Popularity: 5% [?]

The Bay Area’s own Tony Gemignani went to Naples, the birthplace of pizza, and came home the world champion Neapolitan pizza maker - beating every Italian contender in the very city where pizza was born.

But he still can’t make his championship thin-crust margherita pie at his own Castro Valley pizzeria, Pyzano’s, which he runs with his brother, Frank (or at their Spin Gourmet Pizza nightspot in Walnut Creek).

They make lots of pizzas - New York, Californian and their own fully loaded American-style Pyzano’s pie - but not the Neapolitan.

That’s because Pyzano’s doesn’t have a wood-fired oven, the only kind that gets hot enough - 900 degrees - to give Neapolitan pizza its classic blister and char. Like many urban areas, Alameda County restricts wood ovens to cut pollution.

In Pyzano’s gas oven, which tops out at around 600 degrees, Gemignani’s margherita bakes to a golden crispness. It’s delicious - but not what Naples has in mind when it comes to pizza.

“We always wanted a wood-fired oven,” Gemignani told me. And now, he hopes his upstart win may allow that to happen.

Over samples of his various pizzas - all have different crusts, made from different flours and recipes - Gemignani relived his day at the Trofeo Citta de Napoli Championato Internationale per Pizzaioli in June.

“It was a big win,” he said. “People are comparing it to Stag’s Leap (Wine Cellars) going to Paris,” and beating the best French Bordeaux makers in the 1976 tasting that put California Cabernet Sauvignon on the map.

Until that day, Gemignani’s claim to fame came as a pizza acrobat, winning eight championships for feats like spinning a disk of dough to 33.2 inches in just two minutes and rolling stretched pizza dough across his shoulders 37 times in a row. He’s appeared on Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show,” and is a Food Network regular with Emeril and Rachael Ray.

A couple of years ago, Gemignani hit his 30s and realized he was becoming the old man of the acrobatic world, so he decided to focus his competitive energies on baking. He flew to Italy to earn his certification as a pizzaiolo, or pizza maker. Italy takes its pizza seriously - the rules for making a Neapolitan pizza run to five single-spaced pages.

He installed a small portable Bee Hive wood oven in his Castro Valley backyard and started baking, with his Sicilian-born wife Julie serving as guinea pig and critic.

Hundreds of pizzas later, they headed to Naples for the two-day event in June. This was just the second year that the Naples trophy championship has been held.

Gemignani was one of 12 Americans among the almost 50 contestants. None of them was expected to win - especially not someone from California, where great pizza is notoriously tough to find, and where non-classic ingredients like figs, lamb and smoked salmon might show up as toppings.

When Gemignani showed up with his dough, tomato sauce, basil and salt in wooden bowls and trays, one young Italian pizza maker commented derisively, “You could tell him we have stainless steel now.”

Before the day was out, the joke was on the young Italian.

Gemignani showed me exactly what he did, before the sharp eyes of the Italian judges.

His crust is made with just flour, water and salt - and the flour must be the “double zero” kind, meaning it’s low-protein and low-gluten. In a few deft gestures, he stretched it to 13 inches, leaving a thicker edge at the center; it can be no thicker than about one-tenth of an inch.

He seeded San Marzano tomatoes and added salt for a simple sauce, spread on in the required spiral motion. Fresh mozzarella, a little basil, a swirl of olive oil - that’s it. The ingredients must be at room temperature, which is why he uses wood; stainless steel feels colder.

“It’s really back to the basics of the way pizza was traditionally made,” he says.

Once in the oven, the pie got a quarter turn every 15 seconds; 80 seconds later it was done - and a winner.

Afterward, the Italian contenders sat him down and demanded to know: “Who taught you?” He told them that although he learned basic pizza-making in Italy, he taught himself the Naples way.

Now, the Gemignanis are hoping they’ll finally be able to bake Tony’s champion pizza back home. Because of his win, the VPN - the Associazione della Verace Pizza Napoletana, or association of true Neapolitan pizza - has authorized him to open a pizza school in Castro Valley.

The Gemignani brothers plan to open a restaurant and school in downtown Castro Valley, if they can talk their local government into letting them fire up a wood-burning oven during certain hours of the week.

If that happens, they hope to start construction late this before year and move from their current location in a strip mall near Interstate 580.

But Tony Gemignani isn’t waiting around. He’s already found a supplier for the San Felice flour he used in the competition, and has brought in 30 55-pound bags - enough for 6,000 pizzas. And he’s got a permit to bring a wood-fired oven to the parking lot outside Pyzano’s for one day, Oct. 20.

For $17.95 a pie, the Bay Area will finally get the world’s best Neapolitan pizza - without ever leaving home.

Pyzano’s Pizzeria, 3835 E. Castro Valley Blvd. (in the 580 Marketplace mall), Castro Valley; (510) 881-8878 or pyzanospizzeria.com. Lunch and dinner daily.

Carol Ness, Chronicle Staff Writer

Popularity: 7% [?]

Pizza, like so many other foods, did not originate in the country for which it is now famous. Unless you have researched the subject, you, like so many people, probably always thought Pizza was strictly an Italian creation. Dog

The foundations for Pizza were originally laid by the early Greeks who first baked large, round and flat breads which they “annointed with oil, herbs, spices and Dates.”

Tomatoes were not discovered at that time or, very likely, they would have used them as we do today.

Eventually the idea of flat bread found its way to Italy where, in the 18th century, the flat breads called “Pizzas”, were sold on the streets and in the markets. They were not topped with anything but were enjoyed au naturel. Since they were relatively cheap to make, were tasty and filling, they were sold to the poor all over Naples by street vendors.The acceptance of the tomato by the Neapolitans and the visit of a queen contributed to the Pizza as we know and enjoy it today.

In about 1889, Queen Margherita, accompanied by her husband, Umberto I, took an inspection tour of her Italian Kingdom. During her travels around Italy she saw many people, especially the peasants, eating this large, flat bread. Curious, the queen ordered her guards to bring her one of these Pizza breads. The Queen loved the bread and would eat it every time she was out amongst the people, which caused some consternation in Court circles. It was not seemly for a Queen to dine on peasant’s food.

Never the less, the queen loved the bread and decided to take matters into her own hands. Summoning Chef Rafaelle Esposito from his pizzeria to the royal palace, the queen ordered him to bake a selection of pizzas for her pleasure.

To honor the queen who was so beloved by her subjects, Rafaelle decided to make a very special pizza just for her. He baked a Pizza topped with tomatoes, Mozarella Cheese, and fresh Basil (to represent the colors of the Italian flag: Red, white, and green).

This became Queen Margherita’s favorite pizza and when word got out that this was one of the queen’s favorite foods, she became even more popular with the Italian people. She also started a culinary tradition, the Pizza Margherita, which lasts to this very day in Naples and has now spread throughout the world.

History has not made it clear whether Rafaelle began to sell this creation from his own pizzeria but it is known that the Pizza, in much the same form as we now know it, was thereafter enjoyed by all the Italian people. Variations began to be made in different parts of the country. In Bologna, for example, meat began to be added into the topping mix. Neapolitan Pizza became quite popular and it brought garlic and crumbly Neapolitan cheeses into the mixture as well as herbs, fresh vegetables, and other spices and flavorings.

About this time the idea of baking in special brick ovens came into existence and the bread, as it is today, was a rather simple combination of flour, oil, salt and yeast.

Pizza spread to America, France, England and Spain, where it was little known until after World War II. While occupying Italian territories, many American and European soldiers tasted Pizza for the first time. It was love at first taste! Italian immigrants had been selling Pizzas in their American stores for some time, but it was the returning soldiers with a lust for the saucy delight that drew the Pizzas out of the quiet Italian neighborhoods into the main stream of city life all over the continent. In fact, the square “Sicilian Pizza” which is so popular and was the forerunner of the now well-promoted “Party Pizza” is an American invention. Real Sicilian Pizza has no cheese or anchovies.

Today we celebrate Pizza. February 9 is International Pizza Day and the Guinness Book of Records states that the largest Pizza ever made and eaten was created in Havana, Florida and was 100 feet and 1 inch across!

American and Canadian citizens will eat an average 23 pounds of Pizza, per person, per year. Pepperoni and Cheese is the favorite combination, especially with the younger set, and is second only to the hamburger as this continent’s favorite food.

Pizzas can be made either healthy or fatty, depending upon what you use for the toppings. They come in many forms such as Calzones (half the dough is topped then the other half folded over to form a large half-moon shaped Pizza Pocket, which is then baked). It also comes in various forms such as breads, rolls, pan pizza, stuffed crust pizza, thin crust Pizza and thick crust pizza, wholewheat crust, and bagel crust.

The concept has also taken many forms such as Mexican Pizza (a pizza dough topped with chili or taco filling, shredded Cheddar, chopped onions, tomatoes and Jalapeno peppers), Ice Cream Pizza, Candy Pizza and even Pizza cake as well as Pizza flavored items such as Potato Chips and Tortilla Snacks!

So, next time you eat a Pizza, stop and think of Queen Margherita and Chef Rafaelle and be grateful that a Queen would dare stoop to eat peasant bread.

About the name: The word “pie” does not refer to the crust, nor even to the shape or position of the crust. The Oxford English, the Webster’s unabridged,and lexicographer Charles Earl Funk, all agree that the elemental word “pie” relates to the Magpie, a bird with feathers splotched in two colors, a bird called “Pica” by the Romans, whence the English “Pie” and the alteration of “Pica” to “Pizza”. The name relates to the bird’s double color and its habit of gathering odds and ends as does a Pizza, or Pie, gather, and consist of, varied ingredients.

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