How is Pizza Cooked in Italy? The Fire, The Heat, The Magic

 

People ask me all the time: “Francesco, how do you actually cook pizza in Italy? What makes it different?”

The answer is simple and complicated at the same time. It’s fire. It’s heat. It’s hands. It’s timing. It’s generations of knowledge passing through smoke and flames.

Let me tell you how pizza is really cooked in Italy – and why it matters.

 

The Heart of Every Pizzeria: The Oven

 

In Italy, the oven isn’t just equipment. It’s the soul of the pizzeria. Walk into any traditional place in Naples or Rome, and you’ll see it – the wood-fired oven, flames dancing, heat radiating, built from brick and time.

The cooking must be done exclusively in a wood-fired oven, which has reached a temperature between 430-480°C. With these temperatures, you insert the pizza for just 60-90 seconds.

Read that again. Sixty to ninety seconds. That’s all.

This isn’t like your home oven where you bake something for 10-12 minutes. This is fire. This is power. This is pizza transformed in the time it takes to catch your breath.

 

Why Wood Fire? Why Not Gas or Electric?

 

I could tell you it’s tradition. I could say it’s what the rules require. But the truth is deeper – wood fire creates something you simply cannot replicate any other way.

 

The Heat from Two Directions

 

In a proper wood-fired oven, heat comes from everywhere. The stone floor beneath the pizza radiates intense heat upward, cooking the base. The domed ceiling, heated to extreme temperatures by the fire, radiates heat downward, cooking the top.

Authentic Neapolitan pizza is wood fired, meaning flames lick over the pizza as it cooks, producing some charring and a slightly smoky taste. The extreme heat allows for exceptional rise in crust, creating a crispy yet light and soft pizza at the same time.

This simultaneous cooking from above and below? That’s what creates the magic – crispy base, puffy cornicione, perfectly melted cheese, all in 90 seconds.

 

The Flavor of Smoke

 

Gas and electric ovens provide heat. Wood fire provides heat plus flavor. The smoke from oak or beech wood infuses into the dough, creating subtle notes you taste but can’t quite name.

It’s not overwhelming. It’s not like barbecue. It’s just… there. A whisper of wood, a hint of fire, something that makes you take another bite to understand it better.

 

The Temperature Dance: Neapolitan vs Roman  

 

Here’s where things get interesting. Not all Italian pizza is cooked the same way.

 

Neapolitan: The Inferno  

 

Traditional Neapolitan pizza cooks at temperatures around 900°F (480°C) or even higher. The ideal temperature for Neapolitan pizza is around 900°F, which gives that characteristic leopard-spotted crust and perfectly cooked toppings in just 60-90 seconds.

This extreme heat is why Neapolitan pizza has that soft, wet center, those dramatic bubbles on the crust, those black leopard spots. The pizza cooks so fast that the dough doesn’t have time to dry out or become crispy.

 

Roman Style: The Controlled Burn

 

Roman pizza, like what we make at MaMeMi, cooks at slightly lower temperatures – around 626°F (330°C). The bake lasts about 2 minutes, producing a well-baked but still moist dough with well-cooked toppings.

This lower, longer bake creates that signature Roman crispiness. The thin dough has time to become properly crispy without burning, creating the *scrocchiarella* texture Romans love.

 

The Pizzaiolo’s Dance: Technique Matters

 

Temperature is only half the story. The other half is the pizzaiolo – the pizza maker – and what he does during those crucial seconds.

Loading the Pizza

 

You slide the pizza onto a long wooden peel, lightly dusted with flour. With one smooth motion, you tilt the peel and flick – the pizza drops onto the hot stone floor, not too close to the flames.

This moment requires judgment. Too close to the fire and it burns. Too far and it doesn’t cook evenly. You learn this through years, through burning hundreds of pizzas, through paying attention.

 

The Constant Rotation

 

While the pizza cooks, you cannot just walk away. You must turn it. Using the peel, you pick up the pizza in one swift motion, bring it to the front, quickly turn it, place it back.

You repeat this maybe four times during those 60-90 seconds. Keep your eyes on the pizza – failing to turn regularly will result in very charred black edges on one side while the other remains pale.

This rotation ensures even cooking as different parts of the oven have different heat intensities. The spot closest to the fire is hottest. The corners might be cooler. You’re constantly adjusting, compensating, working with the fire.

 

Reading the Signs

 

A good pizzaiolo doesn’t watch the clock. He watches the pizza. He sees when the cornicione has puffed properly. He notices when the cheese begins to bubble. He spots the moment when those leopard spots appear on the crust.

Once you have a puffed crust which is darkly charred in spots, you remove it from the oven. Not before, not after. Right then.

 

What We Do at MaMeMi: Adapting Tradition for Copenhagen

 

At our Vesterbro location, we use a professional electric oven. Not wood-fired, not gas – electric. And you know what? That’s okay.

We reach the high temperatures needed for proper Roman-style pizza. Our pizzas cook quickly, creating that thin, crispy base while maintaining a slightly tender interior. We watch them constantly, rotating when needed, pulling them at the exact right moment.

The technique, the timing, the judgment, the 48-hour biga fermentation – that’s where the real craft lives. The oven is just a tool. What matters is understanding how to use it properly.

 

Why Home Ovens Struggle (And What You Can Do)  

 

People often ask why their homemade pizza doesn’t taste like pizzeria pizza. The answer is temperature.

Most home ovens max out around 500°F (260°C), which isn’t ideal for Neapolitan pizza. At these lower temperatures, pizza takes 8-12 minutes to bake – five to eight times longer than in a wood-fired oven. The crust dries out, the cheese overcooks, the magic disappears.

But you can get closer:

• Use a pizza stone or steel, preheated for an hour
• Use your oven’s broiler to add top heat
• Make your dough slightly wetter to compensate for the drying
• Accept that it won’t be exactly the same, and that’s okay

The truth is, making authentic Italian pizza at home in a regular oven will simply never reach perfection. But you can make something delicious, something that captures the spirit if not the exact letter of Italian pizza.

 

The Rules Are There for a Reason

 

The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana has strict regulations: wood-fired oven, specific temperatures, 60-90 second cooking time, precise dough handling. Some people think these rules are too rigid.

But I understand them. These rules exist because generations of pizzaiolos figured out the optimal way to cook pizza. The wood fire, the extreme heat, the quick cooking – these aren’t arbitrary. They’re the result of thousands of pizza makers over hundreds of years discovering what works best.

When you follow these methods, you’re not just following rules. You’re tapping into collective wisdom, into knowledge earned through experience and passed down through apprenticeship.

 

Come Taste Properly Cooked Pizza

 

The next time you’re at MaMeMi on Vesterbro, just minutes from Vega, watch your pizza come out of our oven. Notice the slight char on the edges, the way the cheese bubbles, how the crust has that perfect balance of crispy and tender.

That’s technique. That’s proper cooking temperature. That’s our pizzaiolos watching every second, rotating at the right moments, pulling the pizza at the exact instant it reaches perfection.

Italian pizza cooking isn’t just about having a hot oven. It’s about understanding fire, respecting time, and knowing that great pizza happens in that narrow window between underdone and overdone – a window that lasts sometimes just seconds.

This is how pizza is cooked in Italy. This is what we bring to Copenhagen. This is why, when you taste properly made pizza, you immediately understand the difference.

*Experience authentically cooked Roman-style pizza at MaMeMi on Vesterbro – where technique, temperature, and tradition create every perfect pie.*