Naples Part 4: Pizza

Apparently, pizzas were invented in Naples. A true Neapolitan pizza is made out of a few, very high quality ingredients. This is a very different creature indeed from the 'load everything you can on it' North American version. One of the things our guide book told us to look out for was the 'vera pizza napoletana' mark outside of pizzarias. As it is the home of the pizza, Neapolitanos take pizza very seriously. They even have an association which has decided on the guidelines for producing something that can be called a real 'Naples pizza'. They even go around and do quality checks before handing out the badge of approval which a pizzaria can then proudly display. Now, if being a pizza quality control person in Naples isn't a dream job, I don't know what would be.

A key ingredient in an authentic Neapolitan pizzas are San Marzano tomatoes, which grow on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius (lets hear it for that nice fertile volcanic soil). It is a plum tomato with a very little juice, so it is excellent for sauce. The typical pizza sauce from a Naples pizza doesn't have a lot of herbs and spices. It just has top quality tomatoes, sea salt and extra virgin olive oil. The flavours are so strong, you don't need anything else in the sauce. Spices are added on top of the pizza, rather than in the sauce. The two most popular are fresh basil leaves and fresh oregano. Quite often, top quality extra virgin olive olive oil is sprinkled over the top of the finished pizza to add taste.

As you can see from the above photo, most Naples pizzas are very simple indeed. The main ingredients are tomato sauce and local buffalo mozzarella (mozzarella di bufala Campana). This is mozzarella cheese made from the milk of water buffalos raised locally (Naples is in Campana province).

As you can see from the photo above and the one below, this is a bit different from the pale yellow hard blocks of mozzarela we get from the co-op. It is very soft, a bit watery, but it does have an strong flavour. Not surprizingly, it works perfectly with the San Marzano tomatoes. Interestingly, the wateriness of the cheese makes these pizzas a bit difficult to eat. The accepted method is to cut your pizza into a slice, fold the tip of the triangle to the centre and eat.

In case you didn't know what a water buffalo looked like. Here is one below.

This water buffalo is take from google and isn't an Italian one, but it gives you an idea of what one looks like. They are cow shaped, but don't mind living in marshy areas (hence the term 'water buffalo'). Apparently, there are marsh areas around Naples where these creatures live.

The other crucial ingredient is the pizza dough. This is made from Italian 0 or 00 wheat flour (i.e. fine milled) with a high glueten content, baker's yeast, sea salt and water. You may also add extra virgin olive oil. The dough must be kneaded by hand. After rising, it must be formed into a pizza shape by hand (i.e. no rolling pins) and must be no more than 3mm thick.

This is a wood fired pizza oven photo I pulled off of google images. These ovens are very, very hot (485 C/905 F). These ovens have to be started up hours before the pizzas go in, you put wood (oak for a Naples pizza) in, let it cook up and turn into hot embers and then push it to the side. You slide the pizzas off the large pizza spatula directly onto the hot oven base (the pizza bases are floured). Because of the heat of the oven and the thinness of the pizza (and the skillful use of yeast), the pizza will cook in 60 to 90 seconds. This high heat/quick cooking results in an amazing dough that is flavourful, crisp and woodsmoked on the outside and yet soft and chewy on the inside. What makes these pizzas work is that every single part is made either in the best possible way or with the best ingredients. You can tasted every single ingredient as you tuck into your pizza.

So, where is the best pizzaria in Naples? For years it was a hole in the wall place called Da Michele. This is in a side street about 15 min walk from Naples Central train station. Our guide book said that you knew when you were there when you saw the line of people outside. What our guidebook didn't explain was what you had to do to get inside. Observing the locals, I spotted that they all had numbered tickets. I asked about this (in my best Italian). We were told that we had to get our ticket. You go to the guy at the front desk, give him your name and the number of people in your party and he gives you a ticket. Then, it is pizza lottery. As tables of two or four are cleared off your number eventually comes up. Standing out side is quite a social occasions. Just about everyone in the line up were Italians, so they were curious about us.

Once you get inside, this is what it looks like. It is totally plain, has cheap tables and chairs (the pizzas are inexpensive too), and the menu consists of a choice of two types of pizza (tomato sauce with or without mozzarella (you can see the non-mozza version above, maybe this guy was on a diet)) and beer, water and Coke. Robert asked for the wine list and the waiter looked at him as if he was from a different planet.

Da Michele's supremacy as the best pizza in Naples has been challenged by Da Trianon. This is a much larger, more elaborately decorated restaurant about 30 seconds down the road from Da Michele. Unlike Da Michele, this restaurant offers wine and it has more than two different types of pizza. Compared to the the typical North American pizza, these are still quite simple, but even so, the addition of one or two extra ingredients seems quite risque by Naples standard. Of course, we ate here too. I had a pizza with porcini mushrooms and parma ham. Robert had peparoni. It was nice to have the extra flavours, but we both agreed that the Da Michele dough was better and so still retains our 'best pizza on the planet' award (a research topic we have been working on for a while). Amongst Italians, there is a debate as to whether Naples or Rome pizzas are the best. We have carried out intensive investigations into this and more will be revealed in my future Rome posts.

Note: Most of these photos are from google. I do have Naples pizza photos somewhere, but I think they are on another computer. I really do need to do a better job of organising my photos.