21/02/2024
As well as tondo, Rome is the home of another extraordinary style of pizza: al taglio. This means pizza 'when sliced', or 'by the slice'. We went to visit the most famous al taglio spot in the world, Gabriele Bonci's Pizzarium.
Rather than being in the shape of a traditional tondo (or round) that we usually associate with pizza, these beauties are baked in sheet pans and you order it by weight/area. Your server will get a pair of pizza scissors and cut you off as much as you want.
One of the best things about baking your pizza in a tray is that you're no longer bound by annoying things such as having to shape it by hand. Bonci takes advantage of this in the most delicious way possible.
When we talk about hydration in dough, we're talking about the amount of water present, relative to the amount of flour. For example, if for every 100g of flour there is 60g of water, we would say that dough is sixty per cent hydrated. In the case of a traditional Neapolitan pizza, hydration tends to be between sixty and sixty five per cent, but Bonci's dough is hydrated to eighty per cent.
Having more water present, which expands and creates bubbles when cooked, ends up producing a much lighter dough. It also uses very little yeast, and is fermented for over seventy hours. So, combining these factors leads to an extraordinarily light and digestible pizza - a hallmark of dough mastery.
Bonci is also a champion of local producers, and features the most inspiring and unusual toppings. Even just to look at, these pizzas are works of art. And to eat them? Well, that's what life's all about. Yum. 😋
