Pizza Paradiso

Only in Italy can you sit down to a dinner of a dozen pizzas and describe it as “a light dinner.” Welcome to pizza night at la Fattoria del Gelso.

We have enjoyed pizza all over the peninsula, from Puglia to Piemonte, from Udine to Umbria. Several years ago, joined by our friends Pete and Nancy we devoted a full two and a half days to touring every pizzeria Naples could throw our way, eating and judging our way through nearly a dozen of the world’s most highly regarded pizzerias sampling scores of margheritas, marinaras and pizze bianche.

Pizza is an Italian icon but one with many variations and many personalities. Frequently we hear spirited arguments about the virtues of a soft, fluffy crust versus a crisper, cracker-y crust. We tend to side with the former but respect the latter.

One of the favorite activities on our Food and Wine tours (as well as our weekly rentals) is pizza night with Marco. Being Umbrian, perhaps Marco is not a natural born pizza maker. But over the past couple of years he has thrown himself into the pizza making process with such gusto that today you might mistakenly think he had been born in Naples. Of particular pride is his handmade pizza dough, a recipe introduced to us by our Cannarese neighbor Jennifer McIlvaine but worked and reworked by Marco. In our simple outdoor oven Marco is able to coax a fluffy, doughy crust that has volume, substance and flavor.

Pizza night is a hands on affair, with guests participating as much or as little as they wish. Most help stretch out some of the doughs. Most help top pizzas with tomato sauce, buffalo mozzarella and assorted other ingredients available in the farmhouse kitchen, including local Cannara onions, fresh sausage from Norcia, truffle sauce, vegetables from the garden and myriad other toppings. Some of the favorites are gorgonzola, pear and nut, sausage and onion and anything with truffle.

As you can see below, pizza time is not just for our adult guests. Earlier this month Marco’s children Carlo Alberto and Viola joined him in the kitchen to make pizzas and then enjoyed them at the table along with their mother Chiara.