By Brian Hernandez
Now and then you’ll find yourself in a conversation that completely changes how you think about dough. That’s basically what happened when I met Boris Berard, the French pizzaiolo behind ORA 1929 in Nice, France, after his run at this past year’s International Pizza Challenge in Las Vegas.
Berard finished 22nd in Traditional American against more than 700 competitors, which is impressive enough already. What really caught my attention, though, was the fact that he got there using ancient grains, wild sourdough fermentation and a process centered heavily around digestibility in a category where most competitors lean toward more traditional competition formulas.
“Patience is a tool, not a waste of time,” Berard told me in episode 57 of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast. “In French traditions, time is treated as an ingredient, just like salt or water. American pizza culture has mastered speed and consistency, but there is another level of flavor and digestibility you can only reach by allowing biology to do its work.”
Related: Click here to watch/listen to episode 57 of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast featuring Chef Boris Berard
The deeper you go into a conversation with Berard, the more obvious it becomes that he approaches pizza differently than a lot of people. From his family roots in baking, he took a detour through technology and business before returning to dough full-time. He spent years working in operations, analytics and business systems, including a stint with Tesla and consulting work. And instead of simply accepting traditional dough-making methods because “that’s how it’s always been done,” he started breaking everything apart and asking questions. “Why this flour? Why this fermentation? Why this protein structure?”
That mindset eventually pushed him toward Einkorn wheat, long fermentation and a three-stage sourdough process inspired by Italian lievito madre and French boulangerie traditions. Berard uses wild fermentation only, avoiding commercial yeast entirely, while building his dough in multiple stages designed to develop flavor and alter the way proteins break down during fermentation. “Most people focus on how long the dough ferments,” he said. “I focus on what happens to the proteins during that time.”
That distinction is a major part of why Berard believes pizza is entering what he calls a new “slow food” era. He pointed to artisan bread, craft beer and specialty coffee as industries that already went through similar evolutions years ago, with consumers becoming more educated about process, ingredients and quality. In his view, pizza is simply catching up.
But he doesn’t think that shift is being driven entirely by chefs or pizza makers. He believes customers themselves are changing after the pandemic sourdough boom exposed millions of people to proper fermentation for the first time.
“People learned what real fermentation tastes like,” Berard said. “But more importantly, they learned how their stomach feels after eating something properly fermented versus something that wasn’t.”
That growing awareness around digestibility became a recurring theme throughout our conversation. Berard pointed to concerns over highly processed flour, gluten sensitivity and the rise of industrial gluten-free products that often replace one problem with another nutritionally.
His goal, he said, isn’t to create “health-food pizza.” It’s to create dough that maintains the flavor, crunch and structure people expect while becoming easier to digest through fermentation and grain selection.
At the same time, Berard pushed back on the idea that improving dough quality automatically requires expensive equipment upgrades or massive operational overhauls. According to him, most operators already have the tools they need. “What they need is process knowledge.”
That systems-based thinking clearly comes from his background outside pizza. Berard repeatedly framed dough through the lens of repeatability, measurable variables and process management rather than purely instinct or tradition. “Most pizzaiolos ask, ‘How do I make this better?’” he said. “I ask, ‘How do I make this better at scale, repeatedly and measurably?’”
Even with all the technical discussion, Berard never came across like somebody trying to overcomplicate pizza for the sake of sounding smart. If anything, he is genuinely fascinated by how much more there still is to learn about fermentation and dough behavior.
That curiosity also extended to American pizza culture itself, which clearly left an impression on him during his trip to Las Vegas. “The diversity is incredible,” Berard said. “Chicago, Detroit, New York, New Haven. Every region defends its identity and brings its own artistic touch to pizza.”
He was also surprised by the openness and generosity among competitors during the event. For somebody coming from a country without the same kind of large-scale American competition culture surrounding Traditional American pizza, the experience became both a learning process and a validation of his approach. One judging table actually ranked him Top 3 overall before final scores averaged out to 22nd place.
“The judges’ notes said I was marked down for leaving too much flour on the dough, “ said Berard. “And they were right, but the difference between third place and twentieth place can literally come down to dust,” Berard said.
Regardless, what makes that finish even more impressive is the fact that Berard essentially trained himself for American-style pizza competition through observation and YouTube videos because France doesn’t really have an equivalent framework for that category. Despite that, he still finished 22nd in Traditional American at the International Pizza Challenge against more than 700 competitors.
At the same time, he was also a finalist in the French Pizza Championship earlier this year, meaning the exact same fermentation-focused approach found success under two completely different judging systems and pizza cultures. “When two different pizza cultures validate your work, you stop second-guessing yourself,” Berard said.
Chef Berard plans to relocate to the United States in early 2027, likely somewhere around Austin, Texas, though he’s also exploring Florida and Arizona. His long-term goal is to create what he describes as a “hybrid atelier”—part artisan production lab, part restaurant and part hub for sourdough and ancient-grain protocols.
After hearing him explain the process, it’s hard not to be curious where that project ends up going. Because whether operators agree with every aspect of Berard’s philosophy or not, he’s posing questions that a lot more people in the pizza community are probably going to start asking over the next few years.
