Why Is Flour Making Pizzamakers Sick?
For a handful of chef-owners, the ingredient that shaped their success also made them miserable
By the time his eyes started to water and his throat began to feel like it was closing up, Anthony Mangieri had been a professional bread and pizza maker for over 15 years. “This was 2008,” he says. “I didn’t know what was going on with me.”
Credited as one of the first pizzaioli to bring Neapolitan pizza to the states, Mangieri was four years deep into the second incarnation of Una Pizza Napoletana, the legendary pizzeria he first opened in New Jersey and subsequently moved to New York’s East Village. Not one to rush to seek medical attention — “I’ve been to the doctor, once, for a hernia; I paid cash,” he says — he instead went to an acupuncturist, which helped a bit. But what really helped was the period between July 2009, when Mangieri closed the restaurant, and September 2010, when he reopened it in San Francisco. His symptoms “totally went away,” he says. The reason? He wasn’t working with flour.
It sounds like a lame joke, the one about the baker who can’t eat bread. But Mangieri is among an…
