All About Pizza by Radchada Garden Café

Pizza

Our major speciality is Pizza - Thin crust Italian style 12 inch Pizza! Freshly made to order and served piping hot straight from the oven with a variety of toppings. Hand made dough is allowed to rise for several hours before being made into pizza. A covering of our own recipie of home made tomato sauce is complimented by a generous covering of good quality morzarella cheese and various toppings to create the perfect Pizza for you.

Although the best known Pizza style is the original Neapolitan Pizza from Naples in Italy, the origins of Pizza date back to the ancient Greeks who made breads covered with cheese and herbs. The classic Pizza Margherita is named after Queen Margherita of Italy who ate it on a visit to Naples way back in 1889. This basic Pizza had colours red (tomato) white (mozzarella) and green (Basil) representing the colours of the Italian Flag. Italian immigrants took their beloved Pizza to America where the style diverged into Chicago style Pizza or thick crust pan Pizza.

Traditional Italian wood fired Pizza Oven

A key to making a good pizza is the oven which must be searing hot. The best ovens are brick and stone construction heated with a wood fire with the Pizza cooked directly on the stone floor of the oven. Good ingredients are essential too. The dough must be made with good quality strong flour, high in proteins to give the right gluten content when kneaded into an elastic dough. The only other ingredients in the dough are yeast, salt (in low quantities) and water.

Mozzarella Cheese is another essential ingredient, in the perfect world absolutely fresh mozzarella would be used the day it is made, but in practice, most Pizzas use a partially dried form of the cheese. Tomato sauce is the other essential commodity, many recipes exist for sauces, may carefully guarded by the Pizzaiolo, but as a minimum all will contain good quality tomatoes, often with other flavourings such as garlic, onion, carrot, celery and herbs to enhance the taste.

Many Pizza toppings can be used but the common ones in Italy are cooked ham, mushrooms, artichokes and olives; the quintessential ingredients of the Pizza Quattro Stagioni. Other popular toppings include onion, anchovies, eggplant, capers, cured meats, e.g salamis and prosciutto, Italian sausage, a variety of different cheeses (e.g. Pizza Quattro Fromaggi ) and even egg. Capricciosa is one of the best with a variety of ingredients.