Microbiological quality in pizza production

Pizza is one of the most popular food in the whole world: particularly Italians are great pizza eaters. Nowadays market presents a large offer of innovative products such as pre-cooked pizzas, which are preserved as frozen food or in modified atmosphere, but usually consumer still prefers the traditional product which is cooked in wood burning ovens. In wood burning oven, however, it is difficult to control the cooking temperature and to check the temperature really reached by the pizza: consequently it is not possible to standardize the cooking time. On the other hand, this parameter and time are fundamental for determining the number and the type of micro-organisms who can survive at the cooking process. The present work illustrates the results of microbiological researches carried out on several samples drown in different pizzerias in South Italy. The microbic charge have resulted unsteady but the hygienic-sanitary level has resulted generally good for every sample of pizza which has been analysed.