Puntata Report 5-10-2014 Pizza

Have you ever noticed, when pizza goes into the oven, what is the condition of the oven? Often there's a black cloud of smoke and, on the cooking surface, stains from flour, ingredients and wood chips. Isn't that black smoke harmful? No no. Is it good? Yes yes. It is wood, beech. How many degrees is it inside? At the moment, around 400. 4-500 °C Can't that black smoke cause damage...? The oven is dome-shaped exactly for this reason: so it never touches the pizza. If you film inside...Look: it's above the pizza. Here everything is ok: wood is the correct wood. All cut to the same size, all the same thickness And this is also important in cooking pizza. Although in the past, 'pampuglia' was used. These are wood chips from a saw mill. Saw mill wood chips are still used. We are in Forcella, in the historic pizzeria of Port'Alba. To fire up the wood a little bit, to make a softer pizza. The smoke coming out of there, is it used to heat it? What is it? No, smoke is nothing more than smoke from burning wood which has its own aroma. It then covers pizza. In Naples, this black cloud is often seen but this happens in Milan as well. There's smoke, does it matter? No no. Here we are in Florence. And here in Treviso. These wood-fired ovens are often full of smoke which almost touches the surface of the pizza. Here you touched on an important point, an interesting point on which I haven't seen any serious work to date because the product of combustion, whether it's wood or naphtha or any other compound, contains carcinogens. And they can be absorbed. When there are black stains on the cooking surface, it's burnt flour. If the oven is not cleaned it's absorbed by pizzas. All this black stuff, are we sure it isn't harmful? No no. This is natural... How is the oven cleaned? What do you mean "clean?" I don't know, do you clean the oven? Let's say that ovens are self-cleaning. If you want to clean it, how do you clean it? The oven... inside? The oven is not cleaned inside. Don't you clean it? No. Can't we check, if we wipe a damp cloth, what happens? No, not now, we're working. No, not right now. Shall we see, with a white cloth, how it's cleaned? No, I can't, sorry. Let's do a test. Now I'm going to put something inside... You do that only in the morning, after... Not during... After removing the soot! After removing the ash. By insisting, we managed to have one cleaned in Milan. That way you are removing all burnt flour! Burnt flour and ash. There is always ash. If you don't clean it, this is what you get. We eat this. This gets under your pizza. And in Rome. Here it is! Let's see what we found. Let's see. Here it is. All this. This burnt flour under the pizza is... it's harmful, of course! I am going to do this wood-fired pizza test. What will I find, in your opinion? It's like being on a highway. Oh, really? The same as if you are breathing on a highway behind a truck. Here are the best pizzas in Naples! Eat and you'll see! Let's eat and see. Good evening. That's all we need, at a time like this, to have a go at pizzerias as well. Well, first of all I must apologise: my voice is not in top shape. Perhaps because I sang too much. In this episode we will also talk about the National Institute of Health and the labs used to certify medical devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators. And we hope that our report put a cat amongst the pigeons tomorrow. But let's get back to pizza. We want pizzerias to work better so they work more. It's our most well-known brand in the world and investing in reputation is a guarantee. So, pizzas: we eat millions of them in Italy alone. Two million take-away pizzas a day. It's natural, nourishing and cheap food. Cooking it in a wood-fired oven is also an assurance of quality. Who goes and check underneath to see if pizza is slightly burnt? And even if it is, what's the big deal? In fact, we were actually surprised when we read the test results of a specialised lab that tells us what's inside those crusts. Bernardo Iovene. Don’t burn the pizza This is a clean oven and after cooking the first pizza, on the cooking surface we find a layer of charred flour. That there... is it flour? Yes, that's flour, yes. The more pizzas you cook, the more flour, wood chips, tomato... This residue here is smoking but this pizza goes right on top of it. Then they're turned around and served. Let's see how it is underneath. The manager of this renowned pizzeria is guarded in front of the camera. He doesn't lift this side, nor this other side. let's try this one. There it is. We call it tiger-striped. Tiger-striped? Tiger-striped. Listen, when we see that the pizza is burnt underneath, what is it? Often the pizza maker puts too much flour when stretching it and it burns underneath and becomes awful. And even if it turns yellow, it'is a problem. Do you know that burnt flour under pizza is harmful? Of course! And we know another thing...: when the oven isn't hot there's a coating of black inside. Black smoke. That black smoke is harmful. When we see black smoke, when we see it, this black smoke... Totò used to say: "Stop". "Stop". Because it's harmful. Of course. So, if we also have charred flour... We should sue him... for devaluing the image of Neapolitan pizza. Here we are at Michele's, the world-famous temple of Neapolitan pizza and we see a smear of flour on the cooking surface which is immediately charred by the flame... and black smoke. How often do you clean the oven at Michele's? Only in the morning? Only in the morning. Then we work continuously until the evening. How many pizzas do you cook in a day? From morning to evening, around 1,200-1,300. When business is good, on average, a pizzeria cooks 200 pizzas a day. Here instead there's a queue all day long. They cook 1,300 pizzas. Some are smoked, another is burnt underneath, some others on the sides as well. As it happens, the one I am offered to taste, is perfect. Is there any kind of cleaning for the oven? Yes, yes, we have a broom to brush inside in the morning or perhaps we prepare a pizza dough. We put it on the shovel and we clean inside... Ah, do you clean it with pizza? Yes, with pizza. This is something you do at 9 in the morning. By contrast, in this pizza maker training center, they say to clean the oven with a dedicated mop every two loads and look what's collected on the stone of an oven, an electric oven at that, after cooking just five pizzas. We eat this stuff together... we eat it along with pizza. Yes, if I don't clean the oven. Let's see how does the water turn out. I can't believe it! This, after five pizzas! Five pizzas with the standard flour used by your average pizza maker. Let's put it in a glass. That's worked well. Without a doubt there's ash. Too many pizzas in the oven lower the temperature. In fact, in Ciro Salvo's pizzeria, no more than three at a time are cooked. Cooking time: 50-60 seconds. The oven is approximately at 500 °C. Neapolitan pizza requires more aggressive cooking. See? I work with very little flour on the bench. Then I need only three or four movements to stretch pizza. For example, if I take some flour and throw it into the oven, see what happens. Oh wow! Yes. So the pizza maker must be able, even with a soft dough, to avoid too much flour going into the oven otherwise, that's what happens. Yes, pizza becomes bitter. How do you clean away the flour when it is left there? No, we don't let the flour go in there. Tomato, oil.... it mustn't fall into the oven. Flour mustn't enter into the oven. When the oven isn't dirty, pizza doesn't burn. In fact, it remains golden underneath whereas most Neapolitan pizzas are like this because the oven isn't clean. But there's black smoke here as well during cooking. This black smoke we can see... Safe? Yes! Black smoke is the beginning of combustion but as you can clearly see, black smoke goes up, It doesn't touch the pizzas, no, no It wouldn't touch them if the pizza were not continuously lifted into the smoke dome. When the pizza maker sees that a pizza is cooked, if he wants to colour it a little more because it's too white, what does he do? He lifts it because the temperature is higher above. So, speaking of the cooking the smoke and charred flour ... what problems do they create? Burnt flour... Burnt flour is like any other burnt fuel. Therefore there's a risk factor, for sure. But... risk... what does that involve? Risk in the sense that, as I said before, it isn't that if somebody eats these compounds, automatically, in a month or three months he'll get cancer or a disease. However, it does bring those who eat it into a class of risk. Is it inevitable that there are carcinogenic compounds? And what about the smoke? Is it harmful if it touches the pizza? Isn't there a problem? It doesn't even need to touch it because smoke spreads itself around. It's an inescapable principle of physics called "diffusion" and it's a thermodynamic process. Here you touched on an important point, an interesting point on which I haven't seen any serious work to date because the product of combustion, whether it's wood or naphtha or any other compound, contains carcinogens. And they can be absorbed. Listen... I am going to do this wood-fired pizza test. What will I find, in your opinion? You will certainly find traces of polynuclear hydrocarbons, there's no doubt. You'll find benzo[a]pyrene, benzoanthracene, benzofluoranthene, pyrene... It's like being on a highway! One of the most qualified test laboratories involved in research on hydrocarbons in food is located in Oderzo, in the province of Treviso, where we brought pizzas that were cooked and burnt in a wood-fired oven when there was black smoke. The first tests were made on the crust and, when completed, we brought the results to Professor Perin. There are significant quantities of the hydrocarbon marker, which indicates it's carcinogenic. These concentrations, at least in the crust, exceed the recommendation of the European Union in particular with regards to using pizza as food for teenagers and children. Hey you! Aren't you eating? No mum, thanks, I can't eat hydrocarbons. What? You're mistaken! The results of three pizzas taken from three different pizzerias and cooked in an oven without smoke returned surprising results. Hydrocarbons decreased 19-µg to 13, 9 and 8. Therefore smoke is the determining factor. Yes, in my opinion. In my opinion it's really easy to solve the problem. Therefore perhaps this time..., once again, the work of the journalist is important because it allows the solving of a problem that nobody took into consideration before. In practical terms, clean the oven, try not to make smoke... and we're able to eat a healthy pizza. I would say it's a rather elementary solution. In order to avoid charred flour, it would actually be simple to use a pierced shovel. Here, we bang it like this and this is the flour that remains. Exactly. This remains on the worktop and then in the oven it doesn't stick to the bottom of the oven. There's no flour. The oven remains clean. No smoke either. Why? Because smoke is only present when we turn the oven on. Then we cook at a lower temperature with a small flame. In point of fact, the preference is for bread baked in a wood-fired oven. Let's ignore illegal ovens - just in the Campania region, carabinieri of the food hygiene unit seized hundreds of these ovens - and instead let's talk of legal ovens which now are burning, not wood, but walnut husks which come in bags. In bags. Those are 50-kg bags. There are rats, there are cockroaches... In the bags? It's unbelievable. Really? And then you burn them? No, they run away but then you find them around the bakery. Soot and vermins convinced Domenico to convert the oven into a methane oven. Instead, in this other oven, which looks like this and isn't illegal, but perfectly legal, bread is regularly baked with walnut husks. These are the ovens you use? Yes, yes. This as well? Are all these ovens active? Ah, here's the bread! Shall we use the light? All this is going to be shown on television? This soot here... and also there. This must be removed. It doesn't go into the bread, does it? No. These are all walnut husks. When we open the bag, it's sealed, They bring them sealed. There are vermin, aren't there? You can't actually see them. But even if they come out, they burn... They burn or they run away. If they are alive, they run. Certainly. It's not something you see... There are even mice, right? No. Very rarely. I understand. Anyway, everything is burnt, so... We have no problem. So, it's said that what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Yes, all right, but... the customer is not exactly a grunting animal that you can feed anything to. Also because, at home, when we grill an eggplant or a steak, we wash away the residues of sausage we cooked the week before. And anyway we wait embers to settle and smoke to dissipate. Then again, if somebody likes to eat burnt food he's free to do so! As long as he knows that there are combustion residues and that eating hydrocarbons, as shown by the test lab specialised in this, is not exactly a boost for your health. So, no one is forbidding anyone to serve burnt pizzas, but no one is preventing you from sending them back. Then there are the boxes used for take-away pizzas. In Italy, every day, at least two million people eat a take-away pizza. There are three types of boxes. One is pure cellulose and you can recognise it because it's white inside, Then there's a semi-chemical one, which is brown inside. And the third one is made of recycled cardboard and you can recognise it because it's grey inside. One of these three types is illegal but it's also the most used and most sold one. Why it's illegal and which one it is, we'll find out after the commericial break. In Italy, every day, two million people take pizza away in a box. That makes 700 million boxes a year. With these figures, competition is very fierce and turns on cents. The cheaper the box, the greater the sales. Why is it a problem for us? Because a Margherita pizza at 90°C is put into it and often the box is also used as a dish -, - we stick our knife into it. Pizza boxes must, by law, be made only with pure cellulose cardboard and recycled cardboard is prohibited. Why? Because recycled cardboard has been previously used. Printed paper has inks, ink residues, and, theoretically, if they are present together with an absorbent food they could end up in the food. And this is the case for pizza. This is a pure cellulose box... entirely white. This is the top range. Pizza inside here isn't contaminated by harmful elements. Then there is this other one, a corrugated semi-chemical cardboard. It costs less and is brown. Prohibited cardboard is grey. See that it's already two different colors? This is pure, let's say. Yes, exactly. This, on the other hand, is recycled. Exactly. If I open up the cardboard and see this color, at a glance, I can say: "This is recycled." Certainly. Do you see? Yes. Apart from the color, if paper starts to get mushy, see, it gets mushy immediately. If you pour a bit of water here and a bit of water there... Hey, let's try. Here, it stayed on the surface for a while... Certainly. Here instead it's all absorbed. We just need to buy a few take-away pizzas to see if the box gets mushy. And often, when we open the boxes, we find grey recycled cardboard which is illegal in Italy but which is manufactured because it can be sold overseas. It's clearly cheaper and it's clearly used. If I want to save... I go to this one. If I want to save and break the law, yes. This entrepreneur instead, in order to avoid any trouble, thought of laminating the inside part. A plastic film that acts as a barrier for everything under it. It's even applied to paper plates used by kids where it acts as a barrier to ink. So in the end you'll use this one. We'll use this one. This is laminated paper. We patented it. In the meantime, when we buy a pizza and we find out that the box gets mushy and, inside, the corrugated part of the cardboard is grey... For this there's the food hygiene unit... the carabinieri of the food hygiene unit and local inspectors. So if I find this stuff here, if I check.... Since it's illegal, you can report it to the police. Is it illegal? Of course it's illegal. The market for frozen pizza is one of the frozen food markets that's showing growth even in the current year. We are talking about 77-78 million pizzas. Every... Every year. So, what's the best selling pizza? These pizzas here. Let's take a Margherita. Let's see what's there. So this is the market leader: Cameo. Yes, the Cameo brand is the best selling brand in Italy. Where is this produced? In Germany, yes. Are these coming from Germany? Yes, they come from Germany. And they're the best sellers in Italy! Yes! They're produced in Germany. But there's only an Italian address on the boxes... Desenzano del Garda... and produced in the European Union. Buitoni says that the Bella Napoli is produced in Campania, in Benevento. And then there are the manufacturers that work for supermarkets, such as Roncadin, in Pordenone. It produces 300,000 pizzas a day, 5,000 an hour, 70% of which go overseas. In Europe we have approximately three billion frozen pizzas, The top consumer is Germany, which eats one billion frozen pizzas. 20% of our market is the hospitality industry. We have a customer in Ibiza that gets through 600,000 pizzas in five months. Let's see the ingredients... these yellow cakes are mozzarella from Ireland. It's ground and spread over pizzas. These are tomato drums. Tomato comes as both concentrate and pulp, from Emilia Romagna. Here's the Italian certificate. Vegetables are from Calabria. The dough uses a simple "0" flour. It rises for 24 hours. How much do these pizzas cost in a supermarket then? These pizzas go for € 3.20, € 2.50 during a promotion. The fewer ingredients, the higher the quality of the product. The Tradizionale by Cameo costs € 3. Let's read the ingredients... whole egg powder, mono- and diacetyl tartaric fatty acids, modified starch, dextrose, thickener, guar gum, acidity regulator, calcium phosphates, skimmed milk powder, raising agent, sodium bicarbonate. Is this a Margherita? What are all these ingredients for? They're used to speed up production, to deliver more taste with more standard products. But according to Professor Perin, who monitors the ingredients of frozen food, with this pizza you need to pay attention to saturated fats. Palm oil is 51% and olive oil is only 15%. It's three times less. Saturated fats, if taken in doses exceeding 20-g per day, can cause obesity and cardiovascular disease. According to Professor Perin, Venetian pizzerias use palm oil a lot. It's not just a matter of belief... we actually took pictures near pizzerias where we saw drums of palm oil. Drums? Drums. Here are the drums! However, as we toured the pizzerias of Venice, we didn't see any drums but we did discover something else. Are your pizzas frozen or do you make them yourselves? Excuse me, are you interviewing me? Yes. Are your pizzas frozen? Some. Same everywhere. Is this a historic restaurant? Oh, yes, yes! Of course! This is the Antica Torre, from 1520. These are prosciutto pizzas. Can we see how do you prepare them? Like this, bagged. We order as we go. Like this morning, we ordered these ones .... fresh. As they run out, we call them and within half an hour we have pizzas bases here. Then you put them in this oven here. Yes, we heat them there. I understand. We don't make our pizza bases. They bring them. That's all. Is it written anywhere? What's written, what do you want to know? You have to do your job and we do our job! I just asked a question! No, you are being annoying. That's all. Here we're at the Antica Torre. You sit down, eat a pizza but you don't know that it's prepared with a ready-made dough and if you ask these Hungarian tourists whether it's similar to pizza they eat in Hungary, they answer like this: "Yes, generally yes." In this pizzeria we saw hundreds of pizza bases stacked on the floor. Who's preparing pizzas? We do them in turn. So, those on the floor there? They're take-away. You mustn't film. Okay, sorry, but don't you sell those ones? Yes, I sell them. Why can't I film them if you're selling them? Why do you want to film them, sorry? Are they for sale or not? Those are not for sale. Those are for other uses. What would it be? For other pizzerias? You make dough for other pizzerias. There's nothing wrong. Is there anything wrong? Those there, are they prepared, are they frozen? Those are pre-cooked for other people. They are pre-cooked. Yes, for other restaurants. I understand. Can we see them? Since they'll be sold and eaten by somebody, surely? Come here. No, you mustn't film, I said. I'm not authorising this interview. I'm not authorising this interview. Go away! We can see those pizzas, can't we? Yes, you can see them. I am not authorising this interview. Okay, I don't want to interview you. I want to see. I don't want to talk to you. Of course, restaurateurs who have an oven and make proper pizza, feel their business suffers. The customer enters, thinks it's a pizzeria, thinks that his pizza is made in the oven, with normally risen dough Instead it's pre-cooked dough We don't know with what flour and we don't know with what ingredients And then they're sold as pizzas. I don't know what law is that allows you to write "Pizzeria" outside. They don't even have a pizza oven. So if you have a small garage you can buy a microwave, put in some pre-cooked pizza, and outside you can write "Pizzeria." Apart from pre-cooked pizzas, there are also frozen pizzas. Is that pizza frozen? Yes, it's frozen. Frozen, frozen... Can you show us that it's frozen? Ah, here it is. Excellent. There's pizza with tomato or with mozzarella. Heated and sold as a typical product. It's very nice! Is this an Italian pizza? Yes, it tastes like an Italian pizza. The base isn't as soft as good pizza, but it's still good! We're really hungry so it tastes amazing! We wanted to know whether you make pizza yourselves? Frozen. Frozen pizza. It's frozen, frozen... But is it written there that pizzas are frozen? Where? In some restaurants, after you're seated and, with a magnifying glass, you see it written that food is pre-cooked and frozen but prices are more or less the same as those made with dough and a pizza maker. Just now I got a pizza here in a kebab shop and it was very heavy. I still haven't digested it. Usually I eat the first slice, which tastes good, Then it becomes rubbery. Mozzarella is not mozzarella, dough becomes hard. 80% of the times I've eaten pizza, it's been indigestible. I can't point out a particular place to avoid but don't go to a restaurant near the university, with a white animal because I was sick for two days after going there. It rises in your stomach and in the morning it's a tragedy. Thirst, bloating... Well, it takes three days to digest. I shouldn't. Ah, really you shouldn't? No, I should not. Ah, so what about the pizza we ate the other night? No, well, the one I ate the other night was made from the mother dough. Which is the wrong name. They should call it "great grandmother starter" because it's very old. And what does the mother starter do? Since it rises for a very long time, etc. etc., it rises fully so pizza doesn't rise in my stomach. And, above all, it uses up the sugar. So it doesn't give me a big kick of sugar, which is bad for blood glucose. All types of flour contain sugar but refined flours only contain sugar and gluten. And a lot of gluten in people that are susceptible to it can cause celiac disease. In wholemeal flour, on the other hand, all micronutrients are preserved that are normally lost when you refine flour trying to get the "00" flour. For example, minerals. In wholemeal flour there's 2.5. With 00 flour, you get 0.5. Calcium. From 40 in wholemeal flour to 15 in 00 flour. Phosphorus. 400...and when you get to 00 flour, there's nothing left. And this is fundamental for metabolism because a lack of phosphorus can cause insanity. It's true that it's in many types of food but flour is the basis of our nutrition. Then we have vitamin B1 and B2. From 0.40 in wholemeal flour we get to 0.06. Then polyphenols, which are the garbage collectors in our arteries. From 210 they disappear when you get to 00 flour, which is the most used flour. Why? Since it has nothing left alive in it. It's the one that lasts longer and it simplifies life with pizza because, together with improvers, you can stretch and pull it the way you like it. Normally pizza is made with flour that isn't good for you. It's not good for you... Flour is too refined. These are wheat grains. To get to 00 flour, white flour, you remove this entire part which contains fiber and vitamins, polyphenols and other precious substances from a nutritional point of view. All that is left in 00 flour is starch, which is sugar, and gluten. One of the main goals in preventing cancer is to keep blood glucose low. So all food that increases blood glucose a lot is not particularly recommendable. So are 00 and 0 flour increasing it? Yes. They increase it much more than wholemeal flour. Starch is a sugar. It's a complex sugar, so with many branches. And refining it can more or less speed up absorption of this sugar. Refined flours are specifically associated with abdominal obesity. Those who have a belly get sick more often with diabetes, heart attacks, Alzheimer's, cancer, hepatic steatosis... When I say "Let's find the right flour," I say "Let's take flour rich in fiber." Fiber helps the intestine to work properly. It's one of the reasons that people are constipated. So, you experts have particularly identified this as a problem... Of course it's a problem! What's the most used flour? The most used flours in Italy are absolutely the 00 and 0 flours. The 00... Let's say that 00 and 0 flours cover 80% of overall sales by volume. So, 00 and 0 flour can create a lot of health problems. Experts know it and we don't. For example, if we eat a pizza with wholemeal flour or type 2 or 1 flour, it is good for our health but in the specifications for a "True pizza", only 00 is mentioned. Today we have excellent pizza makers who are truly masters because today they have scientific knowledge of what they are doing, not just practical knowledge. They know what flour is, they know... Yes! They know what the flour has in it. You know that if I go around Naples to proper pizzerias with the Association logo... What sort of flour is it? 0, 00, 1, 2...? 00.... 00 what does that mean? That it is... Nobody knows. 00 is flour... 00? 00. Why must flour be 00? Can you take a break? Good morning. He's the main pizza maker. Why do you use 00 flour? Why do we use it? Ciro! This gentleman wants to know from you why we use 00 flour. I don't know. Let's move on from flour. Do 1 and 2 flours exist? 0 and 00, yes. 1, 1! No, it doesn't. No. So, what flours are available? Only... 0 and 00. In Rome, take-away pizzas are made with reinforced 00 flour. Flour, flour! Our flour is Manitoba. It's an American flour. Manitoba 00, Ma...ni..to...ba. Does it come directly from the United States? It's an American flour. Does it say "Reinforced"? Yes. "00 Reinforced." You're right. Ah, reinforced with what? Reinforced and that's it. Reinforced. It means there are different flour mixes. In Milan, it's the same thing: For a classic slice of pizza that's quite thick, they use the 00 flour. 00 flour because... we prefer 00 because it makes the dough stronger and it lasts longer. Within 00 flour, used for pizza, there's a greater quantity of gluten because it's used to make the dough more elastic. The problem with flour is mainly linked to the presence of gluten, to the gluten proteins which are gliadins and glutenins, which, even in perfectly healthy subjects, when taken in high quantity, create an alteration of our intestinal barrier. In practice, they alter the permeability of the barrier. They destroy those muscle proteins that create the structure of our intestine and then you get functional disorders such as bloating, abdominal cramps and alterations of the intestine. One of the largest suppliers of pizza flour is Caputo, in Naples, but they choose wheat from all over the world according to the gluten content. See what it does? It stretches and makes us understand the stretching capacity of flour. Gluten can be extensible or less extensible. For pizza you need a very extensible gluten because you must be able to stretch it without it rebounding like rubber. But there would be a solution... to let the dough rise for at least 24 hours. Why? A long rising time actually facilitates the elimination of gluten and the remaining quantity is really reduced in the end product. So, the more it rises, the less gluten there is! Of course. In Milan, on the other hand, a slice of pizza, that's very thick, rises very little. Overall, it rises for an hour. Then, you know, it depends, because if they are needed immediately they are put in the oven anyway. After half an hour, three quarters of an hour, a pizza can already be made. Here we are in Rome. How long does your pizza rise for? Three hours. The rising of the dough, around one hour, one hour and a half. To better understand what pizza we are eating, we asked for help from Vincenzo Pagano, professional taster and a member of juries in pizza world championships. Let's start with take-away pizza from Rome. Here it says they let it rise naturally. This is a pizza with dough that was prepared very quickly. Is this a pizza you prepared this morning? Did you prepare it just now? In another pizzeria, they assure us that it is highly digestible. This one is not perfectly cooked either, although it is very thin and very salty. A sub-optimal rising. Here they said it rises for 12 hours. Here as well, very poor rising. The other characteristic of Roman pizza is that the round one is thin and stretched with a rolling pin. The rising is too fast, so this is quite a heavy pizza. There is very high quantity of uncooked flour. At Baffetto's, a temple for this type of pizza, the bases are placed one on top of another, and there's less flour. A little wet in the middle, but you can tell it was prepared quickly. In Milan, traditional pizza is by the slice... a lot of mozzarella, a lot of oil. It's thick, but allowed only a short rise because it seems that after three hours the dough is no longer good all right. This dough must be used within three hours. After being worked, within three hours, three hours and a half, then it's no longer all right. For this reason many are using improvers. Enzymatic improvers. It's a chemical substance but helps keep the product fresh. But it's certainly allowed by law - it doesn't have any contraindication. Alternatively, you can always resort to frozen dough. Here we are in Piazza Duomo. The base is blast chilled. What does it mean? It means it is half cooked and then frozen. But those who are eating, it can't know that because it's not printed anywhere. No, no, it's mandatory to print what product we're using.. It is not mandatory to print which company it is... The bottom part separates from the middle part. Rising has been very short. It hasn't had a long rising time. In this case, we are closer to bread. It's compacted, it's a bit heavy to be digested. Expanded...exploded...but not risen. Raw. We are in a hurry in Florence as well. How long does the dough rise for? 20 minutes, half an hour. Maybe it can get up to an hour. From dough let's move on to the ingredients. Here we are at Spontini's in Milan. To enter you have to queue. What oil are you using? Soy oil? Yes, that's used just to fry it... only lightly. You cannot fry with olive oil or another oil... It stays much lighter. So, do you fry pizza in the oven? Yes. It's fried with soy oil. Other pizzerias say they use sunflower oil... No trace of extravirgin olive oil. Not even at Michele's in Naples. Soy bean oil is very light. Because olive oil isn't good... too fatty. Soy? Soy. Have you always been using soy bean oil here? Always, always. It's the best. What's used at the historic Trianon's? Sunflower seed oil is what we use for the classic Margherita, our good old Margherita. Do you put sunflower oil here? Oil... yes. And this is the pizzeria of Aurelio Fierro, author of this famous song. Couldn't he earn the true pizza logo? What sort of oil is this? Let me see the oil. This is very clear. What is it? Sunflower? This is a mixed oil. Because olive oil is too heavy. What is it, sunflower or peanut? We put sunflower and olive oil. Yet, in the statutes of the True Pizza Association it's specified that only olive oil must be used. Then there are always on-the-spot checks. We have delegations all around the world. Our delegates go to the site, assess it and then we apply for a grant of the logo, even if only provisionally, which then becomes final when we visit them. Another check by the True Pizza Association delegates should be done on Spaccanapoli, on this other affiliated pizzeria. No, we mix sunflower oil with extravirgin oil so it becomes a little bit lighter. Why, is extravirgin oil heavy? Yes, it's heavy. Here it is! Is this sunflower oil? Sunflower. Extra virgin oil is heavier. We use it only upon request. Often grape seed oil is preferred in Florence. The smell isn't good for pizza. Extra virgin is not good. In Rome, the same story. What oil are you using? Sunflower oil. Sunflower? Yes. This here. In my opinion they are talking nonsense saying that they only use olive oil. One must be clear... But not because they use it and we don't use it, yeah? Because customers say it's heavy. What did you use? Strong! Again? Does it tingle? It's the polyphenols! And more it tingles, the more the antioxidants.... Oh dear! It's also bitter, isn't it? This is Coratina, wonderful. It's like a Barolo wine, if you want to make a comparison. Coratina is oil from Apulia. Extra virgin oils have antioxidants that guard against cancer and heart disease and we have the best oil in the world. But on 80% of our pizzas we use sunflower oil in large plastic jars. Soy, sunflower... Keep away from light and heat sources. With clear PET, light comes in. Seed oils are extracted with solvents. Do you smell the aroma? Dr. Celletti makes me test three different extravirgin oils poured raw onto pizza. Three completely different experiences. And we must go back in time to have a "Renaissance" of pizza because, what's more, it will also turn into a large business for Italy. The difference for food that is healthier and tastier is 40 cents more. We put 5 g of extra virgin olive oil. 5 g. Whatever the cost, what difference does it make? Is this clear? The difference between the worst and the best Margherita pizza, is no more than 30-40 cents. You add it to the price of pizza and that's fine. Can you taste how rancid it is? Don't you clean it before putting oil in...? But there's only ever oil in it. Is it not worth cleaning? Indeed not, perhaps it's even better if it takes these aromas from the previous oil... With these practices, the oil is scientifically rancid. In these labs Professor Lercker analyses adulteration as well as the defects of oil. Oil you find on tables doesn't have great attributes. On the contrary, it's usually either rancid due to the clear jugs, let's be honest... due to continuous refilling with oil that's of poor quality to start with. So, when you go out to eat, you bring your oil bottle. Do you go around with this bottle? Always. If I want to go out to eat. And at lunch I'm almost forced to. And sometimes also in the evening, for leisure... I don't know about you, but for me... all these oven loads... I have a huge craving for pizza. And the guy that brings an oil bottle from home looks a bit eccentric, but in reality he has thought about it properly. This is the famous pizza maker jug that is used to pour oil over pizza. Everyone fills it with the oil they prefer and as it goes down it is topped up. This mechanism is understood better with a clear bottle. This part is dirty with oil that oxidises, becomes rancid. As you pour it, rancid oil goes onto the plate. You top it up and rancid oil goes into the oil you are pouring on the plate and so on over the years. Because this jug isn't cleaned by anyone - at least, when we asked, the answer was: "No way ever." So, it's best to ask: "Pizza without oil, thank you. Please bring me the extravirgin oil bottle at the table," because, as a matter of fact, all pizzerias have one. After the commercial break we'll see the other ingredients: tomato, mozzarella, etc. Irresistible pizza. Surely somebody's eating one at the moment and we don't want it to remain in their stomach. Because we can expect and choose to have good produce. We have San Marzano, the best tomato in the world... a concentrate of lycopene, which is a bomb of antioxidants. We invented mozzarella more than a thousand years ago. It would really be bizarre to crumble some German cheese on top of pizza. What tomatoes are you using? No, no. No. What tomatoes are you using? Natural peeled tomatoes. Here we are in the Foggia region. The harvest is now done mechanically by dragging. 97% of plum tomatoes are produced in Apulia. So, those who use peeled tomatoes, use Italian produce for certain. So, if we buy peeled tomatoes, we have no problem? I know where you're going... China produces, within its territory, tomato concentrate. Passata can contain tomato concentrate. Of course! Because, technically, if I take concentrate and add water, I get a passata. This is a drum that comes from China. We import from China on average, depending on the year, part of the concentrate tomato coming into Italy... It's 105 million kg overall of tomato concentrate coming partially from China and partially from the United States. Pizza with tomato is a doctor's cure, we used to sing, because back then only San Marzano tomato was used, which is produced only in an area covered by 41 municipalities of the Agro Nocerino Sarnese. Is it a fruit? For us, it's a fruit. You must taste it, though! And then you tell us what you're actually eating. Is this tomato? For us, this is a fruit. We can see it as a fruit. When you think about it... see this tomato inside? It's all fiber. Not much cellulose. And all this part under the skin is lycopene. It has been studied, scientifically proven that the quantity of lycopene in San Marzano tomato is at least ten times higher than normal. Ten times higher! How much does it cost? What's the price on the market at the moment? Between €1 and €1.50, in the worst-case scenario. So, where are you selling it? Mainly overseas. Our San Marzano is sold overseas. They enjoy it overseas. This tomato, is, on average, 50 cents dearer per can but it doesn't sell very well in Italy. As a percentage, how much of your market is in Japan? At the moment it is 65% Japan, 15% United States and the rest is Italy. Are there fields available? But they are abandoned because, clearly, youths... Are there abandoned fields here in San Marzano? Yes, here in San Marzano there are abandoned fields. And can this tomato grow? This tomato can grow. Tomato... here we have San Marzano, which is practically unique in the world. A product that could have boomed and instead you allowed the use of other types of tomatoes as well. Why? We allowed the use of other types of tomatoes because if pizza were to be made only with San Marzano all over the world, we would have had to close 80% of pizzerias in the world. You just had to create a true pizza with unique ingredients, which only we have, such as mozzarella. This is mozzarella specifically for pizza. It's produced already cut, julienned, in cubes, as a roll, as a ball, or as a block. Right now, this is top notch. Here we are at Muretto's and it says: "Only Italian products." It's not that I am a pizza wizard. I have Italian products. Berlin. Oh my! I didn't even know! I was convinced that Francia was Italian. If I'm not wrong, in Italy we get 110 million kg of rennet, mostly used to produce mozzarella. But its provenance is not written anywhere. It's not written on the label because it's not mandatory. We don't say it. We use the labels everybody uses. Which are? Milk, rennet, salt. That's the same thing written on mozzarella made with Italian milk. I usually order a tomato-only pizza because mozzarella is heavy. Sometimes it's heavy... poorly topped. I need to take a Brioschi antacid in the evening, before going to bed. Also because I don't stop. I eat it and notice later that I can't manage to digest it. For me, it's mozzarella. Here we are in the area of Gioia del Colle in Putignano. Gianluca owns a farm with cows that he milks, and he produces milk on the farm that he uses to prepare mozzarella and also the roll specifically for pizza. How much do you sell this for? Around € 7.50 €7, €7.50. Then it depends... What about fiordilatte? Fiordilatte is €7, €6.80. It's about €1 more per kg compared to the average torpedo and with 1 kg you can make more than ten pizzas. But although this product is organic and traceable, Gianluca can't manage to sell it in Italy. We work with Germany, the Netherlands Belgium, Denmark, France... A very little with Italy, with those few restaurants or shops that want it. They know and they want quality... Fiordilatte at least must be produced in this area? Of course! Fiordilatte must be produced with milk from Campania. Do you check these things? We usually check them. This is the dairy factory that the True Pizza Association indicated as one of the suppliers for their members. Where is the milk from? This milk comes from Avellino and also from Germany. Why is it coming from Germany? Because milk must be collected from the countryside with our trucks. With German milk... the tanker comes here. The milk is ready, already pasteurised, ready to be used. It's a matter of convenience and also a question, basically, of German milk costing a few cents less than Italian milk. It's more convenient to get it from Germany than to pick it up from farmers in Campania. What counts is the cents. It is a matter of cents that makes the difference between a good pizza and a poor pizza. We're in Florence with our taster. Good oil...The tomatoes also are good... The fiordilatte is good too, the edge has risen properly... This is beginning to taste like a true pizza. This one in Milan was also appreciated and, when we open the menu, we find out that a Bella Margherita is made with San Marzano D.O.P. tomato, fresh fiordilatte, Tuscan extravirgin olive oil, parmesan.... The price is €7.00 Let's go back to Rome. I want to be connected with agriculture. I don't need anyone or anything. Only farmers. Anything you see on a pizza is produced together with other farmers. Here we are in Bologna. Is this dough? Yes. Here, between 10 am and midnight there are some who go at the pace of the dough, the mother starter... In order to proceed at a slow pace over a long time. This starts fermenting, with water, keeping it at a controlled temperature. See all these dots? Yes. This is the exterior part of the wheat grain so there's a bit of bran. If we refine it too much, there's no nutritional element left. And, to be digested, dough must rise at a controlled temperature. Then pizzas are topped with prepared ingredients, with products that are traceable, and then served in slices and their story's told to the customers. The dough is classic, type 1 flour, stone ground with a mother starter. The Cutigliano fiordilatte, the Torre Guaceto Fiaschetto tomato, salted capers, oregano and basil. How much does this delicious Margherita cost? Here it's €7.50 to the public. If you were to use cheaper ingredients that you can buy wholesale, how much cheaper would it be? Probably we'd be able to offer a more aggressive price to the public, particularly for a Margherita. I don't know. 90 cents, €1 less? Are we at those levels? Yes. Even in Naples, something is moving. Sorbillo is experimenting with flours, oils and new doughs. So what do I do? With the temperatures, with the quantity of salt, with mother starters, with a dough prepared the day before... At Michele's there is a temperature-controlled room where the dough rises and matures and becomes more digestible. The last quest, because it's a quest to go and pay a visit, is the International Museum of Pizza. One should be able to make an appointment but nobody is answering the phone. It's on the fifth floor of a palace and even the President, when he came with me, had trouble getting in. He hadn't booked! It's not our museum. Can I confess something? I must say... people don't know who owns the museum... Who's losing out here? Unfortunately this is the true story of pizza... I must confess I haven't even visited the museum. They put together a consortium to create the STG brand, which stands for Traditional Guaranteed Specialty. Europe was involved, the Ministry of Agriculture was involved, they achieved it, but then nobody applied for it. Now, if we are not able to safeguard and exploit our strengths then we can't complain. Even hospitality schools teach how to make pasta, risotto... but not pizza, although pizzerias are some of the most common restaurants. It's only we consumers that can change the trend because it's all a mess. There are places that are working well and they should be rewarded. The price difference is really minimal. From 40 cents to a maximum of €1. One's health benefits from it and so do all related businesses. If then a few pizzerias start to empty, maybe they will start to work better, cleaning the ovens and using ingredients that don't sit on your stomach.