Neapolitan Pizza Wins Protected Status

Is the base more than an eighth-of-an-inch thick? Mozzarella from cows, not buffalo? Tomatoes not San Marzano? If not, that's not a Neapolitan pizza and you'll now be breaking EU law if you call it one. Neapolitan pizza—according to many, the mother of all pizzas—was granted the EU's "Traditional Specialty Guaranteed" label yesterday to protect producers from cheap imitations, the Telegraph reports.

Pizza makers from Naples to New York must now strictly conform to approved methods and ingredients to be able to call their pizzas Neapolitan. "Europe has crowned the work and tenacity of Neapolitan producers," said Italy's agriculture minister, hailing a product which "for too long has been the subject of imitations which have nothing to do with real Neapolitan pizza." (More neapolitan pizza stories.)