Pizza Neapoletana is a style that has been gaining respect and popularity in the U.S. since the nineties.  The last few years it has progressed into a movement, a revolution, and war amongst artisanal pizza makers all over the country.  This Session will impart the knowledge and share what our contribution to this movement has been and continues to be.  Our journey started in Naples, Italy where we have staged at the famed Pizzaiolo del Presidente, Pizzeria Trianon da Ciro and even Da Michele.  This is  where we learned the importance of making dough  “in giornata” which essentially means made and used in the same day.  The recipe consists of low protein 00 flour, water, fresh beer yeast, and Trapani sea salt.  It is mixed, cut, balled and matured during an eight-hour fermentation at room temperature in Neapolitan wood dough boxes.  Neapolitan pies are pillowy soft, simplistic in nature, using far less cheese and toppings than we, as Americans, are accustomed to.  It is blistered or charred by a 900 degree wood burning oven, which gives it great flavor, and a sixty-second cook time leaves the integrity, essence and flavor of the ingredients intact.  Sweet tasting San Marzano tomatoes are painstakingly stripped of the flavorless stems and seeds and the cheese used is made from whole milk curds.  We are members of the famed VPN (Verace Pizza Neapoletana) number 427.   The VPN is an international non-profit organization founded in the mid 1980’s by a group of Neapolitan pizza makers seeking to cultivate the culinary art of making Neapolitan pizza.  In June 1984, the association was officially established as a denomination of control (DOC) by the Italian government, a designation that made the VPN a legal entity able to give special designation to pizzerias who meet strict requirements that respect the tradition of the art of Neapolitan pizza making.