Pitch Night Showcases Pannetone, ​“Bacorn”

Pierluigi Mazzella never sleeps. This is because he’s obsessed. And in love.

At Monday’s CT Food Launchpad Pitch Night in East Rock, the founder and owner of fatto a mano stood beside the object that has kept him awake at all hours: the panettone, a towering round of sweet bread naturally leavened with sourdough and studded with organic raisins and semi-sweet Valrhona chocolate.

It took him 72 hours to make.

“My goal is to bring the panettone, which is considered the most challenging product in the baking world, to the U.S.,” he proclaimed to a crowd of roughly 75 in the mild autumn evening air outside Atticus Market at 771 Orange St.

The event showcased 12 emerging Connecticut food brands with an aim to ​“connect them with wholesale buyers from grocers and restaurants, as well as the food-curious public,” its Facebook post reads.

The food brands included fatto a mano, an Italian micro bakery based in Monroe; Oh Shito, a savory Ghanaian hot sauce; Boy-yi, which produces East Asian superfoods, and the plant-based frozen meals of Fire Ox, as well as East Rock Apiary​’s honey, Sanctuary Kitchen​’s Middle Eastern baked goods, and the Connecticut-grown jams, jellies, and pickles from KD Crop Farms.

Mazzella said he fell in love with sourdough bread while working at pizzerias on his native island of Ischia, Italy. ​“Baking sourdough, it’s artistic and scientific,” he said. ​“It takes patience, dedication, craftsmanship.” That’s when he decided to work in bakeries in Italy, and that’s when the ​“beautiful challenge” of panettone beckoned.

On his two days off each week from his job as lead bread baker for Atticus, he was staying up all night making panettone, as well as sourdough bread and pastries in his kitchen. He ordered the best quality ingredients, including flour from Italy.

“If my ingredients cost a lot, I don’t care, because my goal is to show people the best product,” he said. ​“If you use cheap ingredients, you’re never going to have a good product because it’s made of different bricks, and if one brick is wrong, the whole structure falls.”

About six weeks ago, he began posting ​“This Week’s Bake” on his Instagram page.

“After a couple weeks, it got crazy and I was selling out the panettone and bread 30 minutes after the post came up,” he said.

Last week, he left Atticus. ​“I loved to work for Atticus because they have such high-quality products, especially their bread, so I wanted to learn their system,” he said. ​“Now I’m going to devote my life to this,” he said.

“Bacorn” & ​“Olive Oil With Legs”

In Spain, they call their pigs ​“olive oil with legs.”

That’s in part what inspired Jennifer Milikowsky to found Walden Hill, which produces sustainable acorn-fed pork from heritage hogs.

“The best pork in the world by many people’s standards is bellota, and bellota means acorn,” she said as part of her pitch.

For thousands of years, pigs roamed freely, consuming vast quantities of acorns. ​“Pigs have the healthy fats, like olive oil and oleic acid, and these healthy fats and acorns get into the fat of the pork,” she said. ​“So when people say bellota pork melts in your mouth, it’s quite literally doing that.”

There are also health benefits. Acorn-fed pork benefits cardiovascular health because it increases good cholesterol and reduces bad cholesterol.

“Then I realized no one was doing it in the U.S.,” she said. With her forestry background — Milikowsky studied at Yale’s School of Forestry — she knew acorns. With her business chops from her degree from the Yale School of Management, she saw opportunity.

“This was a chance to partner with family farms across New England to produce a better product, one that’s healthier, more sustainable, and more delicious,” she said.

Walden Hill offers products ranging from fresh pork to sausages and smoked meats, including Bacorn, as they call their Acorn Pork bacon, as well as a line of charcuterie. They supply restaurants, local grocers, and butcher shops across New England.

Pasta Sauce With Wooster Sq. Roots

Angela Massimino was a stay-at-home mom to her five children. So when, one Sunday dinner, she announced she had a secret, they looked at each other with concern.

“We were like, ​‘what, Mom, you’re having another baby?’” her daughter Gina recalled. “‘No,’ she said. ​‘I’m taking our sauce public.’”

So it was that, on July 12, 2018, Angela’s Kitchen Gourmet Pasta Sauces was born.

“My grandparents and my parents came from Warren Street on Wooster Square,” said Angela, who owns the business with her husband Keith. ​“My grandmother, Fortunata Cimino, used to make her meat sauce with fresh ground beef, pork, and sausage, and we use the exact same
ingredients.”

It took her eight or nine months to make the sauce shelf stable. ​“I became a scientist,” she said.

Then she noticed the sauce had a certain effect on her customers. ​“It helps bring back memories of their relatives, their grandparents, their parents,” she said. ​“When they tell me that, I know we got it right.”

Angela’s Kitchen also offers marinara sauce, vodka sauce, and tomato basil. Currently the sauces occupy the shelves of Big Y’s and Adams Family Markets, as well as delis and meat markets across Connecticut.

The labels on the sauces took a while. ​“I had to come up with the color coordination,” she said. ​“I have to think about every detail because it’s mine and I wouldn’t want it any other way.”