The article below from NYTimes.com

For the Pizza Makers of Naples, a Tempest in a Pie Dish

June 9, 2004

 By AL BAKER

NAPLES, Italy

THE thing about Neapolitan pizza, one axiom goes, is that

the higher the grade of the olive oil, the better the

thread-count of the proprietor's clothes.

So while a new national law mandates what can authentically

be called Neapolitan pizza, the legislation also exposes a

deeper, ages-old rift about whether pizza is best served to

the masses or the classes.

Italian pizza makers, politicians and the modern-day

proletariat had set aside a century's worth of squabbling

over tomatoes, basil, cheese and oil to focus on a larger

topic that threatened them all: Neapolitan pizza was under

attack, facing impostors worldwide.

As one local pizza maker, Alfonso Cucciniello, put it:

"Everyone in the world is trying to do this type of pizza.

In Japan, in China, in the United States, in Miami."

"Pizza with pineapples?" he asked. "That's a cake."

At the behest of the Association of Real Neapolitan Pizza, a

group with 2,500 members worldwide, lawmakers and officials

of the administration of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi

recently acted to put some political weight behind an

ancient dish made with green, red and white ingredients,

the colors of the Italian flag. A law was passed in May. A

nation of pizza makers gave thanks.

The European Union may follow suit. As the continent is

homogenized, the new law is a marketing tool to brand

Naples forever as the cradle of pizza. Pizzerias that serve

the approved brand are now stamped official.

Then details of the new national standards slowly started

to be digested.

Under them, the pizza must be round, no more than 35

centimeters (13.8 inches) in diameter. The crust cannot be

too high. The dough must be kneaded by hand. Only certain

flour, salt and yeast can be used. Extra virgin olive oil

is a must, as are tomatoes from the Mount Vesuvius region

and bufala mozzarella. For cooking the classic pizza

Margherita, only mozzarella from the southern Apennine

Mountains is allowed.

But here in the sun-blessed hills near the Sorrento

peninsula, where the locals say pizza was invented, an

almost improbable mini-melodrama is being played out. The

pizza made by Mr. Cucciniello is no longer officially

Neapolitan.

Mr. Cucciniello runs Da Michele pizzeria on the same gritty

street in the working-class Forcella quarter where his

wife's grandfather, Michele Condurro, first started baking

pizzas, a bit larger in size than the average dinner plate,

in the late 19th century.

Da Michele's pizza breaks the new rules in several ways. It

uses vegetable oil, not the more expensive extra virgin

olive oil; cow's milk mozzarella, not the moister, costlier

variety made from the milk of a water buffalo; and small,

sweet San Marzano tomatoes, grown in the nearby Sarno

Valley, not the ones that come from the soil around Mount

Vesuvius.

Yet Mr. Cucciniello, draping his thick forearms over the

cash register one recent night, said the pizza in Rome is

being made by foreigners and is not authentic.

"It's not Italian," said Mr. Cucciniello, who wears

bluejeans and serves his pizza with paper napkins and

plastic cups to hordes of adoring Italians. "It's not the

Italian pizza."

Rosa Russo Iervolino, the mayor of Naples, praised the new

law.

"It is a guarantee for Naples pizza, just as there are

guarantees for other Italian brands, like Parmesan cheese,"

she said recently. "It is important to recognize where

certain foods come from and protect them from impostors."

Across town from Da Michele, in a more refined dining

setting in a more opulent neighborhood, Carmine Stentardo,

who runs Ciro a Santa Brigida, a pizzeria where diners can

get an award-winning pizza as well as a variety of fancier

dishes - antipasti, vegetables, pasta, fish and desserts -

said he could not agree more.

It was his pizza association, after all, that had its

standards codified in the new pizza law. Those ingredients

are used in the pizzas on his menu. "Now this product is

protected," Mr. Stentardo said with an air of

self-satisfaction.

He is a tan, white-haired man who dresses in sport coats

and leather shoes the complexion of his skin. His

grandfather started serving the pizzas he serves in 1932.

"It's protected as a brand-name product," he added as he

sat in a lacquered wooden chair in a dining room of tables

with glinting silverware and heavy cloth napkins.

Once the law passed, Mr. Stentardo, Mr. Cucciniello and

others seemed only too happy to pick up where they left off

with the honored pastime of bickering over just the right

ingredients for the pizza.

Of the pizzas made at Da Michele, and at another popular

pizzeria that claims to be the birthplace of the

Margherita, Antica Pizzeria Brandi della Regina d'Italia,

Mr. Stentardo said they use the wrong foods to be

considered real Neapolitan pizzas.

"They don't make good pizza," he said of those places.

"They make a cheaper pizza."

But no one is fretting too much. The law has no real teeth.

It comes with no sanctions.

Eduardo Pagnani is the owner of Pizzeria Brandi, where, he

said, the pizza Margherita was invented in 1889 and named

after Queen Margherita of the House of Savoy. He said that

pizza may be named for nobles, but that it has always been

more about the people.

Indeed, here in famously passionate Naples, where garbage

mounts in fetid mounds and moped drivers zoom the wrong way

up one-way streets, there seems a certain pride in ignoring

the new law - of course, only after it has been passed.

"We'll start a mini-federation," Mr. Pagnani said,

laughing. "We'll be outlaws."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/dining/09PIZZ.html?ex=1087786376&ei=1&en=a44a546bd65a9a8f