Educational Media Reviews Online

While many different countries claim to have invented pizza, this video seeks to prove once and for all that the birthplace of pizza is Naples, Italy. Done entirely with subtitles and an English spoken translation, it is a surprisingly detailed as well as sometimes humorous look at this world famous dish.

The viewer watches Professor Carlo Mangoni di S. Stefano of the University of Naples talk about the history of the tomato and the invention of pizza around 1750. The narrator tells about the Authentic Neopolitan Pizza Association which has drawn up regulations for defining international standards for obtaining the trade name for authentic Neopolitan pizza. These regulations are referred to throughout the entire video.

The video includes shots of the famous Pizza Fest that features 40 ovens and serves 4,000-5,000 customers per night. The Nazionale Italiano Pizzo Acrobatica is shown next. This has to be seen to be believed. It is an amazing show of young men displaying their talents and agility with pizza dough! Accompanied by energetic music, they twirl, dance, do tricks and generally clown around handling dough the entire time. While it’s humorous to watch, it’s obviously serious competition among the dough twirlers.

The film then becomes much more serious as it provides an in depth look at the 4 main ingredients of pizza. We see every aspect of the tomato from the farmlands where they are cultivated to the processing plants. Mozzarella cheese is next to be analyzed. There is a lot of discussion about the comparison between the much-preferred buffalo mozzarella over cow’s milk mozzarella. We see how the buffalo mozzarella is processed. Next is a discussion about the wheat which is produced for the dough. Earlier in the film we watched an experienced pizza maker instructing trainees on the proper rolling and handling of the dough. The next ingredient to be examined is the olive for the olive oil. The final part of the film covers the ovens used to cook pizza. The industrialization of the entire process of creating and selling pizza is described.

Altogether this film is a combination of a serious and fun look at the world of pizza. It would enhance libraries that have collections dealing with cooking, production engineering, manufacturing and agriculture.