What’s on this pizza? I’m not sure I even know.
One of the trends I’ve noticed in my recent trips to Italy is that Italian pizza — or should I say, pizza in Italy, since pizza is a champion among world foods — has been undergoing a radical transformation.
Increasingly, I’ve been seeing creative pizzas like the one above (with fennel and what I believe was a beet ricotta cream).
But the bigger trend I’ve noticed is that pizzaioli are adding the toppings after the pie has been fired.
Take, for example, the photo immediately above.
That’s a classic “napoli,” the kind you’d find in nearly every pizzeria in Italy in the 80s and 90s, with salt-cured anchovies and capers.
It’s the kind and style of pizza that I found when I first began studying in the country.
Now look at this pizza (immediately above). It’s a “napoli” but the ingredients have been added only after (notice how they aren’t incorporated into the mozzarella and they). The mozzarella was also added after it was fired.
Tracie and I first encountered this style of pizza at the legendary I Tigli in San Bonifacio near Verona.
At the time, about 12 years ago or so, people thought that owner and pizzaiolo Simone Padoan was either a genius or a lunatic.
As one hipster pizzaiolo explained it recently, this new approach was inspired by the fact that the toppings and crust have wildly divergent cooking times.
If all the ingredients are fired at the same time and at the same extremely high temperature (the key to a great pie), the toppings suffer at the expense of the vessel.
Notice how the prosciutto cotto (literally, cooked ham) was added only after the pie had been cooked through.
The heat of the dough is transferred to the toppings and they become — at least in my experience — more tasty as their flavors are “freed.”
Will Americans begin following this new and sometimes controverial trend of post-fired toppings? I’m not sure that we are ready for such blasphemy!
Thanks for being here. And THANK YOU to everyone who came out to our sold-out Piedmont diner last night at Rossoblu in DTLA. What a blast! Thank you Chef Steve and Dina for a truly wonderful evening!
Do Bianchi 
Hi Jeremy, Adding toppings to pizza after the bake has been going on for a long time-we (my restaurant Cafe Lago in Seattle) started doing it in the 90’s starting with the classic white fontina pizza with prosciutto and arugula added after baking. We called it the “Rolando” after our friend Rolando Beramendi who told me about that pizza being all the rage in Firenze. I love how the heat of the pizza lets the prosciutto’s fat meld into the cheese without cooking. Mortadella is also dreamy.