An expert eye on pizza

Some time ago I wrote about the proposed certification of Real Pizza Napoletana. Marco who had at the time replied to me in the comments, he's a serious expert on the matter and is writing a book on the theme, was kind enough to send me a few pics to explain his arguments on the matter, which I happily publish below. Note: I added a few corrections after talking to Marco again.

Pizza as we know it today has its roots in the Neapolitan tradition: pizza is not an uncommon name for baked goods in central and southern Italy, but it's definition as a flat disc of dough topped with sauce and, today, almost anything coming to your mind, came straight from Napoli. Whether you believe the story about Pizza Margherita being invented by Raffaele Esposito, the pizzaiolo of Pizzeria Brandi, or if the whole thing was just a smart renaming of an existing pizza, the Neapolitan style was always a rather simple one far from today's excessive toppings. Neapolitan pizza is mainly a simple item: common toppings are the aforementioned Margherita, tomato, fiordilatte (cow milk mozzarella), and basil: marinara (a delicious one depicted above), with tomato, oregano and garlic; or simple modifications of these two.

This simple view of pizza has been progressively disappearing or is sometimes unknown, especially abroad, and often, even today, unrecognizable thick dough pies topped with a nightmare of ingredients, end up being sold as the "real Italian thing". It is therefore understandable that the Neapolitans Pizzaioli tried to protect their tradition with the creation of the Verace Pizza Napoletana association. This association pushed to have a law approved defining what the standards to call a pizza a real Pizza Napoletana DOC are.

This has lead to quite a lot of criticism both in Italy and abroad. This has ranged to a general opposition to the idea that a recipe can be forced through law to attacks on the technical details. Marco was kind enough to discuss his critiques to the law proposal back at the time of my first post. Talking to him I understood that his informed criticism is not against the regulation itself, rather against seeing this as a set of rules set in stone. The published regulation should rather serve as a guide line. To make his point Marco showed me a simple particular of a pizza made not following the regulation. In the pictures below you can see a pizza made with crescito, i.e. sourdough, which should be used in a proportion of 1 to 5% of the total water, and using a higher water to flour ratio. Now, I love sourdough pizza. I made sourdough pizza myself once, and even in my puny home oven the 48 hours old dough gave results I never achieved with yeast, both in taste and, especially, texture.

What is important to notice is the puffed and airy look of the crust in what we Neapolitans call cornicione or the pizza rind. I can't believe how many people throw this part away. I always thought it was the part where you can taste the real flavor of the dough, unadulterated by the topping, an important parameter to judge quality to my eyes. Marco, on the other hand showed me another reason to look at the cornicione closely: a pizza made with a very soft dough, properly ripened and baked using a wood burning oven at the right temperature will give a delicious bubbly cornicione. A pizza made with the official recipe instead will give you a cornicione full of crumb. Which is bad, at least in my book. Many pizzaioli today prefer working with a dough that is not as soft as the one traditionally used, either because it makes their work easier or because they never learned to handle such a dough. The regulation reflects this calling for less water than what Marco used here.

Thanks to Marco for this interesting pizza quality lesson.

P.S. After the proposed regulation was published Marco wrote to the responsible Ministry to complain about some aspects that to him were not exact. In response to this the regulation now includes sourdough as a possible rising agent. Good Work!

Comments

[ronald]

che bonta'!

[Niki]

I'm wondering why there isn't any seafood mentioned in the marinara pizza? As far as I'm aware (my family are Italian/Australian) marinara pizzas and pastas include seafood - hence the name (coming from the Italian word for ocean: mare).
Many Australian have been confused about this when we hear on American TV shows and movies about marinara sauce - which is nothing but a simple tomato sauce (what Australians and Italians know as napolitana sauce).
What happened to the name that in one country it changed its meaning? I'm quite curious. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Alberto]

Niki, marinara in Naples and most of Italy has no seafood. Pizza was, and still is, a poor dish in Naples and fancy expensive ingredients, like seafood, are mostly a recent addition. The name comes from marinaio, mariner, so it's pizza mariner style. Pizza with seafood is usually called pizza ai frutti di mare (simply a translation).

The topic of Italian recipe names is quite complex. Italy doesn't have a codified cuisine like France, for historical reasons, since it became a united country only in the second half of the XIX century. So you can find a recipe with a name having many different meanings. For example: names like bolognese or neapolitana are not used in Italy, except maybe for tourists. Bolognese's proper name is ragu' Bolognese, to distinguish it from other ragu' throughout Italy. In Bologna you'd just find it as ragu' in menus. Neapolitana is something I've only seen used for pizza in Italy (marinara, the one in the picture, plus anchovies). Ironicaly the dish is often called pizza Romana in Naples.

What happened to the names once they left Italy is even more hard to say. One possibility is the following. Sometimes a certain name established itseld because most immigrants came from a particular region in Italy and they brought their local names with them. These names established themselves abroad while they slowly disapeared and changed in Italy.

Confused? Me too :-).

[Niki]

Yes, it certainly makes for a fascinating linguistic study!
My Nonna (from Veneto) has always referred to her bolognese sauce as ragu, which confused my school friends no end when I'd say "no...it's not bolognese...it's ragu...and it's fantastic, so there!".
Both her and my godfather from Rome have always referred to a pizza with tomato sauce, anchovies and black olives as a pizza napoli, but also give the same name to a pasta with just a plain tomato sauce!
Actually, after writing my last comment I remembered that in Australia occasionally pizza or pasta with seafood is also known as pescatore, as well as marinara. Not entirely accurate as it contains other seafood than fish....but there you go.
Certainly true about a non-codified language. Even today strong regional cuisine is maintained through Italy, as an indication of the separate countries/states they all were. In fact, my nonni had never even tasted pizza until they migrated to Australia in the 1950s!!

[Gigiuletta]

Is it true that Pizza from Naples is so good because of the special Naples water?
Gigiuletta

[GigiulaUegiula]

I am a big fan of the sourdough pizza myself but to tell the truth I disagree on your water to flour ratio. I keep it slightly lower than you do. I may lose something in softness but I gain in "aroma" and chewiness. And I still get better results with yeasts than "crescito" even though I am about to close the gap. The problem is that in the Bronx I hardly find the right ingredients. My sister (she wrote just before me) believes that the water here sucks as well. But even with San Pellegrino in the dough the results were not as good as in Genoa or Naples.

[Alberto]

Cari gigiuli: credete che non vi abbia riconosciuto marrani ;-)? Come state Genovesi d'America?

Sorry, let me go back to the point for the other readers too.

water: Napoli used to have a very soft water (i.e. low on salts) which some argue is very good for pizza. Today the water supply is not exactly as good (so to say ;-))so I would argue that, as almost always the case, what counts is the experience of the pizzaioli.

Some interesting info on water's effect on baking can be found here:
http://www.triangularwave.com/BakeryEffects.htm

Corrado, are you really making pizza yourself? I'm shocked! Since when did you start baking?... or are you just trying to impress the ladies :-D?