The aim is to squeeze and pull apart the whole tomatoes in such a way as to shred them and mix them with the tomato liquid to create a thick chunky sauce of even consistency. (top picture)
Next, one of A Mano’s pizzaiuoli (pizza makers), all of whom have been trained in the Neapolitan (soft crust) style, demonstrated the transformation of mozzarella curds into grapefruit-sized balls of silky mozzarella.
He first filled the plastic tub with the curds, which look like finely shredded bits of mozzarella with some of the soft, rounded surface of large-curd cottage cheese, but a little dryer.
Then he filled the tub with piping hot water, not boiling but hot enough to scald, and began working the curds into a thick sheet of elastic emergent mozzarella. Fred Mortati, co-owner of A Mano ("by hand") observed that a pizzaiuolo needs asbestos hands for this task.
As the water cooled slightly, the pizzaiuolo used long-handled wooden spoons to repeatedly stretch the mozzarella (middle picture), eventually breaking off pieces and shaping them into balls with a deft technique that looks a little like peeling a banana but with more twisting and pinching.
After Esposito turned one of his perfect 9-inch dough domes into a perfectly round 12-inch dough disc, the A Mano pizzaiuoli added the crushed tomatoes, slices of fresh mozzarella and a whole basil leaf to create a Pizza Margherita, first served to Ita;y’s Queen Margherita in 1889. (bottom picture)
Soft and wet are the key adjectives for traditional Neapolitan pizza. Unlike the crisp crust ideal of Italian-American pizza, if a piece of pizza Napoletana doesn’t droop when you lift it, something is wrong.
The style takes some getting used to. If the crust is made with the necessary finesse, the pizza has a light chewiness and the outside edges, spottedly charred, are almost nutty-flavored and pillowy.