Pizza, Oh Dear

I interrupt my usual travel writing (no, this is not a travel blog) with something closer to home.

Pizza.

Or more specifically, the endless wave of pizzerias now blighting the UK, spreading across cities like an unstoppable beige tide of sourdough, San Marzano tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella.

This week in Sheffield, where I’m from, a new opening arrived in the city centre: Forbici. Already operating in Manchester, it has now headed over the Pennines, bringing yet another Neapolitan-style offering to a city already flooded with them.

And it made me wonder: is there any limit to this copy-and-paste way of feeding people?

The ubiquitous pizza napoletana

Sheffield, of course, is behind London, which at least now has a more diverse range of pizza sub-genres. London has moved on to Roman slices, New York folds, Detroit trays (admittedly there are also a couple of these in Sheffield), Chicago deep dish, New Haven cult imports, and whatever people are currently calling “London style”.

Sheffield, meanwhile, is still stuck in the mid-2010s hype cycle of all things Naples.

Back to Forbici, though, who have perhaps realised that the Steel City doesn’t exactly have a shortage of pizza napoletana already. And instead of marketing themselves on the familiar holy trinity of best dough, best tomatoes, best mozzarella, they appear to have opted for a slightly more bizarre left-field approach.

Their angle is this:

Come here… because you cut your pizza with scissors… Forbici also translating to scissors, in English.

Apparently, this is the Neapolitan way - Here was me thinking the Neapolitan way was either folding it up portafoglio style and eating it on the street, or sitting down with knife and fork, slightly burned fingertips and a look of mild superiority.

In Sheffield, the world leader in manufacturing blades, perhaps the scissors are the most locally authentic part of the experience?

If anything embodies the sheer mass of identikit Neapolitan pizza options now boring many UK cities, it is surely this.

My first question is: why would anyone care about the method of cutting pizza?

People have been managing perfectly well for decades. Entire generations have survived without artisanal scissors. I admit I’ve even used them at home myself, on the rare occasion I buy a supermarket pizza for the oven. It works. It’s fine. It’s not exactly a culinary revelation.

My second question is: how sustainable can this kind of marketing possibly be?

A restaurant built on kitchen scissors feels unsustainable. What happens when the novelty wears off? Do they move on to machetes? Hedge trimmers?

Ironically, their pizza does look very nice. I’m sure it tastes very good. I have no issue whatsoever with Forbici.

My issue lies elsewhere.

A refreshing change - pizza romana al taglio

It’s the lack of imagination. The sense that outside London, the dining scene has largely become trapped in a loop: the same concept (see also, smashed burgers), the same aesthetic, the same language, the same slightly reverential obsession with Naples, repackaged again and again with some small gimmick taped on top.

And perhaps I’m being snobby. Perhaps I need to loosen up.

But I can’t help feeling it’s a slightly sad reflection of where we are that hype for a new opening is now generated not by flavour, or originality, or even atmosphere…but by the utensils.

All that being said, I know full well that the next time I’m back in Sheffield, I’ll be yearning for one of Napoli Centro’s Maradona-stamped pizza boxes making its way to my door.

Pizzeria… Pizza, oh dear.

If you enjoyed this, you might like the below too…

The Long Way to Scaccia

Some foods find you. Others you have to hunt for. Scaccia belonged firmly in the second camp.

I first came across it years ago, in a newspaper article I read. It mentioned this strange folded bread from the Ragusa area of Sicily; part pizza, part focaccia, part something entirely its own. Nobody I knew had ever heard of it. Even in the UK, where Italian food is popular, scaccia might as well not exist.

That only made it more intriguing. When a dish is that local, that unknown, my curiosity goes into overdrive. So I did what any food-obsessive would do: fell down a rabbit hole of half-translated recipes, regional blog posts and fragmentary instructions. I ended up stitching together my own version (recipe below), equal parts instinct and detective work. It tasted good, but I always wondered how close I’d come to the real thing.

Scacce Modicane - the slimmer, lighter sibling to that of Ragusa

And now here I am, in Ragusa, finally meeting the dish on its own turf. No substitutions, no approximations, no British flour pretending to be Sicilian. Just a bakery counter, a sheet of dough rolled out thin and fillings folded in with the kind of muscle memory that comes from doing something your whole life. Holding a slice warm from the oven feels like closing the loop on a quiet obsession that’s followed me for five years.

What’s struck me since arriving in this part of Sicily however, is how scaccia isn’t an outlier. It belongs to a whole landscape of baked goods that are so local they sometimes don’t even travel to the next town. In Modica you’ll see scacce Modicane (note the difference in spelling), which is a thinner layered version and less rich than that of Ragusa. Impanate (or ‘mpanette depending which town you’re in), resembling a cross between an empanada and a Cornish pasty; filled with cauliflower, brocolli or aubergine.  Ten minutes over a hill and the display changes entirely: different shapes, different fillings, different vocabulary.

A selection of baked goods at Panificio Giummarra, Ragusa

It’s one of the clearest reminders of how hyper-local Italian food really is. In the UK we often talk about “Italian cuisine” as if it’s one unified thing, but here the borders are drawn at the nearest ridge. A bakery in Ragusa folds its dough differently to one in Modica. A tomato filling that’s standard in one town is unthinkable in another. Even the way loaves are knotted or scored seems inherited, more family tradition than written recipe. That’s the charm: food that has stayed local, specific and stubbornly itself.

And it’s not just the bakeries. Even pizza rewrites itself here. At Daniele Baglieri’s pizzeria in Modica, I watched every assumption I had about what pizza “should” be fall away. Lighter bases, different techniques and dough fermentation, toppings that respect the land rather than trends. It’s a reminder that just when you think you know Italian food, something new taps you on the shoulder. That’s the thrill of it, in a world where almost everything is available everywhere and known, there are still pockets of Italy producing things so local, so particular, that they feel like discoveries.

Outstanding, fresh and inventive pizze (Padellino & Pensa Tonda Romana) at Daniel Baglieri Pizzeria, Modica. A must try!

Scaccia sits right at the heart of that. A dish that’s pretty unknown outside of this corner of Sicily, somehow finding me anyway and now finally, letting me come to it and in my quest, unearthing a whole other plethora of wonderful baked goods to taste and try and one day recreate myself.

The delicious cross-section of a Scaccia Ragusana

My Scaccia Ragusana Recipe 

335g semolina flour

160ml lukewarm water 

1 & 1/4 tsp sugar

1/4 tsp yeast

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1/2 tsp sea salt

Flour for dusting 

1. Mix the yeast, water and sugar and leave to sit for ten minutes. Then mix in the olive oil.

2. Separately, combine the flour and salt in a bowl. Add the wet ingredients and bring together. Knead for 5-8 minutes, until smooth. Add more water if the mix feels too dry. 

3. Add the dough to a lightly oiled bowl and cover with cling film. Let it rise for approximately 2 hours, or until doubled in size.

4. Meanwhile make a basic tomato sauce and slice cheese/any other fillings (aubergine is popular in Sicily).

5. Heat the oven to full and roll out dough as thin as possible.

6. Fold and fill the dough using this video as a guide for the technique - https://youtu.be/CjJiVchocxA. Tuck underneath at the end to stop leakage.

7. Bake for around 50-60 mins at 200 degrees.

8. Let the scaccia rest for at least 5 minutes before cutting. Enjoy!

One of my prior attempts at Scaccia Ragusana - straight from the oven

A cross-section of my scaccia. Having now tried the real deal, I can’t wait to get home to tweak and develop my technique further.