Some workshops teach you a technique. This one taught me something closer to a philosophy — and it happened over the course of one unhurried morning in the kitchen of Pasticceria Cicciù in Praia a Mare, with Pastry Chef Antonino Cicciù.
This was a one-on-one experience, arranged through Vera Italia, and that format ended up mattering more than I expected. There was no group to move through material for, no clock to watch. Just Chef Antonino, me, and a kitchen he clearly loves.
We started with croissants. Chef showed me how to roll the dough properly — the kind of small, precise motion that looks simple until you try it yourself and realize how much control it actually takes. Then, almost as if on cue, we stopped for a break: an espresso and a nutella-filled cornetto, fresh and so delicious. We sat, and talked, for a long time. About baking. About ingredients. About why either of us does this for a living. It wasn't part of a script — it just happened, the way good conversations do when nobody's in a hurry.
Afterward, we went back into the kitchen, and Chef showed me how to layer butter into dough to build a multi-use laminated base — the same foundation that, depending on shape and filling, becomes a cornetto, a pain au chocolat, or the shell for a cannolo. Watching him work through the folds, I understood something I'd known in theory but never quite felt: so much of pastry is really just a handful of core techniques, applied with intention.
The part of the morning that's stayed with me most, though, wasn't technical at all. At some point, talking about ingredients, Chef Antonino and I landed on the same idea from two completely different lives: nothing should go to waste. It's a value he clearly carries into every part of his kitchen. And it took me straight back to my Nonna Maria, who used to kiss any food she had to throw away before it went in the garbage — a small, private gesture of respect for what it took to grow it, make it, or earn it.
Two kitchens, two countries, two generations apart — and somehow, the same instinct.
The staff at Pasticceria Cicciù were every bit as warm as Chef Antonino, and I left Praia a Mare with a lot more than a new dough technique. This is one I'll be thinking about — and cooking from — for a long time.
