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Roman Pizza Project: A Slice of Rome at Home
Along West Maitland Street sits Roman Pizza Project; Edinburgh’s first Roman Bakery. Only opening in mid-April, its small window gives pedestrians a glimpse into a traditional pizza that you would find in the bakeries of Rome. It is filled with many different types of pizzas and bruschetta. With all Italian Staff, including husband and wife owners Laura and Francesco Serreri that hail from Italy’s Capital, this adds to the authenticity of their bakery.
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As you pass through the door you are immediately faced with over 20 products. It can be very overwhelming, but the staff are quick to help customers find a slice to their liking. Pizza slices are priced between £3-5, square in size, and one slice is a decent size for a lunchtime portion.
The dough is used with a fine bread flour that is leavened for 48 hours that allows the dough to be light, yet crisp once baked. The dough has a bit of chew to it which happens when the dough is left to rise for so long. The pizzas are double cooked; the second happening after an order has been placed. It blackens the edges of the dough, similar to the charring that takes places when cooking Neapolitan style dough.
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The sauce is a neutral tomato sourced near Rome with notes of salt and garlic which sets this sauce apart from other regional pizza sauces that tend to be sweeter. There is not as much sauce used on this pizza compared to others, and the layer is thinner. This allows the toppings and the dough to act as the focal point of the pizza.
On most slices, the cheese used is buffalo mozzarella, however, the moisture content is far lower than normal balls of the cheese. This is to avoid the sauce and the cheese marrying into a sauce, similar to Neapolitan pizzas. Roman Pizza Project also offers other main cheeses on certain slices, like gorgonzola and vegan mozzarella.
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Toppings on the pizzas are very traditional Italian toppings, such as; rocket, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and Italian cooked ham, to name a few.
My Pizza
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I chose the number five pizza, named ‘Circo Massimo’. It is topped with the regular tomato sauce, mozzarella, prosciutto cotto, rocket and shaved parmesan.
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The base of the slice was crispy enough to work as a vessel for the toppings, as you would imagine from bakery pizza. The bottom of the pizza had a nice chew to it and was light in the interior. The edges of the dough were charred from the second cooking which played well with the peppery flavour from the rocket. The rocket also paired nicely with the saltiness from the cured prosciutto which was elevated by the mature and salty tasting shaved parmesan. The cheese still offered some creaminess but melted more like mozzarella used in a classic New York Pizza slice.
