Mamma Mia! EU Nod for mother of all pizzas

TSG label means Neapolitan pizza will now be protected from imitation

Mamma Mia! EU Nod for mother of all pizzas

TSG label means Neapolitan pizza will now be protected from imitation

Neapolitan pizza is regarded as the benchmark for pizzas around the world, and the guardians of the city's centuries-old pizza-making tradition have been fighting a rearguard action for years against shoddy foreign imitations.

But now, pizza restaurants from New York to Nice will be forced to conform to a strict list of ingredients
and a specific method of cooking if they want to give their food the prestigious Neopolitan label.

Neopolitan-style contrasts to traditional Sicilian pizza, characterised by its lack of tomato sauce.

Rome offers two styles of pizza that are distinguished by either a rectangular shape and relatively thicker crust, or a thinner crust than Neopolitan-style pizza.

"Europe has crowned the work and tenacity of Neapolitan producers," Luca Zaia, the agriculture minister, said in a statement.

He said Naples' best-known product had "for too long been the subject of imitations which have nothing to do with the real and unique Neapolitan pizza".

Legend

Legend has it that the "true" pizza was invented in the grimy port city at the beginning of the 18th century.

The Margherita version, a staple of almost every Italian restaurant and pizzeria on the planet, was first created in 1889 and named after Queen Margherita of Savoy.

Its ingredients reflected the national colours of the newly-unified Italian state u2013 red from tomatoes, white from mozzarella and green from basil leaves.

About TSG

The TSG label, which was created in 1992, stipulates that a product has to conform to traditional ingredients and cooking methods but does not have to be made in a specific geographic area.

Cooking Rules

To make a pizza in the traditional Neapolitan way, a pizzaiolo, or pizza maker, can use only durum wheat flour, sea salt, fresh yeast and genuine mozzarella cheese from the milk of buffaloes, rather than cows. Only San Marzano tomatoes, which grow on the plains south of Mout Vesuvius, will suffice.

Genuine Neapolitan pizzas must have a raised crust and a base no more than an eighth of an inch thick.
The dough must be stretched by hand, rather than flattened with a rolling pin, and then cooked in a wood-fired oven on a stone slab.

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