Pizza is a flatbread built from a few simple staples: dough, tomato sauce, cheese, and toppings, all brought together by heat. Its modern form emerged in Naples, Italy, during the 18th and 19th centuries, when working-class bakers began topping flatbreads with tomato, oil, and other available ingredients. The original Italian style, Neapolitan pizza, remains the touchstone of the craft. A true Neapolitan pizza is thin and soft at the center with a puffy, charred edge known as the cornicione, the result of dough baked at very high temperatures in a wood-fired oven. The classic Neapolitan bake takes just 60 to 90 seconds in an oven running between 450 and 485°C, producing the spotted char pattern called leoparding on the crust.
To preserve this tradition, the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN) was founded as a certification body for pizzerias. A pizza that meets AVPN standards is called "Vera Pizza Napoletana" — true Neapolitan pizza — and must adhere to strict rules: a specific Italian flour, San Marzano tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, hand-stretched dough, a wood-fired oven, and that 60–90 second bake near 485°C. Beyond AVPN, the European Union has also granted Pizza Napoletana a "Specialità Tradizionale Garantita" (STG) designation, a broader protected-origin label, while AVPN functions as a more rigorous industry certification. The hallmarks of Neapolitan dough are a hydration of 58 to 62 percent and a fermentation of 8 to 24 hours, often extended with a cold retard in the refrigerator to deepen flavor.
These constraints may sound narrow, but they produce a pizza of distinct character: airy, slightly soupy at the center, with a leopard-spotted cornicione that crackles when bitten. Understanding the Neapolitan model is essential because every other pizza style can be understood as a regional adaptation of, or deliberate departure from, this original.