Ingredients, preparation process and time add equally to the quality and taste of great pizza, these are just some of the reasons that not all pizza is equal.

In this blog post we are going to list, the differences of why we use certain ingredients, follow a certain established process and what does that mean to the pizza you eat from Rossa compared to other pizzas.

Cheese – Dough –  Sauce – Toppings

Lets go through each of the above to give you a world class pizza-cation and put you in the know when it comes to pizza.

Say Cheese

Let’s start with cheese, we only use 100% mozzarella blocks that are freshly grated at Rossa daily (we purposely order blocks to grate as it avoids imitation cheese being mistakenly added), now this may sound logical but we promise you that not all cheese is equal, many restaurants use imitation cheese or add a 50%-50% ratio to their cheese mix (this allows them to lower cost). Here is a snippet from one of many articles we found online on imitation cheese:

“If you love cheese, then make sure that you eat real cheese made from milk and not an industrial photocopy that has no nutritional value.”

Experts advise to avoid the consumption of dairy imitation products with vegetable fats because they are harmful to our health. With regular use and enough accumulation in your body, that can lead to heart disease, cancer and problems with the gastrointestinal system.”

The full article can be found online here: Imitation Cheese? – Why You Should Avoid This Fake Food!!!

We source our Mozzarella from the Bandini group who are a “proudly family-run business that has been operating successfully since 1957.  Our competitive edge is achieved through our use of high quality, natural ingredients, the care and pride we take in our products, and our need to constantly strive for perfection.”

Dough – Rise Rise Rise

We have a full article on “what does it take to make quality pizza dough”, but thought sharing that we only use 00 flour for our pizza dough. Using a cold fermentation process for a minimum of 48 hours.

The fact sheet on our dough is quite interesting with “Moisture: max 15,5 %, Proteins: min 11 % (s.s.) Ashes: 00 max 0,55 % (s.s.)”

Allowing the cold fermentation process has 2 important reasons.

• Dough that is shaped and proofed after a slow, cold fermentation process demonstrate noticeably better flavour and better structure, By allowing the fermentation process to take effect, it produces more of the desirable flavour compounds and fewer of the sour ones. Texture is also improved as it gives the enzymes present in the flour more opportunities to cleave proteins (a process known as autolysis), making it easier for them to untangle, straighten out, and link up into gluten improving the gluten structure. Finally, the colder the dough when you shape it before the final proof, the fewer bubbles are forced out of it.
• Thirst – ever wondered why you drink a litre of Soda with some pizzas. The yeast from freshly made dough most often lives on\in your stomach alive and thirsty. Starchefs have the perfect way of explaining the “key to a healthy pizza” “if you’ve ever awoken at 3am after a pizza dinner so desperate for water you’d suck the condensation off the refrigerator, you’ve felt the effects of ill-fermented dough.”

Sauce thats Superior in Ingredients

Most everybody agrees that the most important part of your pizza is the dough. But, a close second is the sauce. The magic of our sauce lies in the tomatoes. Tomato purity is something most restaurants and pizza take-away places won’t go through, they add sugar to mask using or picking weaker tomatoes.

Whilst not giving away the secret to our sauce, we ensure that we use only imported Italian tomatoes to start the process making our sauce, (PS: the same quality goes into out nepolitana sauces for our other Italian dishes). Then we add selected fresh herbs and light seasoning to create the perfect pizza sauce.

When it comes down to it, on pizza, there’s a lot of other stuff you’re going to taste, but sauce is really what brings everything together.

Toppings – Quality over Quantity

The choice of what to put on the pizza is always a personal one, but what we can tell you is that, if you use quality ingredients as your toppings, you don’t need to cover your pizza with toppings. Actually with our ingredients, more often than not, less is more. Less is more because quality ingredients are packed with flavour and the sauce allows it to all pull together so that the taste explosion for your taste buds can actually distinguish, taste and enjoy the pizza you about to eat.

Rossa Pizza Sizing

Thought we might as well throw this in as Rossa makes unique pizza sizes, in that they are rectangular and not round (obviously we don’t cut corners), and with almost no crust, means means you get more cheese, toppings and flavour on your pizza compared to traditional round pizzas.

Our Pizzas come in 3 sizes – 6, 8 and 24 slices.

• Our 6 slices is equal to your normal large round pizza.
• Our 8 slice pizza is about 35% larger and heavier than your regular round pizza and often feeds 2 people (this pizza can also be split in 2 types to accommodate those sharing, IE: 4 slices being Espania and 4 slices being Pancetta).
• Our Grande 24 slice pizzas which we are well known by locals  (potentially JHB’s largest pizza) can be split into 4 types and as is the perfect sharing, catering and socializing pizza.

We hope that you enjoyed this semi educational read on pizza and that we added value to your future pizza and Italian eating experiences.