Neapolitan Pizza Ovens May Be Fueled With Coffin Wood

If you have been to Naples recently and did as many of the Neapolitans are given to do – then chances are you had a slice or ten of world-class pizza cooked in a wood oven. If you did that, then there is a possibility that the chef fired the oven with an economical alternative to firewood – coffin wood – that was dug out of the ground by a gang of thieves.

There is enough smoke to the fire to have prompted Italian prosecutors to be suspicious and an investigation is said to be underway.

Italy’s Il Giornale reported:

Pizza, one of the few symbols of Naples that resists . . . is hit by the concrete suspicion that it could be baked with wood from coffins.

It is not suggested that all pizzerias “use wood from caskets to keep ovens burning”, rather the sights are focused on “thousands” of lower-end pizza shops and bakeries. The sort of places that might be hard-pressed to spend the sort of money that it costs to fire up a wood oven.

Il Giornale continued:

A gang might have set up a market for coffins sold to hard-hearted owners of bakeries and pizzerias looking to save money on wood.

So why don’t they go with a cheaper alternative like gas or electricity? It is a matter of taste. There is no comparing a pizza cooked with electricity to one that is born of flames and smoke – and when your competition’s pizza uses wood, you don’t really have the option of saving a few bucks in the making of an inferior product.