Vera Pizza Napoletana Guidelines


There are the guidelines, or guiding principles, behind Vera Pizza Napoletana. The wood-fired pizza ovens are designed for the 800ºF temperature and 90 second pizza cooking times described by the Vera Pizza Napoletana guidelines. You can also read our English translation of the original Italian VPN Specification presented to the European Union in support of Denominazione D'Origine Controllata (DOC) status for VPN. The Vera Pizza Napoletana Guidelines are:

1. A Wood-Burning Oven: Pizza Napoletana must be cooked in a wood-fired dome oven. Gas, coal or electric ovens, while capable of produce wonderful pizza, do not conform to the Pizza Napoletana tradition.

 2. Proper Ingredients: Tipo 00 flour, San Marzano (plum) tomatoes, all natural Fior-di-Latte or Bufala mozzarella, fresh basil, salt and yeast. Only fresh, all-natural, non-processed ingredients are acceptable.

3. Proper Technique Pizza dough kneaded either by hand, or with a low speed mixer. No mechanical dough shaping, such as a dough press or rolling pin, and proper pizza preparation. Pizza baking time should not exceed 90 seconds.

4. Proper Equipment A proper work surface (usually a marble slab) and a wood-fired oven operating at roughly 800ºF.
 
5. The Final Product:  Pizza Napoletana is not larger than 14” with a raised edge crust and thin (.11 inch) center. The pizza should be soft and elastic, and easily foldable, not hard or brittle.
 
The Pizza Napoletana should be consumed immediately, straight out of the oven, at the pizzeria. If the pizza were removed from the pizzeria to be eaten later, it would not longer carry the mark of a true"Pizza Napoletana