Pizza is one of the most popular and well known foods world-wide. While bread with toppings has been around for hundreds of years, the modern pizza originated in Italy with just tomato more than 100 years
ago. The addition of cheese came later.
Neapolitan pizza, or pizza napoletana is the traditional pizza of the Naples region of Italy. This pie makes its claim to fame as the very first pizza. These are topped very simply with tomatoes and mozzarella cheese.
Genuine Neapolitan dough is made with wheat flour, Neapolitan yeast, salt, and water. The dough should be kneaded by hand and formed by hand into a disk-shaped bread that should be extremely thin. This dough is then topped and baked
in a pre-heated high heat (450 degrees or more) oven for just minutes. Neapolitan dough should come out of the oven crispy, soft, and delicious.
A favorite, and traditional topping, for a Neapolitan pizza is buffalo milk mozzarella. This cheese is widely available, but is quite expensive. Fresh (cow milk) mozzarella is the cheese found topping most Neapolitan pizzas. Recipes
for this pizza that call for buffalo mozzarella can easily substitute fresh mozzarella to save money on ingredients. Fresh mozzarella is much softer and has a somewhat sweeter and milder flavor than processed mozzarella. It is available
in the specialty cheese area of most grocery stores.
There are three variations of the traditional Neapolitan pizza. They are pizza marinara, pizza Margherita, and pizza Margherita extra. Genuine pizza marinara is made with just tomato, garlic, oregano, and extra virgin olive oil and
sometimes basil. No cheese is added. Pizza Margherita is topped with tomato, slices of mozzarella, extra virgin olive oil, and basil. Pizza Margherita extra is topped the same way as the pizza Margherita except for the addition of the
buffalo milk fresh mozzarella. |
