Three things get called pizza in Italy and they could not be more different to make or to eat. Neapolitan is the soft, blistered, fold-it-in-half round everyone pictures. Roman comes in two forms, a cracker-thin round and a thick rectangular slice sold by weight. Pinsa is the newcomer, an oval with an airy, light crust that markets itself as the digestible one. Calling all three “pizza” is like calling a baguette and a crumpet “bread.” Technically true, practically useless.
Here is how they actually differ.
Neapolitan
The original, and the most regulated. Soft, high-hydration dough made from just flour, water, salt, and yeast, proved slowly, stretched by hand, and blasted in a wood-fired oven at around 450°C for 60 to 90 seconds. The result is a puffy, charred, leopard-spotted rim called the cornicione and a soft, almost soupy centre you eat with a knife and fork or fold. It is not meant to be crisp. The char comes from extreme heat and the Maillard reaction happening fast. Toppings are minimal: San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, oil. Restraint is the whole philosophy.
Roman, the two kinds
Roman pizza splits in two. Pizza tonda romana is a thin, crisp round, rolled rather than stretched and often made with a little oil for crunch, the opposite of the soft Neapolitan. Then there is pizza al taglio, the thick, focaccia-like rectangle baked in trays and sold by the slice, cut with scissors and priced by weight. Al taglio is Rome’s everyday street food, often topped with things you would never see on a Neapolitan, from potato and rosemary to mortadella stuffed in after baking.
Pinsa
The new arrival, despite marketing that claims ancient Roman roots. Pinsa is an oval flatbread made from a blend of wheat, rice, and soy flours at very high hydration, cold-fermented for a day or more. The high water and long ferment give it a light, airy, crisp-outside crust that sits somewhere between a Roman tonda and a focaccia. It is genuinely good and genuinely modern. We pull the history claim apart properly in our look at what pinsa Romana actually is.
Which dough does what
The format drives everything: the flour, the hydration, the proving time, the oven temperature, the toppings. A home cook chasing Neapolitan needs as much heat as possible, which is why the gear question of a pizza steel versus a stone matters so much, and why a proper home pizza oven changes the game. A long-fermented dough, especially a sourdough base, suits the Roman and pinsa styles better than a rushed one.
What to order where
In a proper pizzeria, Neapolitan, eaten fast before it goes soggy. From a Roman bakery counter, al taglio by the slice. When you see pinsa on a London menu, it is usually worth a try, and we have rounded up London’s best pinsa spots separately. They are three different dinners. Pick by mood, not by the single word on the sign.