pizza in naples "cooked with coffin wood"?

[Amby 490]

Italian prosecutors believe pizza in Naples may be baked in ovens lit with wood from coffins dug up from the local cemetery.

Investigators in Naples suspect thousands of small, lower-end pizza shops and bakeries may "use wood from caskets to keep ovens burning."

"Pizza, one of the few symbols of Naples that endures... is hit by the concrete suspicion that it could be baked with wood from coffins," according to Italian daily Il Giornale.

According to tradition, Neapolitan pizza should be cooked in a stone oven with an oak-wood fire.

"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," Il Giornale said.

Neapolitan pizza was invented between 1715 and 1725, with the world-famous Margherita variant first cooked up in 1889.

Tradition has it that queen Margherita of Savoy asked one of Naples' famed pizzaioli to come up with a dish for the people.

The result, which provides the basis for most pizzas enjoyed around the world, represented the colours of recently unified Italy: green basil, white mozzarella and red tomatoes.

Naples' graveyard has long been hunting ground for thieves, last year, 5,000 flower pots were stolen from the cemetery.

http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Naples_pizzas_cooked_with_coffin_wood

[Nagishkaw 510]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiJ5rxG-DNk

[Nessa 23]

what's the big deal? did they taste bad?

[IndigoSkies 168]

This is why pizza from Naples has a flavour to-die-for.

[Angel and Gendy 1]

Ashes to ashes crust to crust....

[Otto 83]

Is this how Tombstone Pizza started?....

[IndigoSkies 168]

Is this how Tombstone Pizza started?....

You bring up a very good and valid point. I'll research more on that.

[Ban Hammer 14,364]

Is this how Tombstone Pizza started?....

bring out your dead!