Anthony Compagni flew to California to learn a pizza he already knew how to make. He spent a week with a master pizzaiolo who had taken second at the pizza Olympics in Italy, and by the fourth day he had stopped studying and started producing — pie after pie, stacked one on the next, until the motion became muscle memory. He came home certified.
That credential, Vera Pizza Napoletana, is issued by the Naples association that decides what may be called a true Neapolitan pizza. It makes Volare, the Campus Corner pizzeria Compagni co-owns along with Benvenuti's, the only certified Neapolitan pizzeria in Cleveland County.
The rules leave little room to negotiate. The oven must be wood-fired and built in Naples. Its dome sits low, so a fire banked to one side curls across the ceiling and pushes heat back down onto the stone. The floor holds around 800 degrees, the dome above 900, and a pizza is finished in 90 seconds. Compagni burns dried oak for its steady heat and pecan for the aroma.
The dough is four things: Tipo 00 flour, water, sea salt, yeast. It starts as a biga, cold ferments 48 hours in bulk, then gets cut, weighed, shaped and chilled again. That slow fermentation is where the flavor lives. San Marzano tomatoes, hand-pulled fresh mozzarella, basil, Parmigiano-Reggiano — each one is specified.
What comes out is not the pizza most of us grew up on. New York, Detroit, the drive-thru chains — all of it evolved here after the war. A Neapolitan pie didn't. No oil, no sugar, no crunch. It's soft in the center, one pie per person, easier to digest.
"It's meant to be eaten right away," Compagni says.
A true gem here in Cleveland County.
Volare, 315 White Street, Norman.