THE PERFECT PIZZA FROM BRISTOL
CUCINA
Tasked with creating the best pizza is to be tasked with finding the best ingredients. Recommending Sainsbury's Basics tomatoes and some grated 'Cheddar-style Hard Cheese' would have anyone with even a passing interest in Italy baying for my blood. As all serious pizza fans know, Naples is the home of pizza. Following the masters, I decided to keep my recipe as simple and close to the Neapolitan style as possible. That means a base that is crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside and topped with tomato, mozzarella and basil. Nothing else.
For the dough, '00' flour is needed, the most finely milled stuff you can buy. Yeast, water and salt are all a given, but oil and sugar are strictly forbidden (although I may have thrown in half a teaspoon of the latter just to help the pizza base to brown better when it cooks). As for tomatoes, a high-quality tinned variety is needed. The preference is for San Marzanos, those strangely shaped fruits grown on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. They would be the first choice if possible, but are almost impossible to find in Britain. I also thought I would throw a few semi-dried tomatoes on top, but more on that later. For me, mozzarella has to be balled; none of this dried and grated cardboard.
Armed with a list of ingredients and delis in Bristol, I set out. The first stop was Licata – Montpelier's best Italian grocers – on Picton Street. However, their sun-dried tomatoes were a bit too dry for what I was after (more akin to dried chilies) and the mozzarella was impossible to sample as it was in a sealed bag. This proved to be a problem everywhere. Their tinned tomatoes, though, looked of high quality, even if they were not the fabled San Marzanos. Unperturbed, I went onto Divino Deli, on Worrall Road. They had high-protein '00' flour (protein is important in the formation of gluten), but no tinned tomatoes, and their dried variety were in jars costing £3.75 a pop. Unable to sample them, I decided that my overdraft could not take the strain. Papadeli on Alma Road was next, where I was actually able to taste my first exceptional sun-dried tomatoes.
The last place to try was Mercanti. Although a wholesaler, I had heard that they stocked San