The Colours of Pizza
My pizza journey
Prior to eating Neapolitan Pizza, I only had the one everyone is familiar with. Thin crust, uneventful tomato sauce and stale shredded bright yellow cheese. Usually baked in an electric oven and no wood in sight. My turnaround came when I started working at this restaurant that had a pizzaiolo every wednesday. I thought nothing of it other than "cool italian guy". Shoutout my man Fabio.
Anyway, dinner started so I was quite busy the whole evening. Later in the evening a colleague says to me: "If you'd like there is pizza in the kitchen".
I enter the kitchen and I see an all white pizza with black speckles. I grab a piece and the taste is utterly overwhelming. Since then, I mostly eat Neapolitan pizza.
The pizza I talked about was a fairly colourless pizza also called a pizza bianca. But the true Neapolitan pizza is a colourful pizza. That carries the colours of the Italian flag.
Arrival of the tomato
The pizza that we are familiar with today was invented in Naples. Before the 1700's, the pizzas were never topped with tomatoes because they simply didn't exist. The tomato seems so synonymous with Italian cuisine but it's a fairly recent addition to the Italian pantry.
Tomatoes were brought to Europe in the 16th century by explorers returning from Peru. Initially thought to be poisonous until peasants in Naples would top their flatbread with them. The dish grew in popularity and tourists in Naples would visit the neighborhoods to try this peasant dish.
Heritage
The heritage of the Neapolitan pizza can be traced down to the name of one of the classics, "marinara".
Marinara pizza does not have cheese. It received its name because it was traditionally prepared by “la marinara” (a seaman's wife) for her husband when he returned from fishing trips in the Bay of Naples.
The marinara pizza consists of garlic, tomato, oregano and olive oil.
Margarita
The pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito, who worked at "Pietro... e basta cosi" is generally credited with the creation of the Pizza Margarita. In 1889, King Umberto l and Queen Margherita of the House of Savoy visited Naples. Esposito created a pizza in the honour of the italian flag.
Red
The sauce, the canvas and the base. If you would draw a pizza, the second step would always to colour it red. The distinctive red colour is due to the use of San Marzano tomatoes, which is my favourite tomato. A long shaped tomato that grows near the Vesuvius.
The taste is distinctively sweet but has a distinctive hearty flavour to it, that no other tomato carries.
To create the pizza sauce. You simply get some canned San Marzano tomatoes, add some salt and crush them with your fingers. That's it. You just created the pizza sauce.
White
The salty and chewy part of the pizza. Cheese on a Margarita is essential. The choice of cheese is usually fior di latte or buffalo mozzarella. Both cheeses are fresh cheeses which means they are not dried so they should be eaten quite quickly. The milk is sourced from Campania. The name is derived from Latin and it literally means "fertile countryside".
Green
Basil, a small leaf with a huge taste. Basil is an essential part of the Margarita bringing a colourful element as well as the taste of the garden.
Dough
Let's talk about the dough. The dough is as important as the ingredients in the Neapolitan Pizza. In the pizza I talked about earlier, the pizza is usually thin. Like a pizza from Rome.
The pizza from Naples is thick almost bread like but most importantly light to digest. Pizzaiolo's make use of extremely refined Italian flour, "Typo 00". Resulting in a highly airy dough. Combine this with the rule that you cannot use a rolling pin but must use your hands. Because after resting your dough it encapsulates all the air inside the dough using a rolling pin would blow all the air out of the dough.
Rules
The rolling pin rule is not an unwritten rule. These rules are compiled by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana
The AVPN is a non-profit organization and was founded in June 1984 in Naples. Its mission is to promote and protect the true Neapolitan pizza. They can be found throughout the world from the U.S. to Japan. The AVPN has several rules to consider you a true Neapolitan pizza maker and to give you a certificate. These are the rules
Must be round and no more than 35 cm in diameter
Must be cooked in a wood fired oven
Must be kneaded and shaped by hand
Dough should be allowed to rise for at least six hours
Only three types of Neapolitan pizza exist, they say.
The first is Marinara with garlic and oregano.
The second, a Margherita, must be made with basil, tomatoes and Mozzarella cheese from the southern Apennine mountains.
Finally the "Extra Margherita" variety must include buffalo mozzarella from the Campania region.
A true Neapolitan pizza must be cooked in a wood-fired oven and the final product must be soft, elastic and easy to fold in two
Dilemma
To live by the rules is to die by them. What will you choose. Will you innovate or follow. Take Yuki Motokura from SAVOY in Tokyo. He makes a pizza with bluefin tuna and wasabi. But uses classic Neapolitan techniques in terms of dough and wood fired clay oven. He chose to innovate but stayed to true to the culture of Napoli.