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PHOENIX (MarketWatch) Let pizza lovers in Further York and Chicago sing the praises of their cities signature pies. As future as Justin Piazza is concerned, the two restaurants he runs in this Southwestern metropolis produce pizzas that are tastier and truer to the Italian tradition.

And, as he is quick to note, he has the piece of paper to prove it.

Piazza, a 40-year-old, American-born, third-generation pizza maker, is one of a budding wave of cookery entrepreneurs who have been granted the seal of authorization from the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, a nonprofit organization, founded in Naples three decades in the past, whose mission is to promote and care for exact Neapolitan pizza.

In a sense, the associations aims are similar to groups that safeguard everything from French gleaming wine to Italian cheese. Excluding the goals differ in that the pizza populace dont say exact pizza has to come from a specific locale. Rather, they say it be able to come from anywhere so long as it is made according to the traditional methods and conforms to an exacting string of principles.

Indeed, to progress his Vera Pizza Napoletana, or VPN, certification, Piazza says he purchased in the region of $25,000 in area equipment, including a dome-shaped wood-burning range (he went so future as to buy one he dubs the Ferrari of ovens, which skin tone bricks made from the ashes of Mount Vesuvius). Additionally, he had to avail yourself of certain ingredients, including a flour with what the associations rules illustrate as an roughly talcum powderlike appearance.

Finally, he had to spend the outshine part of six months learning the proper pizza-making techniques, including handling the dough with a deftness that VPN boosters say approaches a kind of skill. Preserving the perfect Neapolitan pizza An increasing number of pizzerias and pizza makers are getting certified as accurately Neapolitan. Certain see it as a mark of condition, whereas others say its just a bunch of ... pepperoni.

It was adequate time, money and effort that it nearly resulted in a divide relating Piazza and his father, Dennis, who honed his pizza-making skills in northern Further Jersey.

My dad told me I was nuts, says Justin Piazza, who owns two La Piazza restaurants in the Phoenix topic, and who sports a leg tattoo depicting Pulcinella, a beloved comical figure in Neapolitan discrimination.

With each and every one due show consideration for to his father, Piazza says there is no comparison relating the typical Further York pizza, which tends to be on the cheesier and breadier side, and the typical Neapolitan one, which tends to be a lighter, lightly topped situation a connoisseurs pizza, in his view. I frown upon populace who say they want bonus cheese, he says.

Even Justins dad admits hes a speck of a convert. My son made me a believer, says Dennis Piazza, however he adds that theres nonentity like good Further York pizza.

Chicagos classic deep-dish pizza is decidedly thicker with hefty layers of meat, cheese and sauce. When Lou Malnatis, a Chicago deep-dish franchise, decided to introduce its version of a Neapolitan pizza, it offered it as an taster. That speaks to what we think in the region of it, says spokeswoman Meggie Lindberg. The franchise discontinued its Neapolitan offering since so hardly any customers ordered it, she says.

The VPN program is relatively indefinite in the U.S., with 76 restaurants from R Napoli in Greenwich, Conn., to Spacca Napoli in Chicago to Mozzeria in San Francisco having earned the certification. Internationally, there are nearly 500 certified Italy has the nearly everyone. congastory201405pizzalocations.html306803 Not only does the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana require pizzerias to spend serious, um, dough on equipment and ingredients it moreover charges a $2,000 treatment fee. And U.S. applicants are encouraged to take classes at the associations school in the Los Angeles topic. A three-day program, at $1,650, includes tutorials in everything from slapping the dough to learning how the plum tomatoes should be ground, according to the course prospectus.

Despite each and every one that, certain pizza fanatics have reservations. Adam Kuban, founder of Slice, a blog that is part of the Serious Eats site, wrote in 2011: A pizzeria should be judged on how its pizza tastes, not on what alphabet soup is on its sign, or on whether the toilet paper in its bathroom is imported from Naples.

Kuban stands by those remarks excluding does now say that the VPN certification establishes a evade condition for pizza.

Additional pizza lovers admit theyve never heard of the VPN program. I didnt go through a pizzeria could be certified, said Iiesha Grammatico, a Los Angeles sales representative who recently visited one of Piazzas eateries. Even restaurant regulars have work recitation exactly what the certification method. The closest Duayne Bellew, a Phoenix-area diesel mechanic, be able to come is calling it the pizza equal of being genuine.

Pizza association officials and owners of VPN-certified pizzerias say Neapolitan pizza is simplicity clear: The dough contains little new than flour, hose down, toadstool and sea salt the cheese is typically fresh mozzarella and cooking time is a mere 60 to 90 seconds (those wood-fired ovens be able to easily reach 1,000 degrees). As regular as the recipe may be, learning the art of preparing the pizza is a undivided additional be able to of tomatoes, so to speak, boosters say (preferably, San Marzano tomatoes from Italy). Justin Piazza asset his VPN pizza certification in obverse his downtown Phoenix pizzeria. Its a commitment, says Peppe Miele, president of VPN Americas, the pizza associations U.S. arm. The Naples-born restaurateur headed two pizzerias in Los Angeles that opened in the 90s one was the to begin with to progress VPN certification in the U.S., he says.

Additional VPN boosters are also obsessed with authenticity so much so that they wont even illustrate their outcome in American terms.

We produce pizza, not pie, says Stefano Fabbri, the Italian-born property owner of Pomo Pizzeria Napoletana, another Phoenix VPN-certified eatery. When you taste this pizza, you feel it, he adds.

A Neapolitan pizza has a maximum diameter of 11 inches, for every the pizza associations set of laws. By draw a distinction, a Further York pizza often measures 18 inches.

Excluding as much as VPN is finding a home in America among the newest certified pizzerias are ones in Fort Worth, Texas, and Bellevue, Wash. the program essentially came into existence in 1984 to preserve the pizza-making tradition in Naples, according to Miele.

As pizza thrived in the U.S., Italian pizza makers started copying the American get in touch with, he says. It isnt that additional styles are bad, he adds its just that theyre not, source, authentic.

Miele points to one of the new recent trends in Italy topping pizzas with hot dogs and french fries as something of an attempt to out-American the Americans.

Our goal is to care for the traditional recipe, he says.

This gossip originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal .

Moreover see:

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Travel Leisure readers 10 top U.S. cities for pizza.

Charles Passy covers personal finance, consumer spending and each and every one things food and drink for MarketWatch in Further York. Follow him on Twitter @CharlesPassy.