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Comment by jaclaz | Hacker News Reader

And they are not anyway pizzas (unless you stretch the definition of pizza to "anything that has a layer of bread at the bottom").

Not so casually the only actual pizza in the list is the one that is called pizza (pizza al taglio[1]) all the others are different specialities that may (or may not) be overall similar to a pizza.

In Italy there are tens or hundreds of regional variations of "focaccie" (that are not pizza) or similar "bread with something", the traditional diets all revolve around bread or pasta (i.e. flour+water), (olive) oil, vegetables and cheese, i.e. the most economical ingredients, more or less always the same and people had centuries to invent variations on the same theme.

[1] which is common enough, literally "pizza for cut", it is actually a "normal" pizza cooked in largish rectangular pans that is sold in rectangular slices.

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Dunno - my Italian partner refers to fresh thick focaccia when we're in Italy as 'pizza', so I think there's a little missing from the translation into English.

Suffice to say, I think Italians have a wee bit more of a right to define the word than I do.

In some parts of central Italy, including Rome, the soft focaccia is called _pizza bianca_ (white pizza) and it’s eaten as-is or sliced in half and filled with charcuterie, typically mortadella.

Source: am Italian too.

Are pepperoni pizzas valid dishes?

What do you mean by "valid"?

I've heard that Italians frown on pizzas that has toppings like pineapple (yuk!) on it. What pizzas would be authentic Italian?

Sure, pineapple (and any other fruit) is no-no.

There are two main school of thoughts.

The first one has a limited number of "coded" pizza's:

Margherita

Napoletana

Marinara

Prosciutto

Prosciutto e funghi

Capricciosa

and a few others.

The second one is whatever floats your boat or "everything goes", normally there are some 10-15, maybe 20 "standard" pizza types in the menu of a pizzeria, but you can usually ask (within reason) to add or remove any ingredient, basically anything that is edible (and salted, NOT sweet) can be used.

Pizza with peperoni (peperoni are "sweet peppers") is "border line", though what in the US is called pepperoni pizza (i.e. with salame piccante, no peperoni anywhere):

https://www.innaturale.com/la-pizza-pepperoni-non-e-con-i-pe...

is usually "accepted" (IF the salame piccante is available, which depends on where in Italy you ask for it, you will always find it in the south, not so commonly in center/center-north)).

Also it depends on the integralism of the pizzeria personnel.

As an unrelated note, in any "normal" bar you would be frowned upon if asking for a cappuccino any time past - say - 11 AM.

Of course this does not apply in cities where there are many tourists, where it is not so rare to see people eating a pizza while drinking a cappuccino. (personally the mere thought of this sends shivers down my spine)

Salami piccante, that's the one thanks. And yes, absolutely no coffee with pizza, it just doesn't feel right. A decent lager, on the other hand, does go down well with it.

Not to nitpick, only FYI, in Italian, one salame (piccante), two salami (piccanti).

Sure, that is Rome (and posssibly Lazio) only and the same thing (more or less) is called elsewhere focaccia, schiacciata or schiaccia (or many other names)

https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/pizza/

https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/schiacciata/

https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/focaccia/

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