New legislation exposes a deeper, ages-old rift about whether pizza is best served to the masses or the classes.:)

I was most amused about: "Pizza with pineapples?" he asked. "That's a cake."

Very interestingly, Mr. Cucciniello, a veteran pizza maker in Naples thinks Pizza made in Rome is made by foreigners and is not authentic. "It's not Italian" :)

Yet, Cucciniello's pizza breaks the new rules in several ways. It uses vegetable oil, not the more expensive extra virgin olive oil; cow's milk mozzarella, not the moister, costlier variety made from the milk of a water buffalo; and small, sweet San Marzano tomatoes, grown in the nearby Sarno Valley, not the ones that come from the soil around Mount Vesuvius.

Let the battle resume, in the honored pastime of bickering over just the right ingredients for the pizza.. :)
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Thanks to Pat Gabriel
FOR THE PIZZA MAKERS OF NAPLES, A TEMPEST IN A PIE DISH

The New York Times
By Al Baker
June 9, 2004

NAPLES, Italy
The thing about Neapolitan pizza, one axiom goes, is that the higher the grade of the olive oil, the better the thread-count of the proprietor's clothes.

So while a new national law mandates what can authentically be called Neapolitan pizza, the legislation also exposes a deeper, ages-old rift about whether pizza is best served to the masses or the classes.

Italian pizza makers, politicians and the modern-day proletariat had set aside a century's worth of squabbling over tomatoes, basil, cheese and oil to focus on a larger topic that threatened them all: Neapolitan pizza was under attack, facing impostors worldwide.

As one local pizza maker, Alfonso Cucciniello, put it: "Everyone in the world is trying to do this type of pizza. In Japan, in China, in the United States, in Miami."

"Pizza with pineapples?" he asked. "That's a cake."

At the behest of the Association of Real Neapolitan Pizza, a group with 2,500 members worldwide, lawmakers and officials of the administration of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi recently acted to put some political weight behind an ancient dish made with green, red and white ingredients, the colors of the Italian flag. A law was passed in May. A nation of pizza makers gave thanks.

The European Union may follow suit. As the continent is homogenized, the new law is a marketing tool to brand Naples forever as the cradle of pizza. Pizzerias that serve the approved brand are now stamped official.

Then details of the new national standards slowly started to be digested.

Under them, the pizza must be round, no more than 35 centimeters (13.8 inches) in diameter. The crust cannot be too high. The dough must be kneaded by hand. Only certain flour, salt and yeast can be used. Extra virgin olive oil is a must, as are tomatoes from the Mount Vesuvius region and bufala mozzarella. For cooking the classic pizza Margherita, only mozzarella from the southern Apennine Mountains is allowed.

But here in the sun-blessed hills near the Sorrento peninsula, where the locals say pizza was invented, an almost improbable mini-melodrama is being played out. The pizza made by Mr. Cucciniello is no longer officially Neapolitan.

Mr. Cucciniello runs Da Michele pizzeria on the same gritty street in the working-class Forcella quarter where his wife's grandfather, Michele Condurro, first started baking pizzas, a bit larger in size than the average dinner plate, in the late 19th century.

Da Michele's pizza breaks the new rules in several ways. It uses vegetable oil, not the more expensive extra virgin olive oil; cow's milk mozzarella, not the moister, costlier variety made from the milk of a water buffalo; and small, sweet San Marzano tomatoes, grown in the nearby Sarno Valley, not the ones that come from the soil around Mount Vesuvius.

Yet Mr. Cucciniello, draping his thick forearms over the cash register one recent night, said the pizza in Rome is being made by foreigners and is not authentic.

"It's not Italian," said Mr. Cucciniello, who wears bluejeans and serves his pizza with paper napkins and plastic cups to hordes of adoring Italians. "It's not the Italian pizza."

Rosa Russo Iervolino, the mayor of Naples, praised the new law.

"It is a guarantee for Naples pizza, just as there are guarantees for other Italian brands, like Parmesan cheese," she said recently. "It is important to recognize where certain foods come from and protect them from impostors."

Across town from Da Michele, in a more refined dining setting in a more opulent neighborhood, Carmine Stentardo, who runs Ciro a Santa Brigida, a pizzeria where diners can get an award-winning pizza as well as a variety of fancier dishes — antipasti, vegetables, pasta, fish and desserts — said he could not agree more.

It was his pizza association, after all, that had its standards codified in the new pizza law. Those ingredients are used in the pizzas on his menu. "Now this product is protected," Mr. Stentardo said with an air of self-satisfaction.

He is a tan, white-haired man who dresses in sport coats and leather shoes the complexion of his skin. His grandfather started serving the pizzas he serves in 1932.

"It's protected as a brand-name product," he added as he sat in a lacquered wooden chair in a dining room of tables with glinting silverware and heavy cloth napkins.

Once the law passed, Mr. Stentardo, Mr. Cucciniello and others seemed only too happy to pick up where they left off with the honored pastime of bickering over just the right ingredients for the pizza.

Of the pizzas made at Da Michele, and at another popular pizzeria that claims to be the birthplace of the Margherita, Antica Pizzeria Brandi della Regina d'Italia, Mr. Stentardo said they use the wrong foods to be considered real Neapolitan pizzas.

"They don't make good pizza," he said of those places. "They make a cheaper pizza."

But no one is fretting too much. The law has no real teeth. It comes with no sanctions.

Eduardo Pagnani is the owner of Pizzeria Brandi, where, he said, the pizza Margherita was invented in 1889 and named after Queen Margherita of the House of Savoy. He said that pizza may be named for nobles, but that it has always been more about the people.

Indeed, here in famously passionate Naples, where moped drivers zoom the wrong way up one-way streets, there seems a certain pride in ignoring the new law — of course, only after it has been passed.

"We'll start a mini-federation," Mr. Pagnani said, laughing. "We'll be outlaws."