I was bitten by the pizza bug in the best of all places, a huge farmhouse kitchen in Tuscany. I was working with chef Alvaro Maccioni teaching Italian cookery classes, when we discovered that a huge bread or pizza oven was hidden behind a small, blackened iron door. Aristide, the old man who swept and set the huge fires in the lodge, set and lit the oven, first with faggots of fine chestnut branches to quickly warm the porous base and domed brick roof, changing to metre-long, thinnish logs of seasoned hardwood to sustain the heat and create a bed of wood coals over the base. After a few hours it was ready. The live coals were swept to one side in a pile, the base or sole of the oven swept clean with a wet brush and another log or two placed on top of the coals to maintain the heat.
During this time, we had mixed and energetically kneaded dough, shaped it into balls and set them on a huge wooden tray, dusting the tops copiously with flour. The dough rose easily on that chilly October day, as the heat from the now roaring fire-pit of the oven was tremendous. The balls rose and cracked their floury caps. These were upturned and patted or rolled out, toppings added and, in turn, guided by Alvaro or twinkly-eyed Aristide, everyone slipped their pizza onto the pala or pizza peel and shot it into the oven. Five minutes later we were munching on what was voted ‘the best pizza in the world’ and sipping ice-cold beer.
Since then, I have fired up different sizes and types of ovens both at home and in Italy, and made countless pizzas, learning more with every dough made and every pizza patted. I have tried to make the recipes in this book home-oven friendly, as I am well aware that most people will not have a wood-fired oven or indeed the time required to fire it up. Good pizza can be made at home, as long as the dough is soft and pillowy, the oven is hot and there’s a heavy baking sheet or bakestone inside. The taste of the wood smoke won’t be there, but the pizza will bake with a nice chewy crust. Most importantly, the ingredients must be the best and freshest – there’s no room for kitchen leftovers.
Pizza is said to have originated on the streets of Naples, to feed and fill ordinary working people cheaply. Its roots are distinctly southern Italian and pizza is considered a food of the city. Pizza alla Napoletana is always ‘open pizza’ (never filled, folded and baked). However, the way to eat pizza in the street is to fold it in quarters, hold it in a napkin and munch it like a sandwich. The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana lays down strict rules for the making and cooking of pizza in order to be able to sell it as ‘Pizza Napoletana’. Little stuffed and deep-fried pizzelle and panzerotti are other examples of street food from Naples and Campania. In Rome, pizza is sold by the metre (or its parts). Throughout Italy, other types of flat hearth breads, such as focaccia and schiacciata, were traditionally made at home on the hot hearth where the embers had been.
The only ingredients necessary to make pizza dough are flour, salt, yeast and water. I like to add olive oil as it gives a good texture and flavour to the dough when baked at home. Salt will bring the flavour out of the dough and strengthen the crust but if you are using a flaky sea or crystal salt, make sure it is finely ground or dissolve it in the warm water before adding it to the flour. Any type of yeast you are happy with will do – just follow the manufacturer’s instructions, using the liquid specified in the recipe. As for water, the softer the water, the better the dough, so I would use filtered water or even bottled water in hard-water areas. Other breads, like focaccia, rely on olive oil for flavour, so you must use extra virgin olive oil. It doesn’t have to be an expensive one – a supermarket blend of extra virgin olive oils will do. Always anoint your piping hot pizza with extra virgin olive oil (flavoured or not) before you eat it. Not only will it look better, it will taste sublime!
My final advice to any novice pizza-maker is to keep the choice of topping as simple as you can to truly appreciate the flavours. The crust is all-important and turns soggy if it is weighed down too much. Slice meat and vegetables thinly and don’t smother the base with sauce or cheese. Most important of all, eat it hot, hot, hot, straight out of the oven. I hope you enjoy using this book – I cooked every one of the pizzas for the photographs and we never tired of eating them at the studio or at home as they were all so different from each other that there was always something new to taste. Go on, get your hands in some dough right now and bake a fragrant pizza. You don’t need any special ingredients – just start off with an olive oil, salt and garlic topping and savour your first real pizza.
