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Just as importantly, don’t fall for fetishism. Neapolitan pizza is a very specific style of pizza that, while “authentic” and photogenic, is by no means a super

Just as importantly, don’t fall for fetishism. Neapolitan pizza is a very specific style of pizza that, while “authentic” and photogenic, is by no means a superior style of pizza. Especially made poorly, at home, in an oven that is 200 degrees colder than necessary!

tomcooks 7y ago
While I agree on your fetishism point, which is in my opinion a byproduct of both post-colonialist "exoticism" and capital-driven standardization of products: using a refractory stone allows your kitchen oven to reach the right temperatures. And it IS a superior style of pizza /s
- ReptileMan 7y ago
  Sorry - refractory stone is not enough for neapolitan pizza in home oven. You need something like the baking steel. And if you manage to get the infrared heater on during bake - you can get into the holy 2 minutes of bake time.
eagsalazar2 7y ago
Neapolitan Pizza is the poster child for fetishism, hipster cargo cult, worshiping a style that has only been deemed by the community as superior, not experienced individually to be so. At its absolute best it is significantly inferior to top American examples.
- tomcooks 7y ago
  Yea that's why Italians have mustaches, they are all hipsters. Please please please go to Italy and show them who's boss, make sure you film.
- arcturus17 7y ago
  Saying that the best American examples are better is exactly the same kind of fetishism... Me personally, I think Italian (non-Neapolitan) thin crust pizza is the best I’ve ever tried but they’re all just different styles.
  - pen2l 7y ago
    I had this fetishism about neopolitan pizzas for a while despite having never actually tried one. Mostly due to reading a lot of what Kenji-Lopez and others wrote on the web. There's an annual pizza festival in the summer i nBoston, which brings a lot of Italians with their stone ovens making neopolitan pies. So I went there and finally got to try neopolitan pies which according to pizza aficionados are supposedly really good. Man, I was in for a ride. Just not my taste. I'll admit that I may be a charlatan or have a pedestrian palate, but I can say now I'll prefer a slice of NY pie over an authentic neopolitan pie any day of the week.
  - KozmoNau7 7y ago
    Pizza tonde is my favorite kind of pizza, I much prefer it over Neapolitan, plus it's much easier to make at home. I also adhere to the Roman style in that there are no rules for toppings. Anything goes.
crispyambulance 7y ago
You're right about oven temperature. Household ovens can barely hit 500F, that's not quite enough for proper pizza. There are some workarounds that will make very good pizza at home. My favorite is to use an outdoor grill instead of an oven. A hot grill with a pre-heated pizza stone is totally capable of reaching proper temperature. This can actually make neopolitan style pizza crust and works perfectly for other styles too. If you can't do a grill, starting the pizza in a large preheated cast iron pan on the stove top will help. Finish it off in the oven. Not Neopolitan, but very good. If you are using the recommended "00-flour" (finely milled high gluten bread flour), and you're not reaching pizza oven temperatures because you're using a household oven, add diastatic malt (powder) to the dough mix. This boosts yeast activity and also helps with coloration of the dough at lower temperatures. Otherwise, the pizza will be "done" before the crust has a chance to color properly.
- gruez 7y ago
  >Household ovens can barely hit 500F There's a hack you can do where you use your oven's self clean function to reach high temperatures. Most ovens have a physical interlock preventing you from opening the door during a self clean cycle though, so to work around that you'll have to void your warranty and saw off the lock.
  - oftenwrong 7y ago
    I have done it at my old (rented) apartment without physically destroying the latch. If I remember correctly (this was ~10 years ago), I was able to remove the latch assembly entirely, and then jump the wires for the sensor that detects the latch being engaged. That said, cooking pizza on the clean cycle is difficult, and not necessarily worth it. Timing and vertical positioning in the oven is crucial, or you will end up with a burnt bottom or toppings. Make sure you have a long peel, and keep your face away from the heat when you open the door.
- subpixel 7y ago
  > Not Neopolitan, but very good. I take issue with Neapolitan being a standard of quality. It's just a style.
mtrovo 7y ago
I feel that learning the classics on cooking is a good way to see how engineering mindset is close to cooking and food preparation mindset. Talking about Italian food in specific, they're very opinionated about what's the best way to work each ingredient, how to work dough, how long to leave pasta resting, and what's the best blend of herbs and the best species for each recipe. On engineering we call it standardization not fetishism. That's what DOP, DOC and DOCG is about, and that's what the Neapolitan on Neapolitan pizza is about, you know that if you eat a Neapolitan pizza that follow the official process you will have a predicted flavor on your pizza, like it or not. By reading the classics and asking yourself why they cook that way you will start to understand that you can use shortcuts where the output could be the same or close enough. For instance stone is a very bad heat conductor, that's why you need a very hot oven to deliver the right amount of heat to cook your pizza. But if you use a better conductor you could deliver the same amount of energy on a much lower temperature. On the "Modernist Cuisine at Home"[0] book they research this topic and arrive on the conclusion that a thick baking steel sheet arrives on much better results, they even sell their official baking steel [1]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Home-Nathan-Myhrvold/dp/0982761015 https://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Home-Nathan-Myhrvol... [1] https://modernistcuisine.com/shop/baking-steel/ https://modernistcuisine.com/shop/baking-steel/
- notechback 7y ago
  DOP, DOC, etc are not about preference, they are designations for regionally protected products names with some production standards. Just like champagne is only champagne if it was made in champagne region from the right grapes in the right methodology. These assure on the other hand normally a good quality standard as the regional producers' associations have every incentive to keep quality good.
  - subpixel 7y ago
    Exactly - they are not for standardization, they are for marketing.
  - basch 7y ago
    and in America, its VPN. https://americas.pizzanapoletana.org/en/members https://americas.pizzanapoletana.org/en/members

tomcooks 7y ago

While I agree on your fetishism point, which is in my opinion a byproduct of both post-colonialist "exoticism" and capital-driven standardization of products: using a refractory stone allows your kitchen oven to reach the right temperatures. And it IS a superior style of pizza /s

ReptileMan 7y ago
Sorry - refractory stone is not enough for neapolitan pizza in home oven. You need something like the baking steel. And if you manage to get the infrared heater on during bake - you can get into the holy 2 minutes of bake time.

eagsalazar2 7y ago

Neapolitan Pizza is the poster child for fetishism, hipster cargo cult, worshiping a style that has only been deemed by the community as superior, not experienced individually to be so. At its absolute best it is significantly inferior to top American examples.

tomcooks 7y ago
Yea that's why Italians have mustaches, they are all hipsters. Please please please go to Italy and show them who's boss, make sure you film.
arcturus17 7y ago
Saying that the best American examples are better is exactly the same kind of fetishism... Me personally, I think Italian (non-Neapolitan) thin crust pizza is the best I’ve ever tried but they’re all just different styles.
- pen2l 7y ago
  I had this fetishism about neopolitan pizzas for a while despite having never actually tried one. Mostly due to reading a lot of what Kenji-Lopez and others wrote on the web. There's an annual pizza festival in the summer i nBoston, which brings a lot of Italians with their stone ovens making neopolitan pies. So I went there and finally got to try neopolitan pies which according to pizza aficionados are supposedly really good. Man, I was in for a ride. Just not my taste. I'll admit that I may be a charlatan or have a pedestrian palate, but I can say now I'll prefer a slice of NY pie over an authentic neopolitan pie any day of the week.
- KozmoNau7 7y ago
  Pizza tonde is my favorite kind of pizza, I much prefer it over Neapolitan, plus it's much easier to make at home. I also adhere to the Roman style in that there are no rules for toppings. Anything goes.

crispyambulance 7y ago

You're right about oven temperature. Household ovens can barely hit 500F, that's not quite enough for proper pizza. There are some workarounds that will make very good pizza at home. My favorite is to use an outdoor grill instead of an oven. A hot grill with a pre-heated pizza stone is totally capable of reaching proper temperature. This can actually make neopolitan style pizza crust and works perfectly for other styles too. If you can't do a grill, starting the pizza in a large preheated cast iron pan on the stove top will help. Finish it off in the oven. Not Neopolitan, but very good. If you are using the recommended "00-flour" (finely milled high gluten bread flour), and you're not reaching pizza oven temperatures because you're using a household oven, add diastatic malt (powder) to the dough mix. This boosts yeast activity and also helps with coloration of the dough at lower temperatures. Otherwise, the pizza will be "done" before the crust has a chance to color properly.

gruez 7y ago
>Household ovens can barely hit 500F There's a hack you can do where you use your oven's self clean function to reach high temperatures. Most ovens have a physical interlock preventing you from opening the door during a self clean cycle though, so to work around that you'll have to void your warranty and saw off the lock.
- oftenwrong 7y ago
  I have done it at my old (rented) apartment without physically destroying the latch. If I remember correctly (this was ~10 years ago), I was able to remove the latch assembly entirely, and then jump the wires for the sensor that detects the latch being engaged. That said, cooking pizza on the clean cycle is difficult, and not necessarily worth it. Timing and vertical positioning in the oven is crucial, or you will end up with a burnt bottom or toppings. Make sure you have a long peel, and keep your face away from the heat when you open the door.
subpixel 7y ago
> Not Neopolitan, but very good. I take issue with Neapolitan being a standard of quality. It's just a style.

mtrovo 7y ago

I feel that learning the classics on cooking is a good way to see how engineering mindset is close to cooking and food preparation mindset. Talking about Italian food in specific, they're very opinionated about what's the best way to work each ingredient, how to work dough, how long to leave pasta resting, and what's the best blend of herbs and the best species for each recipe. On engineering we call it standardization not fetishism. That's what DOP, DOC and DOCG is about, and that's what the Neapolitan on Neapolitan pizza is about, you know that if you eat a Neapolitan pizza that follow the official process you will have a predicted flavor on your pizza, like it or not. By reading the classics and asking yourself why they cook that way you will start to understand that you can use shortcuts where the output could be the same or close enough. For instance stone is a very bad heat conductor, that's why you need a very hot oven to deliver the right amount of heat to cook your pizza. But if you use a better conductor you could deliver the same amount of energy on a much lower temperature. On the "Modernist Cuisine at Home"[0] book they research this topic and arrive on the conclusion that a thick baking steel sheet arrives on much better results, they even sell their official baking steel [1]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Home-Nathan-Myhrvold/dp/0982761015 https://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Home-Nathan-Myhrvol... [1] https://modernistcuisine.com/shop/baking-steel/ https://modernistcuisine.com/shop/baking-steel/

notechback 7y ago
DOP, DOC, etc are not about preference, they are designations for regionally protected products names with some production standards. Just like champagne is only champagne if it was made in champagne region from the right grapes in the right methodology. These assure on the other hand normally a good quality standard as the regional producers' associations have every incentive to keep quality good.
- subpixel 7y ago
  Exactly - they are not for standardization, they are for marketing.
- basch 7y ago
  and in America, its VPN. https://americas.pizzanapoletana.org/en/members https://americas.pizzanapoletana.org/en/members