Pasta, Pane, Vino by Matt Goulding

Author:Matt Goulding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-05-04T16:00:00+00:00

Roberto made the creation of a pizza Margherita look as ghee-whiz simple as tying your shoes. But on the first day of practice, as he fed the fire with chunks of wood stacked in the corner of the classroom, I quickly realized just how little my previous pizza experience meant in this new arena. I struggled with the moisture levels of my dough, tore holes through it with clumsy stretching, over- and undersauced and -cheesed my pizzas in ways that compromised their integrity. My work inside the oven was even worse: more than once, the pizza stuck to the peel or folded over on itself as I tried to slide it into the oven, burning the cheese and sauce on the heat of the floor, producing great clouds of black smoke that sent students and teachers alike into fits of coughing, and signaling to everyone in the vicinity that a novice was at work.

My classmates all came directly from pizzerias, and though they had their own battles to fight, they were producing respectable pies by the end of the second day in class. My quest for pizza competence would take quite a bit longer, and the idea of the final exam stirred in me a tremendous sense of anxiety. To pass the class and receive the coveted AVPN certification, each student must make two pizzas—marinara and Margherita, Naples’ most emblematic creations—and submit them to a panel of judges consisting of the oldest and most-respected pizzaioli in Naples. I would need to get my shit together, or my quest to become a certified Neapolitan pizzaiolo would incinerate on the oven floor.

* * *

Pizza is the world’s most popular food. Show me a human being who doesn’t enjoy pizza and I will show you a troubled soul. You will find pizzerias in every country and on every continent across the planet—by some estimates, more than a million the world over. There are seventy-five thousand pizzerias in the United States alone, selling $40 billion worth of pizzas every year. Island in Vietnam: pizza. Ghost town in the Midwest: pizza. International Space Station: pizza. (For real: In 2001, Pizza Hut delivered a six-inch salami-topped pie aboard a Russian rocket to astronauts in the International Space Station.)

Pizza is the world’s most democratic food. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus; black, white, brown, yellow; omnivores, herbivores, vegans, celiacs: everyone eats pizza in one form or another.

Pizza is the most versatile food. It can be eaten with a knife and a fork at a dinner table, folded and devoured on a street corner, scarfed from a napkin right out of a toaster oven. It can be grilled, baked, fried, and frozen. It can please a crowd of hungry schoolkids, a couple on the verge of romance, a pack of men in suits.

Pizza is the most regionalized food. In Italy, a country not known for its culinary flexibility, pizza takes on nearly as many forms as there are regions, from wafer-thin crusts in Rome to thick, spongy rectangular slices in Sicily.

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