Seeing Franco Pepe in action is quite a show. Don't expect to see the dough bases being whirled around or any other acrobatics by the world's best pizza-maker, who arrived at Madrid Fusión Pastry on Tuesday to the delight of a captive audience. Plain and simple are the watchwords of this pizza wizard. He travelled to the congress with his team and his own electric kiln to demonstrate that the latest technology can bring about the excellence of a wood-fired oven, and also that with pizza, as in many things in life, less is more.

Pepe turned the stand into his pizzeria, taking "the tastes of my territory" out of his box of tricks - basil, tomato, onion, mozzarella and olives to explain his miracle: how he has deconstructed pizza without altering its essence, and the concept of the ‘pizzaiolo’ pizza chef. At his Pepe in Grani restaurant, located in a former 18th century mansion in Caiazzo, a small town with a population of 5,500 near Caserta, between the sea and the mountain, he handles 500 diners and makes 900 pizzas every day, a menu of 60 specialities, all handmade using the most traditional technique.

"There has to be dialogue with flavours if we're to go on serving up the best pizza, a popular, simple food", says the maestro. "The ‘pizzaiolo’ used to be the only person responsible for the pizza. Today we've deconstructed it through training, sharing the workload and maintaining the continuity and quality of the product", he adds. "Nowadays a ‘pizzaiolo’ is a lot of people. We've changed the identity of the pizza, and given some dignity to the ‘pizzaiolo’", he says.

The appearance and structure of Pepe's pizzas vary: thick, fleshy edges, not very large, fried, oven-cooked, sweet, in cornets or served up in two-euro slices - a visual treat and a fiesta for the senses. "I'm sure identity has been preserved", says this apostle of simplicity, who has followed in the footsteps of his grandfather and his father, both bakers, and of whom everyone said he was crazy to give up bread for pizza. "I wanted to create a working community with roots in the territory, working alongside local farmers. We started out with seven employees, and now we have 43. We've created a microeconomy that has reactivated the historical centre of Caiazzo", he claims proudly.