Vincenzo Capuano – Pizza Contemporanea

There are rules for the preparation of genuine Neapolitan pizza that have not changed in the 200 years of its existence. Every pizzaiolo knows these rules – and sticks to them. And then Vincenzo comes along and breaks with tradition.

Capuano was born in 1989, a rebel with a hipster beard and a touch of rocknroll attitude. He comes from a long-established pizzaiolo family and is now the third generation of his family to practise the craft.

What’s so special about his pizza? Well, he experiments with the ingredients. Instead of tomatoes, he sometimes uses creamed potatoes as a sauce. He bakes his pizza for two minutes instead of the usual 90 seconds. He makes the pizza with biga, i.e. pre-dough, and he cuts the pizza with scissors.

His greatest innovation, however, is flour. He has developed a new flour with the Caputo flour mill (also a sanctuary in the world of Neapolitan pizza). The Caputo Nuvola. This is a soft wheat flour with a high protein and carbohydrate content. This flour can bind a lot of water and ensures that the dough rises in the oven like a cloud (nuvola in Italian).

So the secret of the pizza revolution is the flour. Capuano uses it to conjure up pizza whose crust (called cornichione) literally explodes. It is a soft, fluffy and airy pizza. Some call it “cloud pizza” for this reason.

Incidentally, Vincenzo’s other secret to success lies in the social media cloud. He is extremely active on his Instagram account and on YouTube. Here he shares all his secrets, from autolysis and stesura (shaping the dough) to idratazione (hydration). He also often posts new variations for the topping. “I always post everything. That’s part of being a modern pizza baker,” he says.

Vincenzo has now opened pizzerias in Naples. Of course, it’s not without tradition there. The pizzas are baked in the traditional way in a domed stone oven. The ingredients are still mainly sourced from the area around Naples.

If you would like to try a Vincenzo pizza, you don’t have to go to Naples. There are pizzerias in Berlin and Bielefeld that serve the maestro’s recipes under the name Capvin.