Rome's best pizza bianca

There is something ancestral in sinking your teeth in a warm slab of pizza bianca. A traditional Roman recipe for a simple, flat, salty bread that is neither that nor pizza. It is simply pizza bianca, which translates to 'white pizza.' The dough is similar in style and texture to pizza dough, consisting of high-gluten flour, oil, water, sugar, salt and yeast. Pizza bianca is the one and only. Its texture is chewy and crisp at the same time. Pull apart the bread in ribbons, and hidden beneath the thin, crackly crust, lies a soft gluteny heart. It is beautiful.
Upon first encounter, the mouth perceives the olive oil the pizza bianca's top has been lightly dabbed with after leaving the wood-burning womb where it has been baked. But lips also simultaneously meet the flour which dusts the bottom part of the slice, almost parching. This sensation immediately vanishes after the second bite, as taste buds marry the rock salt. The following sensory perception, is the crunch. This all-Roman delicacy is not a focaccia, and in the Eternal City, 'delectable' is never synonym of 'resilient,' when it comes to pizza.

Pizza bianca can be purchased at every corner fornaio, charcuterie, bread oven or specialized pizza al taglio establishment, where yard-lengths of pizza are sold by weight over the counter. These listed above are the small gastronomic temples where the tasty and mundane pizza bianca ritual is carried out every day. A very affordable, simple ritual. Pizza bianca is the perfect mid-morning snack for the hard working, those who wake at 5am and who by 11am could eat a horse; it is the preeminent after-school nibble and a great way to calm fidgety kids while mom does the grocery shopping and tantrums brew on the horizon.

Pizza bianca in Rome has a very high social value. It renders the maximum result with the least effort. For a handful of pennies. And it tastes divine.

To avoid disappointments, pizza bianca aficionados must know where to flock. Which place, that is offers the best pizza bianca in its traditional and truer version. The Forno Campo de' Fiori is certainly among very reliable when it comes to pizza bianca.

My favorite pizza bianca in the centro storico is however the one baked at Antico Forno Roscioli. I am a regular here. Roscioli is where to go for the simplest form of pizza bianca, best if 5 minutes out of the oven, crisp and still warm on the tongue. It's easy to tell when the next batch of pizza bianca is about to be ready at the Forno: a conspicuous group of devotees mingling outside the small joint, nervously waiting to be served their little salty square of heaven. The smell of baking bread alone is worth the trip.

When it comes to stuffing pizza bianca, fundamentalists insist the only admissible filling is thinly sliced mortadella. I personally am a devoted fan of prosciutto and fresh ripe figs.


Pizzeria La Parioli located on Viale Parioli n. 26 is a minuscule pizza takeout joint owned by two brothers who owe their fortune to having opened their business next door to a famous private school. Kids would stand in line for hours for a square of the pizza bianca baked here. The school is no longer there, now a condo complex, but the brothers (and their daughters) are still baking the same applause-worthy pizza bianca. Even rubbery hours later, their product rocks.

I had to go to Panificio Mosca near the Vatican more than once, because the pizza bianca changes according to the mood of the baker and the degree of humidity in the air. Excellent freshly baked, or heated at home, hours later.

Pizza Luigi in Ostiense is equally good, but I haven't been in a while.

Pinsere near Via XX Settembre is another favorite. As well as La Renella in Trastevere. Colapicchioni in Prati, Albanesi in the Marconi area, and Zaza in Sant'Eustachio.

The best thing to do at this point is take your stuffed pizza bianca and (weather permitting) improvise a lunch en plain air, sitting beneath a Roman monument or on the steps of a century-old ruin.

Only in this way will the Pizza Bianca Experience be complete. And if the above mentioned flour should accidentally leave a dusty mark on your clothes or face, who cares. It's the small price payed for having "eaten" the city whole.