About Neapolitan Pizza

A few days ago, the information website giornale.it put on the frontpage “Allarme bambini obesi. Così la Gran Bretagna restringe pizze e torte” (Alarm bell sounds for obese children. So, Great Britain shrinks pizzas and pies”). This piece of news certainly scares us and warns all the English mothers, and not only them, which go to a pizzeria or  buy takeaway pizzas to have a family home evening weekly.

Today, I am writing the third article on the “menu saga” because, after having been studied, conceived and proposed to the customers, it is time to make the pizzas. I would like to make some considerations on how a preparation, in this case the pizza, can become an excellent or an awful dish using the same ingredients, at the same time and with the same pizza equipment.

In a previous article, I wrote about the birth of the baked Neapolitan pizza. Now, I’d like to talk about another Neapolitan pizza that we Neapolitans simply call “a’ pizza fritta”(deep-fried pizza). Already in 1789, in the Neapolitan-Tuscan dialects dictionary, the abbot Ferdinando Galiani writes about the definition of the various pizzas, as “la pizza a lu furno con l’arecheta e la pizza fritta di cicoli, la pizza ddoce, etc…

If we ask any person when the Neapolitan pizza was born, he/she will answer, without hesitation, that it was invented in honor of Queen Margherita. That fateful day, on June 11, 1889, in the Royal Palace of Capodimonte in Naples, only the name Margherita was born as some historical texts of the mid-nineteenth century describe the pizza with mozzarella and tomato.

I phone my friend, the photographer Luciano Furia, and tell him: “tomorrow, I’ll pop round to your place at 10am, I’ll bring you to meet a true artisan”. Luciano lives in one of Naples’ oldest and most beautiful squares named San Domenico Maggiore.

After the celebrations by all of us pizzaioli for the UNESCO’s acknowledgement of the art of Neapolitan pizzaiuolo as an intangible heritage of humanity, during these days I asked myself an immense number of questions: how can this important statement be confirmed over time? How can we safeguard this recognition? What are the strategies to communicate this immaterial resource to non-professionals?

The Vera Pizza Napoletana Association and the Neapolitan Pizzaiuoli Association proclaimed January 17th  “Giornata del pizzaiuolo napoletano” (Day of the Neapolitan pizzaiolo). The choice of the date is not accidental because on this day we celebrate Sant’Antuono Abate, which is considered the protector of the bakers and the pizzaioli who cooked their pizzas, from ancient Greece, in the dome oven.

I have been thinking about the importance to go back to the past to make progress for a long time. Let me explain myself better: reintroducing those agricultural products, those flavors of the past and proposing them in contemporary recipes again with the hope that this operation will give meaning to our work and the economic future of our land through a tradition that is revived.

Neapolitan pizza is not just tradition. To the history, culture and technology, it must be added the scientific knowledge, they are all essential elements to ensure balance and harmony to a product of excellence such as the Neapolitan pizza. Do not you believe it? Therefore, I’d like to give you some examples of how scientific research is important for the pizzaiolo profession.

The other morning, leaving my home, I met Virginia and Carmela, my two very smart neighbors, which smiled at me and started to talk to me. Virginia said: “Mr. Enzo I saw you on tv celebrating the Neapolitan pizza”. Therefore, I explained that we were not celebrating the pizza but the art of the Neapolitan “pizzaiuolo” which is now part of the UNESCO List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

I have always wondered why Pulcinella is every time indissolubly linked to food. If we think about theater, cinema, painting, printing, literature or more simply the collective imagination, Pulcinella is continually represented with pizza or spaghetti. The Pulcinella mask, as we know it today, was invented in the sixteenth century by theater actor Silvio Fiorillo, but his modern costume was conceived by another actor, Antonio Petito.

The establishment of any food business starts with the development of the menu. I am fully convinced of this statement I matured over years of work and that’s what I try to communicate through my consulting activity.  I worked as a consultant in Canada, in the U.S., in China and in Ukraine also, around the world, I have always tried to focus the attention on the importance of the menu and on its central role when planning a restaurant business.