Recalling the prior night’s tasting of 10 exceptional Pepe pizzas I put the third-generation pizzaiolo on the spot:

How, I asked, does your pizza compare to that of your father and grandfather?

Pepe smiled uneasily, took a breath, then delivered the response heard in the video above.

The first takeaway is that Pepe knows how to duck a delicate question. But the larger and lasting lesson is as valid for a chef with three Michelin stars (see: Massimo Bottura Compresses His Grandmother) as it is for a pizza baker, or even a home cook:

We should respect, honour and learn from the past but we mustn’t be bound by it, nor by the nostalgic certainty that everything was much better then than it is now.

Think back, look forward.

The signature Franco Pepe pizza seen at the conclusion of the video is called Il sole nel piatto – “the sun in the plate”.
 

 
Its toppings – mozzarella di bufala, Piennolo del Vesuvio tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, anchovies and basil – are all local, conforming to the “km 0” (kilometre zero) designation created by the Italian Agricultural Union and backed by Pepe. Km 0 is a movement of locavores and is very much about thinking back and looking forward.

Naples shared its love of pizza and dry pasta with the world many years ago but something got lost in translation. Rather than eat pasta al dente and pizza soft, in the Neapolitan way, foreigners learned to do the opposite.

Non-Italians at last discovered the pleasures of al dente pasta in the late 20th Century. But only recently have hardcore devotees in the pizza diaspora acquired a soft spot for pizza with a light, pliable crust.

In my video above, “Pizza in Naples is Strictly Softcore”, the master pizzaiolo Enzo Coccia of Pizzaria La Notizia explains why Neapolitan pizza must be so soft and light. (A hint is in the photo of Enzo below).

See my other video starring the great Enzo Coccia: Pizza Master Enzo Coccia Knows his Fior di Latte.

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.

Neapolitans may sing the praises of Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP but mostly they eat fior di latte – mozzarella made from cow’s milk – on their pizza.

Any ambivalence about fior di latte , as opposed to buffalo mozzarella, might have something to do with what happens to this essential pizza cheese is passed from or into the wrong hands. In the video above the great Enzo Coccia of Pizzaria La Notizia complains about low-quality fior di latte that gets dry and rubbery in the pizza oven.

But stringy mozzarella Enzo likes. Stringiness, he says, likely indicates that the fior di latte is of good quality, was cut by hand and won’t separate easily from the tomato or other other pizza toppings. And in that there is joy and beauty.

The very first pizza of PizzaTuesday Naples, the young&foodish group tour of the world’s pizza capital, was shaped by the hands of Luigi Condurro at the legendary L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele.

The master pizzaiolo lightly pinched the corners of the uncooked pizza and stretched it over the pizza peel, using the edges of that long-handled wood paddle to hold the flattened dough’s drawn-out shape.

Luigi the virtuoso voiced his love for pizza with his fingertips, even when addressing the question asked and answered in the short video above.

Luigi is the son of Michele Condurro, who gave the pizzeria its name, and the grandson of Salvatore Condurro Sr, who founded the family Neapolitan pizza business in 1870. The Condurros moved Da Michele to its current location on Via Cesare Sersale in 1930.

The crowds at Da Michele are as much a fixture outside as Luigi is inside. The pizzeria turns tables as quickly as its pizzaioli turn pizzas, assembling each Margherita or Marinara, the only varieties available, in one minute and cooking it in another. Though the wait is rarely longer than an hour it can be an excruciating 60 minutes given how good the pizza is.

PizzaTuesday Naples will return in late October for intimate meet-and-eats with Luigi as well as a new generation of Neapolitan pizza greats like Franco Pepe, Enzo Coccio and Ciro Salvo. If your want to try the third-best, second-best and first-best pizzas of your life in 24 hours you’ll want to join us.

Click here to submit a request for more information.

Forget the great operatic tenors of La Scala. No voice in all of Italy is so lyrical as that of a Pepe in Grani waiter serving you a Franco Pepe pizza.

At this incomparable pizzeria in a hilltop village some 30 miles (50km) north of Naples, every pizza made by Pepe, the Maestro of Caiazzo, is served with all the pomp it merits.

We’re at the PizzaTuesday Naples special tasting at Pepe in Grani in March and Cesare, the mirthful waiter, assumes the dual role of cameriere and town cryer, calling out the names and descriptions of each of the 1o Pepe masterpizzas he served. Highlights of his performance are captured in the one-minute video Three Franco Pepe Pizzas (above).

If only Pavarotti were alive today to record his own recitation as he disposed of one Franco Pepe pizza after another.

Pepe in Grani, Vico S. Giovanni Battista, 3, Caiazzo, Italy (map) – Tel: +39 0823 862718

The Next PizzaTuesday Naples

PizzaTuesday Naples, an insider’s tour through the world capital of pizza as well its heartland, will return to Pepe in Grani in October. Click here to submit a request for more information.

pizza fritta ripieno – “fried stuffed pizza”

 
In Naples a friggitoria is a purveyor of fried foods and snacks. A classic pizzeria e friggitoria such as Di Matteo merges the arts of baking and frying.

Outside the Naples pizzeria-friggitoria Di Matteo on a slow day.

 
Di Matteo was the third stop on my one-day Neapolitan pizza crawl. You can see highlights of that day in my video: 8 Naples Pizzerias in 1 Day & 2 Minutes

To fully appreciate the art and science of pizza in its historic epizzentre you have to explore its surface textures, features and forms.
 

 
THE PIZZA OF NAPLES IN TWO MINUTES, my video compression of the September 25th pizza crawl, traces the topography of Neapolitan pizza, from the stretching of the dough in the practiced hands of the pizzaiolo to his rotating of the crust as it puffs and browns under the torrents of intense heat in the wood-fired brick oven to his unveiling of the finished Margherita, its surface glistening with deposits of molten mozzarella and plum tomato sauce.

The eight pizzerias featured in the video are:

(in order of appearance)

Di Matteo
Pepe in Grani
Trianon da Ciro
Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba
L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele
Europea di Mattozzi
Gino Sorbillo
Regina Margherita

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.

Notes Music & Coffee is home to the UK’s first La Marzocco Strada, the Maserati of espresso machines. Sartori bakes its Neapolitan-styled pizzas in the wood-fired brick forno crafted by Strazzullo Michele, the Stradivarius of pizza ovens.

With its Strada platform La Marzocco introduces pressure profiling, a technology which allows the barista to customise espresso extraction to draw out certain flavour components and mute others. Ordinarily a barista would pull an espresso under a steady brew pressure of 9 bars for 25-30 seconds. With the Strada baristas can adjust the pressure as easily as a chef would the intensity of a burner.

Initially I dismissed pressure profiling as a gimmick and the Strada’s mechanical pressure paddle as nothing more than a play toy for baristas. (Sure I too wanted one in my bedroom, but that’s another story.) Notes Music & Coffee co-owner Fabio Ferreira changed my thinking in 60 seconds. He pulled two espressos for me using the same coffee blend – Has Bean’s Kicker – but changed their pressure profiles. He brewed the first shot under a pressure of 9 bars for the first 15 seconds and then lowered the pressure to 3 bars for the final 15 seconds. He brewed the second shot at 3 bars for the first 15 seconds, ramped up the pressure to 9 bars for an additional 10 seconds and then back down to 5 bars for the final 5 seconds.

The difference between the two was dramatic: The first shot delivered the lemon zing that puts the kick in Kicker. The second was sweeter and softer, likely the result, according to Ferreira, of the long, low-pressure “pre-infusion”. If any geek needed a rationale to spring for a gleaming new Strada, this was it.

The appeal of a Strazzullo Michele pizza oven, like that of a La Marzocco, can be as much about machismo as macchina. That the company’s made-to-order pizza ovens are now mostly exported to deep-pocketed clients in Japan, Korea, China and the USA only enhances their snob appeal back home in Naples. Thrilled merely to have Strazzullo Michele take its money, Sartori did not dictate such design details as the shape of oven’s benchtop or the colours and patterns of its decorative mosaic. Strazzullo Michele pretty much told Sartori how their Leicester Square oven was going to be.

The shiny, bright-coloured ceramic shell you see encasing the domes of brick ovens at famous pizzerias is missing. So, for that matter, is the dome – or at least the top of it. The low height and flattened roof of this model’s baking chamber enables even heat distribution and cooking. There’s little risk of incinerating the crust even before the mozzarella has melted and the dough has cooked through. Paolo, Sartori’s accomplished Neapolitan pizzaiolo, can liquify the fior di latte that floats over his exceptionally light Margherita without having to lift it up from the hot stone and suspend the pizza in the oven’s hottest reaches. The hot zones are everywhere.

Impressive as they are, the Strazzullo Michele pizza oven and La Marzocco Strada espresso machine depend on top-quality ingredients as well as the skill of the mano del operatore. At Notes Music & Coffee and Sartori the “operator’s hand” belongs to geeks who know enough to know there is always more to know.

Notes Music & Coffee, 31 St Martin’s Lane, London WC2N 4ER (map) – 020 7240 0424

Sartori, 15-18 Great Newport Street, London WC2H 7JE (map) – 020 7836 6308