Rising Above the Rest

There’s no doubt: The bread does matter

By Charlotte Libov

Sylvano’s focaccia with rosemary and olive oil. Photo by Richard M. Brooks

Too often, an otherwise good restaurant will ignore the contents of its breadbasket and fill it with spongy rolls. But, in my experience as a food writer and, more importantly, a Dr. Atkins low-carb diet washout, I’ve found that what a restaurant chooses to put in this ubiquitous receptacle is very telling.

So, when I first moved to the Alton Road area and went prowling around the neighborhood to sniff out some new restaurants, I was instantly attracted to Sylvano. I loved the aroma of garlic that surrounds this eatery; the fat, square pieces of focaccia nestled in the breadbasket cinched the deal.

Still, something wasn’t quite right. Although the focaccia, pizza, bruschetta and other bread-based delicacies were delicious, it took me awhile to discover what was missing.

Then, last month, I was invited to join the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce Southeast for a “l’aperitivo,” an authentic Italian happy hour (what foodie in her right mind would turn that down?) at Sylvano South. There I met Francesco Guizio, the restaurant’s executive chef. An ebullient man who is passionate about bread, he supplies the bread to both “my” Alton Road Sylvano and its sister eatery, Sylvano South, at 124 Collins Ave. The catch? Since Guizio can’t be in two places at once (although watching him bound around the kitchen, I’m certain this is only due to the laws of physics and not any lack of desire on his part), he bakes the bread at the Collins Avenue restaurant. So, while I appreciate both Sylvanos, the Alton Road location is more of a sports bar for locals, while Sylvano South offers a larger kitchen, a larger menu and more of an opportunity to fully appreciate the difference that good bread makes.   

“In Italy, all of the restaurants make their own bread,” Guizio proclaimed, as he settled a large pan containing an enormous schiacciata on the counter. He then decorated this flattened bread, studded with pressed-finger indentations, with rosemary, olives and grape tomatoes, before cutting it into squares.

Indeed, Guizio is a wizard with bread; one by one, he pulled out and set several different yeast-based delicacies before me. All were made from the same dough as either the schiacciata or the traditional loaf bread. For instance, he made focaccia, which are served different ways: classico (olive oil, rosemary), pomodorini (olive oil, cherry tomatoes and oregano), a crudo (draped with imported prosciutto) and garlic (studded with fresh garlic and sprinkled with fresh parmesan cheese). He used regular fresh-baked Italian loaf bread for bruschetta, toasting fat slices, then serving classica (heaped with marinated fresh tomatoes, basil, garlic, oregano and grated parmesan) or diavola (marinated roasted bell peppers). Thin strands of bread dough became grissini, the crisp breadsticks that originated in Turin.

I’ve always thought that good bread equals good pizza and calzones, and Sylvan South serves 24 different varieties of pizza and three kinds of calzones. Also, to prove that the dough tastes delicious with nothing on it, Guizio took a fat ball of pizza dough, sliced it into quarters, fried it and dusted it with salt — a highly addictive creation indeed!

According to Guizio, who begins baking the bread at 9 a.m. so it will be ready for the lunch crowd, the secret of good bread is time.

“The secret to good bread is allowing it time to rise,” he noted. “People try to push the bread and bake it when it’s not ready. It’s a four-hour process.” It’s also important not to use too much yeast; a good yeast bread begins by using the “mother” of the day’s dough — a bit of the dough that is used as a starter — to kick off the fermentation process.

Guizio learned to bake bread in Anzi, a small city in the southern Italian region of Potenza, and began working in his uncle’s pizza restaurant at the age of 13. He attended culinary school and then came to Miami, where he worked at Mezzaluna, on Ocean Drive, and Joia, a northern Italian restaurant where DeVito South Beach now stands. Then he was lured to New Orleans by master chef Goffredo Fraccaro to work in the famous La Riviera restaurant, where he refined his skills and was quite happy — until Hurricane Katrina. “The restaurant drowned, and so did my house,” Guizio said. The restaurant never reopened, so Guizio came back to Miami to work for his friend Sylvano Carrara.

By this time in our conversation, the chef had covered almost every inch of the counter space with one or another of his yeasty masterpieces, but he had one more trick up his sleeve: Nutellino, a dessert specialty, which is a freshly baked calzone filled with chocolate/hazelnut spread and embellished with dollops of whipped cream. Delectable as the filling is, the secret to this dessert is the crusty shell, proving that the bread does matter.