How to make pizza like a Neapolitan master
bbc.com
bbc.com
In my opinion, “Neapolitan” pizza is not particularly good. They just throw blobs of stuff randomly onto the crust. You might as well eat all the components separately. I think I t’s only popular as a status symbol.
Napoletan is its own dish as well, I don't think it makes sense to compare it to American styles. It's also important enough to modern Napoletan culture to be UNESCO recognized. I think it might also be a protected designation at this point?
To counter your opinion, I think a good Napoletan is fantastic. The chewy texture and the quality of ingredients (especially if you eat it at a nice place in Napoli, where the mozzarella di bufala tends to be much fresher) are fantastic.
I don't know how the American one can be considered a pizza: dick, with too much cheese (and not Mozzarella, come on!!) And sometimes with horrendous selection of toppings, such as chicken or strawberries (seriously?)
The most important single step in the whole process is what they call "autolysing", nowadays, so people will take it seriously. It really just means that after most of the flour is wet, you set it aside for 45 minutes before working it.
Do it, and the sky's the limit, even with extremely ordinary flour. Don't, and nothing will save your pizza short of serving it to philistines.
Once I had to make 40 mini-pizzas with Pillsbury white flour, cheddar cheese, and Wesson oil on the bottom of a skillet perched on an upturned soup pot under a broiler, down in Waipio Valley, in Hawaii. It turned out fantastic. The dough was very, very wet: I scooped it for each pizza with a ladle.