Taking a cue from French regulations on bread making and German laws on beer production, the Italian government is creating legislation as to what is and isn’t real Neapolitan pizza.
It decrees that a Neapolitan pizza must be round and no more than 35 centimetres in diameter. The centre should not be higher than 0.3 cm and the crust cannot rise over two centimetres.
The law specifies what kind of flour, salt, and yeast and tomatoes have to be used. The sub clauses go even further.
Margherita, the classic type, must be topped not with just any type of mozzarella but mozzarella “from the southern Appenine” mountains.
And restauranteurs beware, you can’t call a pizza a “Margherita extra” unless it is topped with mozzarella made from buffalo milk, a southern Italian speciality.
Rolling pins are blasphemous and dough machines are heretical. The law says the dough must be kneaded by hand.
The CNN story is somewhat derisive and files this story under “News > Funny” but let’s hear it for a country that actually considers it’s cuisine to be part of it’s cultural heritage and worth protecting.
Pizza always makes me think of various topics.
1) Until I was 14, I hated the stuff and refused to eat it, because every Friday my grammar school served disgusting pizza. It had a fetid, rancid odor, lay under the heat lamps bathed in its own grease, and the cheese usually fell off. The L.A. County public schools’ answer to East Berlin, I suppose. On the one or two occasions I ate it anyway, this dreadful pseudo-food gave me the runs. So for years, I assumed that all pizza tasted like that.
2) At Webb School of California, however, I discovered Red Devil and Red Baron, purveyors of fresh, doughy, California-suburban pizza at its finest. We used to get them delivered between nine and ten at night. Scuttling back to the dorm, we stuffed our faces with a nice, greasy Pepperoni-and-Mushroom. (In fact, I had one of these just last week–and more than twenty years later). One especially perverse classmate of mine always opted for an especially repulsive assortment of toppings: Canadian Bacon, with green onions, black olives and pineapple–eeech!
Invariably we would flush down the whole lot with a quart of Coca-Cola, the real thing, too, none of this sissy diet stuff. Give me sugar and carbs and give me Death! One guy used to order large pizzas for himself four or five times a week. Whenever I chowed down on them, I would go right to bed with a full stomach and get up seven hours later, primed to wolf down a nice breakfast of bacon, eggs, oatmeal, hash browns, and buttered toast. Youthful gluttony…how I miss it.
3) The term “pizza” is an excellent example of Americans’ penchant for abbreviating. Edward becomes Ed, Charles chuck, Walter Bud (don’t ask me how), Albert Al. French Fries become “Fries” (pre-2003, that is), Hamburger sandwiches (see the storefront on one of the famous Depression photos) morph into “burgers,” pancakes become “cakes,” doughnuts turn into “donuts,” and what Ralph Kramden referred to as “pizza pies” has become just pizza. Best one today? Round Table.