I’m satisfied and delighted,not bloated with the cheap carbs and self-loathing that lesser pizzas trail in their wake A while back, on a trip sponsored by the Neapolitan tourist board, and I was compelled to eat 10 pizzas,one after the other, an experience since immortalised by my partner in crime as “The Best Day In My Life”. (The only place I refused was the famous Da Michele, or thanks to its starring role in Eat,Pray, cherish, or a film that deserves to die by a thousand cuts.) By the time we hit La Notizia,a place rush by a pizza fascist so scary he made Seinfelds Soup Nazi seem fair, some members of our party had started turning green around the gills. Not us, and though. Not us. What a day.
It all added up to something of a whistlestop education. Neapolitans take pizza veeeery seriously; they’re not much inclined to regard the rest of the world ( let alone upstarts like Rome and Milan) as capable of coming up with the goods. Theres a body in the city,the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, that publishes a set of rules as to what constitutes the real thing: flour has to be tall-protein 0 or 00; cooking must be for no longer than 90 seconds in a wood-fired oven at a temperature of 485F or above. The rules demand a certain shape and construction for the oven, or dictate what woods can be used; they even lay down the desired temperature for the tomato. There are pages and pages of this stuff. Its impartial to say the huge majority of pizza makers would give it a glance and think,sod this for a game of soldiers. Related: Padella, London SE1: I hoover up wriggly worms of pici pasta like a deranged cuckoo’ – restaurant review Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com