Pupatella

About

From Neapolitan Chef Enzo Algarme: Neapolitan pizzeria in Arlington, VA.

Story

We make this pizza for you, our beloved Pupatellans, for those of you who have been to Napoli and love its pizza and those who will never go, but have the spirit and the good taste to appreciate the real thing.
Neapolitan pizza is the purest form of pizza. Made the same way for centuries, this pizza is very different from other Italian types of pizza. It is soft and pillowy, never crunchy or crispy. It is made in an oven built in Naples according to ancient specifications of size, shape, and material passed down by generations. Pupatella’s oven is built from bricks composed from volcanic ash from the mount Vesuvius. The volcanic ash gives the oven superior heat retention necessary for baking pizzas at such high temperatures as 1,000 degrees, allowing for baking time of just one minute.
To make our dough, we use Italian 00 (finest-ground) wheat flour, crushed by stone and, unlike American flour, never bleached, enriched, or otherwise processed. The dough has only 3 other ingredients: sea salt, water and fresh yeast.
The rest of the ingredients are as important as the flour. The San Marzano tomatoes used to make our sauce comes from just outside of Naples, where the volcanic soil from Mount Vesuvius produces this low-acid, sweet heirloom tomato. The mozzarella di bufala, from water-buffalo milk is a most prized mozzarella in the world and is creamy, tart and very moist. The pizza is finished with a light veil of extra virgin olive oil and few leaves of fresh basil and then it goes in the oven – for merely one minute – to produce soft, delicious and pure Neapolitan pizza.