The secrets of the real pizza

It has been said the "Pizza is now a stateless, boundless, flag-less food,". Eaten and sold all over the world, even in conservative and traditional Middle-East and Asian countries, virtually everyone has tried at least once her majesty the pizza. But if you think that pizza is that flat, colourful, frozen dough sold in supermarkets, in Pizza Hut or similar, well you are not on the right path! You should come to South Pontino first and try the real brick oven pizza Neapolitan style. There are few great pizzerias all over Gaeta, Formia, Terracina, Itri with the birthplace of this culinary masterpiece Naples at less than 60 miles away!

           The Italian Pizza

No where in this area you will find the pizza as an industrial product, frozen and then simply placed into an oven or microwave to be heated up for the naive buyer. Tradition says that the very first pizza was baked in Naples more than 400 years ago, to give a different "twist" to traditional bread: it was made of bread dough, garlic, lard and salt. According to the pizza-holics or connoisseurs, here in Italy pizza falls into two distinctive type: Neapolitan pizza and the rest of the world!

It might seem ridiculous considering the basic ingredients are more or less the same, but once tasted a true Neapolitan pizza and the game is over! You will never feel the same about this simple and delicious food again. The real Neapolitan pizza is now officially classified by the Italian Food Authority with precise guidelines, in the country's Official Gazette, ruling that real Neapolitan pizza “must be round, no more than 14 inches in diameter, no thicker than 0.1 inches in the middle and with a crust of about 0.8 inches.” My mouth starts almost watering when I connect the reading and the images of a hot, fuming pizza just out from a wood oven falling on my plate.

The dough must be strictly rolled out by hand, and do not even think about electric ovens: the real pizza is only baked in wooden ovens that can reach the necessary temperature of 905 degrees Fahrenheit. A little over or less and the magic crust vanishes! "The texture must be slightly but pleasantly crunchy outside but soft and elastic inside, easily foldable," the guidelines said. They specify what kind of flour, yeast, tomatoes, oil must be used in the real pizza. These norms protect one of the most ancient and important gastronomic traditions and reinforce the image and tradition of the approved Italian pizza-makers' association.

In every serious pizzeria, pizza is always made to order with somebody in the kitchen manipulating the dough for the next individual pizza. It must always (and only) be cooked in a wood oven, with a very thin crust and not much oily at all. The restaurants specializing in pizzas are called "pizzeria" and often they have listed 20 or more types of pizza. The simplest but also most popular and famous Neapolitan pizzas are two: the Marinara, with garlic and oregano; Margherita, with real buffalo mozzarella cheese from Campania and southern Lazio and fresh basil leaves. But how and why the famous "pizza margherita" got its name? In 1889, while visiting Naples, the King of Italy Umberto I and his wife Queen Margherita were presented a pizza with tomato sauce, mozzarella and oregano to symbolize the Italian flag. The Queen loved it so much that, to this day, the pizza has her name.

With so many different pizzas (flat, folded, fried and filled) it’s very difficult to choose sometimes. Well, I can still tell you my two favourite ones: the calzone or ripieno, oven baked folded pizza in the form of a half moon, filled with buffalo (if lucky) ricotta cheese, salami, prosciutto cotto (Italian cooked ham), mushrooms, and buffalo mozzarella cheese. My other one takes different names according to the pizzeria, ma often is called Margherita with provola (smoked buffalo mozzarella cheese) e pomodorini (local cherry tomatoes) and lots of fresh basil. Now that you know the secrets of the real pizza next time you're in this corner of Italy, enjoy a "real" Neapolitan pizza!