Between 1900 and the rise of fascism in the 1920s, three million Italians emigrated to the US. The diaspora mostly came from the impoverished south – Calabria, Campania, Molise and Sicily. Some died on the way to the American dream. Others arrived at Ellis Island and moved on to build little Italies all over the state: from Brooklyn and the Bronx to New Jersey and Manhattan, the streets spoke, fought, loved, lived and ate Italian.
One economic migrant did better than all the others. Slice by slice, it conquered the American streets.
As with pasta, Italians can’t take all the credit for pizza. Topped breads have been a favoured snack for thousands of years. The Etruscans were baking schiacciata 2,000 years ago, Armenians and Babylonians ate flat, unleavened bread cooked in mud ovens while Greeks, Romans and Egyptians had their own version of bread topped with olive oil and spices. Also, the Oxford Companion to Food points out that the linguistic similarity between pizza and pitta is no coincidence. However, it’s the Italians who made pizza popular. And it’s their version which we can’t get enough of.
You have probably never met anyone who didn’t like pizza. And you’ve probably never met anyone who didn’t have their own version of the perfect pizza: from soft and chewy to thin and crispy, from a simple marinara to a multi-tiered choose-your-own-toppings inspiration, pizza is as varied as humanity itself.
Toppings range from the perfect marriage of pumpkin and ham to the failed relationship of chicken sausage and pineapple
The simplicity of pizza is deceiving. On paper, all you need is a small basketful of ingredients: water, salt, yeast and flour for the dough and tomato sauce, mozzarella, garlic, basil and pepper for the simplest topping options such as margherita or marinara.
On the kitchen top, however, it gets a bit more complicated. Let’s start from the dough. The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana allows only four ingredients in Neapolitan pizza dough: water, salt, yeast and flour. Other recipes add olive oil and milk. Resting time also varies from 15 minutes to 24 hours.
For toppings, not one taste fits all. Traditionally, Italian toppings are seasonal, simple, earthy and strictly sourced, from San Marzano tomatoes and mozzarella di bufala Campana to white anchovies and courgette flowers. But outside of Naples and, more so, across the Atlantic, toppings range from the perfect marriage of pumpkin and ham to the failed relationship of chicken sausage and pineapple.
But back to base because, rather than the toppings, this is what defines a good pizza. And in Italy, this constitutes a constant battle between the two capitals of pizza: Naples and Rome.
In Naples, the pizza base is soft, chewy and charred with a slightly elastic centre. In its regulations, the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana says that from the centre, the thickness should not be more than 0.4cm, while the border, the so-called cornicione, should not be more than two centimetres thick. The base should be cooked in a wood-burning oven and never in any form of pan or container. The result: a base which is so good that it can stand on its own with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt.
Up north, the Roman style pizza has a thinner and crispier base. No pizza police roam the Italian capital’s streets, which means that variations are allowed. Apart from water, salt, yeast and flour, some add a touch of sugar. It is these variations which have, to date, prevented the Roman pizza from earning an indicazione geografica tipica because the Breadmakers Association of Rome still cannot agree on the authentic recipe for the dough.
The main distinction from Neapolitan dough is the addition of olive oil – this gives the thin crust added flavour and crunch factor. Moreover, for cooking, the use of oiled sheet pans is allowed, especially for joints selling pizza al taglio.
So which side are you on: Neapolitan or Roman? The thing is that this is no pizza derby. Whatever your choice, you don’t have to justify it: you just eat it.