Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

That hydroponic basil is good shit.

--FP

oh for a comment editor! In the second paragraph: First i used bread twice in the same damn sentence (lazy!) and also,
"outside these spoken" should read "outside these unspoken".

--FP

OK I've found what looks to be a photograph of a VPN logo displayed at Nostrana - but as a wall ornament rather than bona fide certificate.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kightp/2308382680/
FP

Know this has been a dream of yours for a long time Paulie and has been a while coming. Great to know your pies are finally coming to a wider audience. Wishing you the very best with it and good luck.
FP

Thanks for answering my questions. I'll bear the advice in mind next time I cook brisket. Appreciate it.
Cheers,
FP

Agreed, I think it was probably started with good intentions which got lost somewhere mid atlantic.
Learning about Naples tradition is a valuable education for anyone interested in pizza and even guidelines such as those provided by the VPN are still a good *starting* point, if not the last word in pizza.

@passion4pizza
Anyone who makes pizza regularly with neapolitan ingredients will know that the official pizza discipline is a great guideline but it won't necessarily give you the best pizza followed word for word.
Things like "allows it to absorb between 50 to
55% of its weight in water to reach the “optimal point” and 4-6 hour rising times just don't produce an 'optimal' product. Work with the flour rather than trying to make your flour do what some guideline says.
Da Michele, for example, deviates from the VPN on several points. No one could accuse that institution of making sub-par neapolitan pizza.
The best pizza comes from experience not from rules and certification - and it's experience that makes pizzaiolos in Naples so good at what they do.
I submit there is an argument to be made that VPN America (for example) is just an attempt to franchise Neapolitan heritage. It essentially represents a consortium of local naples producers and craftspeople through selling the 'Verace Pizza Napoletana brand' to an audience of eager (sometimes misguided) pizza-makers and restauranteurs who feel this contrived sense of authenticity is equivalent to artisanal quality and excellence....or more cynically, a competitive edge in an already saturated market.
If you pay money for training and membership and then buy source all your ingredients from Campania, all your equipment from Naples....AND, after (and assuming) the VPN inspection team approves, you get to use the VPN logo and call yourself 'VPN approved'! Big deal.
They might as well be giving you golden arches to put up outside your pizzeria.
For those who claim this is preservation of tradition and culture, I say - go set up a heritage museum! . I can just see it now: a VPN task force descending on Shanghai to stamp out the manufacture of a new wave of 'fake neapolitan ovens'.
When's the last time VPN got involved in promoting domestic US produce such as olive oil, buffalo mozzarella etc. or educating US producers on how to mill 00 flour, for example? I'm guessing never...not now, not in the future. Here's hoping VPN proves me wrong!

If people are going to get overly anal about authentic 'Naples' pizza then fine - I vote to leave Neapolitan Pizza in Naples.
Stipulations about tomatoes, flour, cheese and, yes oil poured from copper cannisters are all well and good when you're actually IN Naples. They are just ridiculous when you're in NY. Don't get me wrong, the ingredients are excellent and I'd be a hypocrite to say otherwise (I use them regularly at home...although technically, I'm geographically closer to Naples than NY) - but at some point this whole authenticity thing risks becoming a smokescreen (wood fired, to be sure!) for the actual pizza.

@seriouspizza
Easy there! Not everyone digs the neapolitan style. Although it is strange for a writer who shows a distinct lack of love for the style to write about what they deem to be 'Best Naples Style Pizza'. Does the title even mean anything at that point?
The use of quotation marks as well as the context (rest of the article) indicates the writer was talking about the trend of neapolitan pizza in NY. What seems to have been the main thrust of the blurb, was their opinion that 'naples style' is being used to sell a more expensive pizza
It's a fair point that in a crowded market, terms like 'authentic neapolitan' are now common currency used to justify the existence and alleged ethos of any given 'neapolitan style' pizzeria.
I suspect these claims of authenticity are a red herring (which Napoletanaphiles get easily hung up on) when price and quality should be the real issues for any place that makes and sells pizza.

@jbary
I can't speak for the recipe above but normally only a small amount of butter (40g it would seem in this case) is incorporated into the dough (detrempe) and separate butter (quantity not specified apparently) is used in the lamination (beurrage).

The amount of butter used in lamination for croissant dough is typically about 25% of the weight of the detrempe which in this case is about 450g. However since no amount is specified above, I couldn't say for sure.

@chichiwang
"Pound out cold butter to make it more extensible without softening"
Is it possible there is a typo here - and one should be using a POUND of butter (ie 450g which would be roughly 25% of the unlaminated dough)

FP

This year I've got the tried and trusted Wing Wah but also a whole assortment of 'Yizhiwan" mini mooncakes - loads of different flavours. Been eating them all month!
FP

Just tried this on a cold slice. Really good!