Scarcity Into Sweet: Substitute Until You Win

"It was wartime and sugar was scarce, it was sold on the black market and was very expensive. But my dad, who was a genius, found a way to extract it from molasses, a by-product of beer. He bought a centrifuge and obtained seven percent of sugar crystals from that molasses. And with that sugar and a bit of thick hazelnut paste, he invented "Pasta Gianduja," which my uncle Giovanni, who was a wholesaler who knew how to trade, began to sell throughout the Langhe. For a long time, people were short of everything, and this product smelled of hazelnuts. When the war ended, my father began to wonder why I had never been there."

"In times when Italians have little money in their pockets, a kilogram of Pasta Gianduja is on sale for six hundred lire compared to the three thousand lire for a kilogram of chocolate. Pietro Ferrero has succeeded in his venture, giving substance to the idea that he has cultivated for years and pursued with determination: to take away from the pastry shop the reputation of being elite, reserved only for the rich or for major festivities. There needed to be a sweet treat for everyone, pleasing to every palate and within everyone's reach: it is the Pasta Gianduja, the fruit of research and patient trials, and the use of machines like that enchanted machine gun, shown by the young Michele to Beppe Fenoglio."

"The glorious Giandujot, although excellent and best-selling, sometimes oozes from the packaging, and for this flaw, some merchants complain. Michele discovers in a specialized magazine the existence of a substance, soy lecithin, which has the ability to retain fats. In Europe, lecithin is still almost unknown, few import it. But he manages to find some. The experiment is a success. The addition of lecithin stabilizes the mixture and allows the launch in 1951 of Supercrema, as is named what we might call the mother of Nutella. It is sold in containers ranging from airtight tins to tubs and glasses, but also in toy wooden houses."

"Pietro, the more restless of the two, invested his savings to open the Ferrero Café and Pastry shop under the arcades of Via Corte, in the historic center. An insistent idea occupies a large part of his mind: to drastically reduce the cost of chocolate. "If I can make chocolate that costs half or a third of what one pays in shops," he says confidently, "if I can sell for a few lire a substantial piece of chocolate, today reserved for a few rich people and a few days of major festivities like Easter and Christmas, I will make it a product that is pleasing to all palates and within reach of all wallets, I will make it popular, people will fight in front of my pastry shop just to get it. I will conquer the market of children, I will ensure their snack, at four in the afternoon I will have them lined up clamoring at the doors of the Café Pastry.""