Not especially, particularly for the first-time Neapolitan pizza maker. Funny thing about the pizza making arts, most people who are just beginning to practice assume that the magic is all in the flour (or some other secret ingredient), when the trick is really in the technique (the handling of the dough, the heat of the […]

Because if Neapolitan-style pizza is about any one thing, it’s heat penetration. Crusts must be crispy and toasty on the bottom, which is a difficult effect to achieve if it goes onto the stone with much more on it than crushed tomatoes on the top. Toppings absorb heat, you see…heat the crust needs to bake […]

Brick ovens are of course the preferred device for making Neapolitan-style pizzas. I happen to have one, however I recognize that there may be a few of you oddballs out there who for some strange reason don’t. But then I made Neapolitan-style pizzas for years using my simple Whirlpool. You can too. The trick is […]

Sorry about yesterday. I was on the road with the family. We headed up to Chicago foa couple of days. It was a short stay and we had no pizza. Sometimes things just go that way.

Since Neapolitan pizzas must be small to bake up properly, you’ll likely wind up making several of them in a row for you and any guests you might have. This isn’t a big deal since they cook up so quickly, even in a home oven. The big things are the dough (which I’ll show you […]

What with all the strong-tasting ingredients on top of it do you mean? I think so, especially for a Neapolitan-style pie, since the flavors are fairly austere compared to an American pizza. On which note, while I am deviating from the letter of D.O.C. guidelines, I do hope to honor them at least in spirit. […]

Well it didn’t take long for me to lapse into D.O.C. pizza apostasy. After scouring the web in search of a link-able Neapolitan-style pizza dough recipe, I finally settled on this one by Mario Batali. Now, a close follower of what I was saying yesterday will note several discrepancies between this preparation and the ideals […]

Interesting you should ask, since I don’t really know the answer. Or at least I don’t know the full extent of the answer, which is spelled out to last detail in a 42-page scholarly paper on the subject that resides in some Italian governmental filing cabinet. However I do know the gist of it. First […]

Having tackled the fully Americanized version of pizza, I think it only makes sense to turn around and go the other direction: to the hyper-authentic Neapolitan style. Neapolitan pizza, as the name implies, is that which comes from the city of Naples, and in fact there’s evidence people have been eating pizza there for a […]