But groundbreaking London pizza merchants like Franco Manca and Pizza Pilgrims may be convincing a new wave of pizza bakers and eaters that the dots are desirable.

“They’re becoming quite the fashion, aren’t they?” observed Nick Buckland of Yard Sale Pizza, a new pizzeria on Lower Clapton Road in the heart of hipster East London.

Yes there is a place for personal preferences, even amongst the cognoscenti in Naples. Some, like the great Enzo Coccia, want their pizza cheese to be stretchy and stringy. Others prefer their mozzarella smooth, flowing, oozy, molten. A few like it every which way but especially loose.

Stretchy, stringy mozzarella over Yard Sale Pizza’s Margherita

Runny, molten mozzarella over the Margherita pizza at Ruben’s Bakehouse

Connecting the dots

I’m learning otherwise. When I’ve posted photos of polka-dotted pizzas displeasing to me these were wrongly interpreted as endorsements. The offenders hit the “like” button. When I released the video I shot at Coccia’s Pizzaria La Notizia in Naples outlining what to look for in fior di latte on a cooked pizza few London influencers commented on it.
 

#NoPizzaPolkaDots

The mozzarella dot matrix is threatening London’s pizza landscape. It’s a strong force with influential backers and it’s spreading like pox. I can’t beat it alone.

I need your help.

Write to your MP. Write to your GP, if you think that might help. When you spot the dreaded dots on a London pizza snap a photo of it and share it on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook with the name of the pizzeria and the hashtag #NoPizzaPolkaDots.

If you don’t have a smartphone or camera handy just write #NoPizzaPolkaDots on a napkin and leave it on the table. Remember, a new generation of oozy-mozzarella-loving pizza devotees is depending on us.

Kidfoodish likes his mozzarella stringy.

The boast is easily forgiven: The Neapolitans are justly proud of their Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP, one of the most prized cheeses in Italy. Five producers in Naples and another 40 in nearby Caserta produce buffalo mozzarella conforming to the strict regulations set by its trademark DOP – Denominazione di Origine Protetta (“Protected Designation of Origin”).

The “DOP” pizza at Princi

When Neapolitans do order Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP on their pizza it’s usually set against fresh pomodorini (cherry tomatoes) rather a sauce made from tinned (canned) plum tomatoes. This pizza displays the classic Margherita’s Italian tricolore – basil for green, mozzarella for white, tomato for red – but is listed differently on menus. Often it’s designated as ‘Margherita Extra’, ‘Regina Margherita’ or simply ‘La Regina’ – “the Queen”. Sometimes it takes its name from its description, as in ‘Pizza con Mozzarella di Bufala e Pomodorini’. The Pizzeria Sorbillo in Naples employs the shorthand ‘DOC’, as in Denominazione di Origine Controllata, a distinction Mozzarella di Bufala Campana was granted in 1993. The mozza’s status was upgraded in 1996 from DOC to DOP but the name stuck. London’s Princi is more up-to-date, calling the same pizza ‘DOP’.

The straight dope on Margherita pizza in Naples is, with few exceptions, as follows:

If the mozzarella is from cow’s milk it goes on the pizza atop a layer of red sauce consisting of peeled plum tomatoes taken from a tin. If the mozzarella is from buffalo milk it is distributed over the dough in slices, cubes or torn pieces and then topped with slices of fresh tomatoes whenever good ones are in season and available. We’re talking little tomatoes, usually pomodorini but sometimes datterini (little dates) or fragolini (grapes).

Why fresh tomatoes? Most pizzaioli will tell you they provide buffalo mozzarella with greater stability. If the mozzarella di bufala is fresh and of good quality it is naturally juicy and, when subjected to the intense heat of a wood-fired oven, as molten as lava from Mount Vesuvius. If the flow of milky cheese juice runs over a bed of hot tomato sauce, rather than around fresh tomatoes, the pizza surface gets very runny. Quickly the mix of white and red liquids runneth over. As a pizza cheese mozzarella di bufala thrives on dry ground.

Could the great lyricist Johnny Mercer have had pizza in mind when he matched these lines about love’s uncertainties to a Hoagy Carmichael melody?  The fatalism in the song How Little We Know reflects my own doubts ever since I fell madly in love, almost nine hours ago, with the pizza at Pizza East, a two-day-old restaurant in the Tea Building (56 Shoreditch High Street, London – see map. Tel 020 7729 1888).

Lunching in a near empty venue where the staff outnumbered the customers by a ratio of perhaps 15-to-1, my Margherita pizza (£6) was the best I’ve ever had in London. It was more distinctive, stylistically, than the pizzas at all but one of London’s more accomplished pizzerias, Story Deli. Rather than merely emulate the Neapolitans, Australian chef Bernie Plaisted has looked to pizzerias in Sydney and Los Angeles for some crisp thinking. His pizza is crisp to the core, unlike its soft-centered counterparts in Naples, yet extremely light, airy and delicately chewy. Evidence suggests that the charred, blistered and bubbly cornicione (puffy outer rim) was inspired by the sourdough crust at Pizzeria Mozza in LA. It compresses exquisitely to the chew. The English difference entails dusting the dough with fine Maldon sea salt. It the pizza too salty? Maybe. Would I like them to use less salt? No. The Maldon almost becomes a flavour as much as a seasoning. I love it.

The mozzarella is Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP – the best that GBP can buy. Pizza East drains the cheese, as it must, only not excessively so. The scattered patches of cheese do melt and ooze some as the pizza bakes in the wood-and-gas-fired oven, but the transformation from solid state towards a liquid one does not turn the whole disk into one milky mess. Devotees of Franco Manca pizzeria at Brixton Market take notice: the surface geology of a Margherita requires molten masses of mozzarella floating alongside fresh basil atop a shallow pool of sweet roma tomatoes over a lunar-like landing. If the cheese is dry, chewy, stringy, tough or otherwise detached from those other elements the ensemble suffers. (I appreciate that Franca Manca’s Giuseppe Mascoli can not afford to use such an expensive cheese given his incredibly low prices. But it would be nice to have the option to pay a couple of pounds more for something better.)

My second pizza at today’s lunch was an extraordinary vongole variation (£12) topped with clams, oregano, cherry tomatoes, garlic, red chili flakes, butter and, most controversially, grated pecorino. This violation of the no-cheese-with-seafood mandate was immediately overshadowed by the defiance of not so much a rule as an unspoken trust assuring all, regardless of age, race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation or economic standing, that every pizza topping be edible if not palatable. Pizza East baked the vongole pizza with the clams left in their shells and then served the it that way. I could understand their removing the clams from the shells after the pizza had been baked but couldn’t fathom their leaving this chore in my hands. This would only slow me down when speed was of the essence. From my experience eating clam pizzas at Frank Pepe’s in New Haven, Connecticut I’d learned that no pizza variety loses more of its appeal as it cools and dries. And that’s why leaving the clams in their shells is such a clever bit of total insanity. It keeps them warmer longer, in their broth. (Some entrepreneur, maybe a Dragons’ Den aspirant, should invent a pizza-sized clam shell to replace the thermo insulated pouches now used by pizzerias for home delivery.)

So why am I concerned that Pizza Love will burst my bubble? First, hands-on consultant Bryant Ng, who was chef de cuisine at LA’s Mozza and has overseen the development of the Pizza East pizzas, leaves after dinner service on Monday – day 4. Plaisted, a capable and serious chef who cares about the quality and compatibility of his ingredients, may be able to manage for awhile without Ng at his side. But will his brigade of freshly trained pizzaiolos be able to maintain the high standards as word spreads and this ground-level warehouse fills up with Shoreditch trendhounds? And can they avoid cornicione creep – the infringement of the bubbly crust towards the middle of the smallish pizzas?
These are open questions that even Nick Jones of the Soho House Group, the backer of this venture, may not be able answer. For now I must take comfort in Johnny Mercer’s wise words of resignation:

Maybe it’s just for a day
Love is as changeable as the weather
And after all, how little we know

The show’s star exhibitor was fresh buffalo mozzarella from the 2,500-acre Laverstoke Park Farm in north Hampshire. Expert-in-residence Tommasso Valenzano, whose English has far less elasticity than his cheese, nevertheless managed to pull off Laverstoke’s pre-emptive marketing ploy to perfection. The idea is that if you’re worried your target consumers are not going to like your product when they sample it, warn the tasters beforehand. Before offering me a taste-on-a-toothpick, Valenzano explained that the challenge for Laverstoke is that its locally made mozza is too fresh. UK consumers are not accustomed to its fuller taste and firmer texture. We’re used to stuff that’s weeks old. Predictably, everyone who heard this argument sought to distinguish themselves as more open-minded. I know I did. We LOVED the mozzarella. Watching the milk ooze from the smooth balls of cheese, we found it nearly impossible to do otherwise.

Velanzano did not do as well with his bit about how happy buffalo make superior milk. Having plenty of room to roam no doubt benefits Laverstoke’s herd and its production. But Petal, the water buffalo brought to the show, wore the bored expression of Jeremy Paxman. Though raised organic on mixed salads, Petal looked like he was on Prozac.

The show’s silliest exhibitor, as well as its oddest manifestation of “real” food, was the Gourmet Chocolate Pizza Company from Nottingham. First off, the terms “Gourmet” and “Chocolate Pizza” are not a natural fit. If you’re producing flat disks of chocolate that resemble pizzas and are packaged in cardboard pizza boxes, maybe it is best to drop the word “Gourmet” from the name. My other concern is that these chocolate pizzas are not very appetizing. They achieve the impossible, making good-quality Belgian chocolate – dark, milk or white – look totally resistible. Among the various message pizzas (“Happy Birthday”, “Congratulations”, “I Love You”, etc.) that can be ordered online, there is a one-word greeting that says it all: “Sorry”

My favourite new product line at the show was produced by The Flavoured Butter Co of Denbighshire, Wales.  Flavoured butter, also known as finishing butter, compound butter, composed butter or, in French, beurre composé, is a butter kneaded with herbs, spices or other ingredients. It’s a convenience food for chefs and great for finishing a sauce or using in place of a sauce, melting it over a piece of fish (perhaps TFBC’s toasted walnut butter), a steak (maybe its Stilton butter) or potatoes (either red chilli butter or black olive butter).  The smoked garlic butter and red chilli garlic butter are ideal for slotting into a baguette, wrapping in foil and heating for flavoured garlic bread. 

TFBC whips the butter before blending in the flavours and shaping it into logs. This lightens the butter and prevents it from oozing its liquid prematurely. The butter, sourced from South Caernarfon Creameries, a dairy co-operative of nearly 170 Welsh farmers, is not organic. Owner Emma Lardwell (now there’s a name for a butter woman), who fronted the stand with her daughter Hannah, hopes that traceability will trump organic in the minds of consumers.

Two food purveyors revered by myself and other shoppers at London’s farmers markets shared transport from the Isle of Wight to Earls Court. Specifically, Lucy from The Garlic Farm hitched a ride with The Tomato Stall. I found the idea of idea of all that garlic, all those tomatoes and a few loaves of crusty bread tightly packed into a van very seductice. If the van hit a bumpy stretch, the smoked garlic jostled with the smooth-fleshed Elegance tomatoes and rubbed the bread in all the right places, you’d have England’s best bruschetta.

I laid thin slices of the mozza over hand-crushed plum tomatoes, slid the pizza over the pizza stone in the 230C (445F) oven and waited for the cheese to run together and form a molten mass. The crust slowly browned, the tomatoes steamed, but the mozza refused to soften, melt and ooze. If anything the cheese slices toughened, an observation confirmed by the difficulty I had using my pizza cutter on them. The unyielding mozzarella di bufalo inglese cut like rubber and chewed like it, too.