The quest for the perfect pizza

We met some Australians at our local Enoteca the other day. They had noticed our accents in the street and thought (shockingly) that we were Aussies. "The pizzas here are not the same as they are at home," they said. "In what way?" I asked, already knowing the answer. "They have a lot less topping", they said, "and they don't cut them up".

I can see how the true Italian pizza could be disconcerting for people who are used to the Super Supreme from Pizza Hut. All that doughey bready base and toppings three inches thick, smothered in cheese. But I am here looking for the perfect pizza. Not just for my own benefit, you understand, but so that I can turn out exceptional pizzas in my earth oven at Four Winds Matakana. So really, this trip is for the good of my whole family, and all my friends.

After three days in Italy not a single slice of pizza had passed my lips, and I really thought I needed to get into it. So we went for lunch at the local pizzeria. (An aside here - although we hadn't at this point had any pizza, we had had some great sandwiches. I'm not usually a big sandwich eater. But the Italians really know a thing or two about how to make a good sammie. Even in a couple of highly dodgy places - like the roadside cafe we stopped at which looked like the inside of a TAB and contained no-one but old geezers - we have had really excellent panini and foccacini. Great bread, lovely ripe tomatoes, fresh cheese, good salad; they really know how to do it. And the variations on a sandwich, like bruschetta, are fantastic. Our local enoteca does such perfect bruschetta, it's hard to stop at just one.)

Back to pizza. It was a perfect Tuscan day, of course, so we sat in the courtyard - the original version of the Prego courtyard, complete with tree. Except that the walls in this courtyard were six hundred years old and looked out on the Tuscan countryside.

Anyway: I ordered a margherita; the original pizza and the obvious place to start. This is simply tomato sauce and mozzarella, sometimes with basil leaves. Also a pizza without tomato - simply mozarella and Italian pork sausage, for contrast. Both were good, but not perfect. The search for the perfect pizza is really the search for the perfect base. It has to be that combination of very thin, crispy and chewy. It can't taste underdone or doughey, and it can't be overcooked and burnt. Ideally the edges will have lovely large puffy bits where the dough has broken into bubbles. Toppings, in a way, are irrelevant if the base is not good.

So the search continued. Italy is great for a pizza lover because you can buy pizza everywhere al taglio: by the slice. In the awful tourist-clogged streets of San Gimignano we had slices of tourist pizza: very crisp, designed to be eaten on the move, so it stands up straight and has no bend whatsoever. Not an authentic crust. But I did like the little cardboard holders they served it in, so you didn't get grease on your fingers.

You'd think, wouldn't you, that we'd be tripping over wood-fired pizza ovens here in Italy. But it turns out not to be the case. Even in our small village, the local pizzeria has an electric oven. I can see why - they're easy and low-maintenance. Lighting a fire every day and keeping it at 400 degrees or so is hard work. But electric ovens are no help to me in my quest. We asked Elio whether anyone in town here had a wood-fired oven, a question which prompted furious debate among the family. They came up with one at the bottom of the funicular, the wee cable car which connects Certaldo Alto, where we are, with Certaldo, the main town. It's called, logically enough, Pizzeria Basso. But every time we went past it was closed! Damn those civilised Italians and their Mondays off.

In Florence we had what I think was the best pizza so far - maybe the best pizza ever. It was at a small, family-run restaurant off the tourist trail, near the railway station, called Ciro & Sons. One of (presumably) Ciro's sons, told us that the beautiful pizza oven there was built only seven years ago, but that it was special because it was custom-built, not just plonked into the kitchen. I was so excited to see this oven. I believe I may have jumped up and down and clapped my hands in a very geeky fashion.

After we'd ordered (Margherita again, for baseline comparison, and their trademarked "Vesuvio") I watched the chef manipulate the very elastic, thin dough on to his paddle, and then re-form the pizzas - our pizzas - before shaking them into the oven. Once both pizzas were deposited at the back of the oven, he took a handful of sawdust from a bag below and threw it in; I guess to heat up the fire a bit and add some flavour. I noticed there was still a bit of wood actually burning in the oven, which I had thought was a no-no; I thought it was supposed to be embers only. So this is interesting.

In this kitchen they were using olive wood in the oven, which until our olive trees are quite a bit older will be a little tricky for us. Luckily we have a good supply of Manuka for our Aotearoa pizzas. Anyway within two minutes our pizzas were on our table and they were just what a pizza should be: crisp, puffy, a little charred on the bottom, not too much topping and lovely and thin. The Margherita was not overloaded with cheese, and it had cherry tomatoes which were sweet and delicious. The Vesuvio was also not overloaded, but what was on there made for a great combination: tangy tomato sauce, proscuitto, rocket leaves and some dabs of truffle paste, which I note you can buy in the shops here. I've been debating with Sandy whether I could bring some home, he is on the side of caution and says he won't go through the red queue with me if I do, dammit. Likewise on the cheese.... I suspect he's probably right about that one.

This pizza story is not over.... but now that I'm out of Italy I'm distracted by all kinds of other food. I think I have enough of a survey to be going on with now. In the meantime if anyone knows of any wood-fired ovens in Barcelona... let me know....