Italy is known for its food and handsome people, not necessarily in that order. While not everyone may have access to Italy’s handsome people, they do have the opportunity to feast on Italian cuisine like spaghetti, lasagna and everyone’s favourite – pizza!

A lot of people think pizza is an American dish, mainly because the US has played a big role in popularising this Italian staple food. But the fact is that pizza is part of the basic food group in Italy and is also known as the ‘common man’s food’. Pizza took the world by storm and is extremely popular all over the world, including Pakistan when in the 1990s Pizza Hut came to Pakistan. Since then, many other foreign and local brands have also set up shop in Pakistan.

Despite our localised tastes, we have taken to pizza as well. It is probably one of the most ‘in-demand’ foreign food items in Pakistan.

We heard that there was a new pizza in town, and the chefs behind it claimed it was different from the other pizzas in the market. So we went for a taste and it was worth the effort. And the best part was that the prices were very reasonable.

Recently, Red Riding Hood Bakery has also started serving pizza – but the owners claim that this is the original pizza – Italian pizza. Yes, this is the same bakery which is famous for their Ferrero Rocher cake. The husband and wife team – Bushra and Ali Rush – say that the pizzas available in Pakistan are not the actual pizza like in Italy but the Americanised version of it.

"Pizza is an Italian dish but people think it is American," says Bushra. "People generally don’t know how an Italian pizza tastes, or even looks."

The couple wanted to launch pizza from their bakery but they wanted to make their pizzas from the original recipe.

So to bring the taste of Italy to Pakistan, the couple actually travelled to Italy to learn how to cook pizza the Italian way.

"Ali and I flew to Florence and stayed with Chef Andrea; we spent a good amount of time there and learnt to bake an authentic pizza."

Bushra says that the oven-baked Italian pizza hardly takes time to cook and it is served straight from the oven served on a peel on the table, where it is sliced before it is eaten.

"We take pride in our five-second Italian pizza and recommend that it is eaten as soon as it is taken out of the oven," adds Bushra. "Our pizzas literally take five seconds from the stone oven to the table and they are piping hot with bubbling cheese, where we slice it right in front of you."

Keeping in tradition, the pizza at Red Riding Hood is cooked in a stone oven. "We use a stone oven that gives our pizzas a nostalgic taste; it is a little rough around the edges and slightly crisp due to the heat in the oven – just like it is cooked in its native country," Bushra adds.

Her husband Ali Rush, the artist who blends the flavours, gives more insight into the cooking procedure, which is quite simple but technical.

Ali told us that the Italian pizza is lighter not only because it uses less cheese compared to the American pizza but because it is made of natural ingredients.

Particular about his ingredients, Ali just has to have the best. Therefore, unlike the American pizza, the cheese used in an Italian pizza is also special. The cheese has to go through a long process before being used and this is what is being used at Red Riding Hood.

"The main ingredient of our pizzas," says Ali, "is Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (Parmesan in English). The beauty of this cheese is that it ferments for two years and actualizes its taste, which gives it a different taste from the other pizzas available in the market. Mushroom is an important ingredient in the pizza, but we don’t use the typical canned mushroom, we use the wild mushroom that adds to the flavouring."

Recommendations: "Our best-selling pizzas are Mexicana and Roma. Mexicana is made with actual Mexican spices, this flavour is closer to what our palates are used to giving the pizza a twang that we so love in our food. The other reason for adding spices is to increase the flavour since we use smoked chicken," said Ali.

He continues, "Pesto is another flavour that is quite popular and it is for those who love basil. I think people like this pizza because of the pesto sauce recipe, which takes a lot of time to make but it is worth every effort. Our Naples pizza is the traditional Italian pizza with no meat and three kinds of cheese including Parmigiano-Reggiano."