I’m in a Vera Pizza Napoletana Kind of Mood

I don’t think I need to explain what the Vera Pizza Napoletana (VPN) certification is in detail, but to anyone who’s just wandered by our site, who may not know, the VPN was established as a denomination of control (DOC) by the Italian government to designate and identify pizzerias who meet and follow strict requirements that respect the traditions and art of true Neapolitan Pizza making.

What the VPN does is work to try to maintain the origins and traditions of Napoletana pizza by establishing rules and guidelines about the use of ingredients and processes in creating pizzas in the age old Neapolitan traditions.  I don’t know about you, but I crave this connection and dedication at times.  The doughs are simple and yet sooo delicious!  There’s nothing complex to the dough:  “00” flour, salt, yeast, water.  Yet, producing a brilliant dough in this style out of my own oven has been a difficult task.  I’ve made some good pizzas and maybe even some “great” ones in this style, but by my definition none of them came close to the most brilliant doughs I’ve had by so many master pizzaiolos that we’ve met here on Pizza Quest.

Every time I make a pizza I learn something. I surpass my expectations with one aspect of the pizza and probably dash my dreams over another. A week after I made the best dough I think I’ve ever created the next batch falls terribly short.  The topping ingredients are the easy part.  There are true artisans, craftspeople, artists out there who have perfected their products.  I can buy a truly inspiring salumi, fresh artisan mozzarella, local farmers market herbs and vegetables, the best tomatoes etc.People like Rob DiNapoli and Chris Bianco are out there focusing on producing amazing tomato products.  But the one aspect we have to perfect at home, all by ourselves, is the dough!

Pizza isn’t easy for that reason.  The dough is a living, breathing entity.  If you haven’t seen it, watch this presentation Peter Reinhart gave on TED about the life of bread. *LINK It’s really fascinating.  Pizza dough is the same.  It’s an ever changing, evolving thing that starts as dry ingredients, is transformed into a wet dough ball that grows as the yeast and sugars in the flour interact, and then is cooked and dried again in the oven creating a pizza.  That’s a difficult process to get right – especially with consistency.

Then try working in a Wood Fired Oven!  That adds a whole lot of variables, but what I love about it is that you can’t just dial in an exact temperature or place your pizza, salmon, veggies, steak, or pork roast into the oven and walk away while a digital timer ticks down to “DONE”!   You can’t even repeat what you did the last time you cooked.  Each fire is different.  Each day is different.  Each time you go into your wood fired oven it’s a dance between you, your food and the wild elements at work. To me, that’s brilliant.  I never follow a recipe to the letter. Instead, I like to use most recipes as a guide. Making pizza in a wood fired oven is the same.  Success requires your past experiences and current senses to guide you and that is so much fun and the pay off is awesome.

Pizza is always a dance to be sure. Even when cooking in my home oven, where the temperature can be set to an exact temperature and I’ve rigged my oven with 2 pizza stones and a baking steel to help regulate the heat distribution, I still have to dance the jingo-jango to coax the best pizza out of the oven!

Following are some photos of my VPN dough using a 00 Flour and my roaring hot Primavera Oven.  I’ll do some recipes for the pizzas in another post.  I normally would just post a recipe about each pizza I made, but, for now, let me just say that I came close to pure pizza joy and perfection — and close is pretty pretty good!

Enjoy….