterranean Seafood Ragu` and seasonal antipasti. Then it's lunchtime! With so many different dishes and pizzas, it is delicious fun! Late afternoon and evening at leisure.
In this morning's hands-on class, we're baking bread. It is some of the best Italian bread you'll ever taste. (Seriously.)
You will make slow-rising dough again so you have more opportunity with the chef to learn his techniques. In addition, you make quick-rising dough for thick Sicilian-style pizza. Since the types of Italian regional pizza are so varied, each with its own special topping, you'll learn more regional techniques, then make different types of pizza. More practice with the pizzaiolo, the peel, the oven, then lunch enjoying our impressive array of pizza!
In the afternoon is our hands-on class with the Amalfi chef making little-known dishes based on pizza that are very popular in Campagna. Fried pizza. Schiacciata. Following is another class for you preparing pizza dough with delicious fillings and making stuffed pizza such as coronetto. Dinner is a food-and wine pairing feast of many dishes we made during class.
What a memorable day of culinary experiences we have as we drive through the Emilian countryside to meet wonderful Regional Culinary Artisans! All of our visits are exclusive and behind-the-scenes, and are not available to tourists. Watching the cheese master stir hundreds of gallons of milk in copper cauldrons and transform this into golden Parmigiano-Reggiano, then tasting this special aged cheese with him, is fascinating!
Near Modena is our private visit at a family-owned award-winning traditional vinegar attic, called an acetaia. You'll learn the fascinating process of Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena, for aging balsamic vinegar in heirloom wooden barrels. A once-in-a-lifetime tasting awaits with these award-winning producers!
We'll visit Modena, one of the most influential cities in Emilia-Romagna, and see Il Duomo, a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture. Taking more than 3 centuries to complete, this cathedral, along with its adjacent Gothic bell tower called La Ghirlandina, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Lunch is a food-and-wine pairing experience at an outstanding restaurant. Arrive back in Bologna in late afternoon so you can attend an evening musical event or stroll through the Historic Center enjoying our wonderful city.
Morning for sipping a cappuccino in sunny Piazza Maggiore, perhaps some last minute shopping. Grazie Mille ~ Buon Viaggio!
