Italian Pizza Polices??

[andylawcc]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5067285/?GT1=3391

so don't EVER ask for a Pepperoni in Naples or Vinny will whack you.

 

[Sid59]

for those who can't click

ROME - When it comes to food Italians are some of the most opinionated people in the world.

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When it comes to pizza, arguably Italy?s most popular culinary export, Italians tolerate and even enjoy a wide range of varieties and baking styles, but they all agree on one thing: The ?real thing? is Neapolitan pizza.

Now the Italian Ministry of Agricultural Politics is proposing that Neapolitan pizza be protected by a law that regulates what goes into it and how it is made.

The draft for the law gets quite specific.

The pizza has to be round. It mustn?t be more than 13¾ inches in diameter. The crust has to be ¾ of an inch at the most, and the center has to be less than a tenth of an inch high!

Naturally the dough must be kneaded by hand. Rolling pins and dough machines are just not acceptable.


? ITALY: Maps, facts and figures

Meeting all these criteria and complying with the required types of salt, flour, yeast and tomatoes will grant the label ?S.T.G.?, which means guaranteed traditional specialty.

Issue stems from EU
This attempt to regulate gastronomical products derives from some tense controversies in the European Union over whether typically national products can be called by the same name if they are manufactured in another country.

The biggest victory of this kind in recent years has been for producers of Parma ham, or prosciutto.

The raw, cured ham is a specialty of the northern Italian town of Parma. The consortium that represents the regional prosciutto firms argued that the English or German version should not be entitled to name their product ?Parma ham.?

The European Union approved this request, making it a commercial violation in all 25 EU nations to label anything as Parma ham unless it actually comes from there.

In the case of prosciutto, Parmesan cheese and some vintages of Italian wine, there are serious financial interests at stake, as the original product can often justify higher prices.

What's really at stake?
But with pizza that goal is hardly possible.

From the massive chains of Domino?s and Pizza Hut in America, to Spizzico here in Italy, from sliced to square and fresh to frozen, the definition of pizza has been stretched far more than the dough could ever be.

So what?s at stake now doesn?t seem to be a profit, but a principle.

In Naples that principle is alive and well, and the city's melding of these simple ingredients is exceptionally satisfying.

You really have to go there and eat it to understand the difference.

A word of advice for first-timers: Don?t ask for pepperoni because it?s an American creation that doesn?t exist over here.

If you do you?ll get a very strange look and a pizza covered with bell peppers.
Stephen Weeke is the NBC News Bureau Chief in Rome.

 

[nakedfrog]

Yes, I actually had that problem. Ordered pepperoni and got long skinny peppers. You want a salami pizza, that's the closest you'll get (but it's still pretty good). But, americans make better pizza, so it doesn't really matter.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
Yes, I actually had that problem. Ordered pepperoni and got long skinny peppers. You want a salami pizza, that's the closest you'll get (but it's still pretty good). But, americans make better pizza, so it doesn't really matter.

And, we invented pizza (contrary to what a lot of people believe)

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
And, we invented pizza (contrary to what a lot of people believe)

You should know.

I'd like a true pizza from Italy, stone oven, hand kneeded, etc.

Ah, well.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

I only had the Pizza they make in Florence, but it was freaking amazing. I've tried dozens of times to recreate it. 100X better than anything I've ever had in America.

Any genuine Italians want to give me a recipe and instructions? I've read innumerable website recipes and am convinced none of them are correct.

 

[stonecold3169]

Originally posted by: HeroOfPellinor
I only had the Pizza they make in Florence, but it was freaking amazing. I've tried dozens of times to recreate it. 100X better than anything I've ever had in America.

Any genuine Italians want to give me a recipe and instructions? I've read innumerable website recipes and am convinced none of them are correct.

I had pizza in Rome, and it was certainly nothing to get excited over... but then again, I'm bias because of my amazing love of chicago style pizza, which couldn't be more opposite of traditional

 

[Jzero]

A local pizza joint in my area claims that the owner bought the recipe from a street vendor in Naples for $100 and has not changed it at all.

It is awesome pizza. Different, but awesome. The sauce is very sweet, and the cheese is spread in a spiral so it doesn't cover the whole pizza. The first time you eat it, you will say "WTH is this?" and you won't like it very much.
But the second time, you start to like it until you become an addict.

 

[yukichigai]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
Yes, I actually had that problem. Ordered pepperoni and got long skinny peppers. You want a salami pizza, that's the closest you'll get (but it's still pretty good). But, americans make better pizza, so it doesn't really matter.

And, we invented pizza (contrary to what a lot of people believe)

Yup. Made by an enterprising cook in (I think) 1945, just before the end of WWII. He tried to market it and got nowhere, so in a last-ditch effort in 1946 he went down to the docks where a boatload of soldiers were coming home for the first time in years, to hand out free samples. One of the soldiers snagged a slice and chowed down, extolled its virtues (I suspect it tasted like ambrosia compared to Army rations) and was seen by enough reporters that a number of media outlets ran either a picture of him eating it or mentioned it in the story. After that I guess people figured eating pizza was the patriotic thing to do.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Originally posted by: stonecold3169

Originally posted by: HeroOfPellinor
I only had the Pizza they make in Florence, but it was freaking amazing. I've tried dozens of times to recreate it. 100X better than anything I've ever had in America.

Any genuine Italians want to give me a recipe and instructions? I've read innumerable website recipes and am convinced none of them are correct.

I had pizza in Rome, and it was certainly nothing to get excited over... but then again, I'm bias because of my amazing love of chicago style pizza, which couldn't be more opposite of traditional

It's funny, because I've always had a strong disdain for sauce on pizza. Chicago is the worst. I always order it with very light sauce and that's the only way I can eat any American pizza. When we ordered a pizza in Italy, I was surprised by how thin it was and by the fact that tomato was represented only as a topping. It was like destiny.