Manna for the Masses
At Wedgewood Pizza, Fernando Riccioni and
crew
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Reprinted with permission by:
PIZZA TODAY - December, 1994
Author: Dennis Wall
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Manna for the Masses
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 "I
can do anything!" says exuberant Youngstown, Ohio, pizza maker Fernando
Riccioni. "I can make clothes, make shoes, cut hair, tend sheep, I can
cook. There's nothing I can't do!"Of all the skills this transplanted Italian has picked up over his 64 years, making pizza is the one he settled on more than a quarter century ago. For that decision, many Youngstown-area customers demonstrate constant gratitude. On an average Friday or Saturday, for instance, Wedgewood Pizza cranks out close to 2,000 of Riccioni's crispy, medium-crust pies for a mainly takeout clientele, who flock in from as far as Pennsylvania to jam the counter at his suburban location. In a sense, Wedgewood makes pies the way the region's auto makers slap together cars - in vast quantities, assembly-line style, with machine-like rapidity. Riccioni's kitchen is a proving ground for the eight Blodgett decks and two Nieco rotary ovens he fires up during the shop's most frenzied business hours. "We go down the line," Riccioni says in the thick Italian accent he's held onto despite his 32 years in the United States. "Never do we have just one pizza in an oven. We fill up the first oven, then the next, then the next. When we get the last one filled up, it's  time to take the pizzas out of the first one, and then we go down the line
and do it all over again." A dozen preppers offer behind-the-lines support in
this war against pizza privation.Riccioni's career began more than 50 years ago, when he learned from his grandmother how to make bread, sausage and other basics. When World War II fell upon his little town of Fano Andrino, Italy, eating became a luxury activity. To keep the cupboards full, young Fernando would steal food from occupying Nazi forces, secreting it at home and distributing it among his extended family. That experience - combined with a naturally generous spirit - seems to have remained with Riccioni all these years. On an average weekend he gives away 100 or more pies to people who either can't afford the cost or who have done him a favor - or perhaps just because the mood strikes him. "I'm just made that way," he says, "I can't help it." On those nights that he's actually in charge of the cooking, he says he might give away a quarter of the pies produced during the shift. But he says "it's no big deal. I make enough money, I'm all right."
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