The distinctive food of Rome is enjoying its moment in the moonlight, as a fit successor to our earlier obsessions with Tuscany and Naples. Like Naples, Rome is a pizza town, but unlike Naples, pizzas occur in a bewildering variety of styles. There are round cracker pizzas that can break apart as you bite into them; and thicker circular pies like those of Naples, but slightly crisper. Some pizzas resemble Sullivan Street Bakery’s pizza bianca, oily and bumpy without sauce, sometimes used to make mortadella sandwiches; others are the bready focaccia squares found in bakeries, strewn with zucchini blossoms, onions, or other single ingredients.
But one of the most characteristic styles is the pinsa. Some would say it’s not really a pizza, but an oblong flop of dough rounded at either end like a huarache, perhaps originating in ancient Rome as pizza’s ancestor. The dough is different too, a mixture of grains that cooks up light and airy. To compensate for this lack of weight, the toppings are piled on with a freer hand, including unexpected meats and vegetables. Even in New York, where we’re proud of our wild and crazy pies, the pinsa seems unbound by convention.
