The Verace Pizza Napoletana Association was founded in 1984, supported by the Italian Chamber of Commerce, Handicrafts & Industry. Old Neapolitan pizza masters, wary of large, sometimes inappropriate use of the moniker “Neapolitan Pizza” decided to fund an association which defines what the true Neapolitan Pizza. This designation protects and increases the value of pizzas crafted according to the old Neapolitan traditions.

To obtain the VPN certification, the pizza is made according to the 200-year-old Neapolitan technique. Only wood-fired ovens are permitted; the dough is made of only four ingredients: 00 Italian flour, sea salt, fresh yeast and water. The toppings for the DOC pizza may only include sauce made of San Marzano tomatoes grown in Italy, fresh cherry tomatoes, fresh mozzarella made with buffalo milk or fior di latte, sea salt, fresh basil and olive oil.

All about the oven.

Enzo personally met the producer of Forno Napoletano in Naples. He was impressed by their dedication to tradition, quality, and most of all the quality of the pizzas coming from Forno Napoletano. The oven bricks were built using volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius renowned for outstanding heat retention, allowing for higher, more even temperature of the oven. No American-built wood-fired oven can achieve this result. The oven arrived from Naples via sea ship.

If we leave a pizza there for another minute, it will be severely burnt.

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The dough is made of only four ingredients. Flour, fresh yeast, sea salt, water. The flour used is soft-grain Italian Caputo flour that is unbleached and unbromated (most American flours are bleached and bromated, a processes that strips wheat of most of its nutrients and adds saturated fat).

Neapolitan pizza dough is hand-stretched using a very precise method called “the slap technique”. Pizza dough is stretched by “slapping” the dough against the work table for just a few seconds. The dough must be handled for very short period of time to preserve its lightness and softness. A true Neapolitan pizzaiolo does not throw their pizza dough in the air.

Real Neapolitan pizza, baked in the real Neapolitan oven in blistering fire, cannot be crispy. The resulting product must be soft, pillowy, fleshy, and light.

San-Marzano is an heirloom type of tomato, grown in the San-Marzano region of Italy, near Mount Vesuvius. They are considered the best tomatoes for pizza sauce in the world due to their intense sweetness and concentrated flavor. San-Marzano are the only tomato allowed to be used for Vera Pizza Napoletana (true Neapolitan pizza).

The secret is simplicity- just two ingredients in an uncooked sauce without sugar or dried herbs.

Using dried herbs in pizza sauce, as well as cooking the sauce to make it thicker, is a characteristic of American pizza. Neapolitan pizza uses thin layer of sauce made from uncooked tomatoes. This results in a balance of all toppings, not overpowering of one ingredient over another.

Fresh mozzarella cheese made from milk of water buffalo, rather than cow’s milk. The Campania region is famous for producing this prized mozzarella.

Fresh, high-quality buffalo mozzarella cheese used in our pizzas has higher water content then dry mozzarella shaped in bricks used by majority of American pizzerias. Our mozzarella comes from a farm shaped in balls and packed in water, rather than in dry “bricks”. Therefore higher water content makes for wetter pizza. If you are eating a pizza from a wood-fired oven elsewhere, and your pizza is not slightly wet, they are not using fresh mozzarella!

Friggitoria translates as “Fried foods shop”. In Naples, it is a restaurant that specializes in stuffed fried pizzas (calzone or ripieno), stuffed risotto balls, zeppole (mini-doughnuts), panzarotti (stuffed potato croquettes).

You can either make your own or choose one of our “Favorites”.

In Naples, people eat pizza in two ways. They cut a pizza with fork and knife and eat piece by piece. Or, they fold it twice “libretto” style, blending all the toppings in the middle.