Italian chef reveals how you’ve been cutting your pizza wrong – and the surprising tool you should be using instead

An Italian pizza master has revealed that you’ve likely been cutting your pizza all wrong. 

Davide Argentino, who previously won the ‘best pizza dough in the world’ accolade, says you wouldn’t catch anyone in Naples using a pizza cutter. 

The renowned chef, who works at Forbici, a new Neapolitan pizzeria in Manchester, also says that cutting a pizza into regular slices isn’t a traditional method. 

In fact, he explains using scissors to cut pizza is much more common in Italy than we might think, particularly in Naples, the birthplace of pizza, and for good reason. 

‘In Naples, how you eat pizza is as important as how it’s made,’ he told HuffPost. 

‘Traditionally, pizza is served whole, quartered with scissors and folded – never sliced with a pizza wheel.

‘The pizza wheel is something invented in America – it’s not Italian. You’d struggle to find a pizza wheel if you travelled around Naples.’

A classic pizza cutter features a round blade attached to a handle, to be pressed into a pizza and pushed across the surface to cut through it.

Davide Argentino, who previously won the ‘best pizza dough in the world’ accolade, says you wouldn’t catch anyone in Naples using a pizza cutter 

However, they tend to drag toppings across the surface and shred the crust if you have to go over a cut multiple times.

In Forbici – which translates to ‘scissors’ – Davide has banned the pizza cutter and instead provides every guest with a pair of scissors at the table to cut into their own meal.

The method is said to protect the integrity of the pizza dough, which is made using a 12-hour fermentation process that helps to create a sponge-like structure in the dough.

This light, airy dough results in a soft and flavourful crust once it’s been baked.

Davide added: ‘Cutting with scissors preserves the delicate, airy crust created through a long fermentation process.

‘It’s about protecting the craft, respecting the dough, and inviting guests to experience pizza as it’s truly meant to be.’

Pizza fans on social media clearly understood his pain, with Reddit users extolling the virtues of using a pair of scissors instead of a cutter.

‘Rolling the cutter is messy, usually ends worse for the toppings and is more work than scissors that cut through whichever kind of crust you prefer,’ one user said in the thread r/unpopularopinion.

At Forbici in Manchester, every guest gets a pair of scissors at the table to snip up their pizza

‘If you want a crispy crust, it’s like the pizza cutter is a wrong tool for it.’

Another wrote: ‘Once you go scissors you can never go back. I have a specific pair of pizza scissors.’

A third chimed in: ‘I have pizza scissors!! People make fun of me, but I love them. Way easier than a pizza cutter and you can use them right when the pizza comes out of the oven instead of having to wait for it to cool.

‘They also fully cut through the crust and cheese whereas a pizza cutter sometimes doesn’t and you end up pulling globs of cheese from other slices or breaking the crust at weird spots.’

But many were sceptical of those who used scissors to slice their pizzas.

‘Clearly you either can’t use a pizza cutter properly, or it’s as sharp as a bowling pin,’ one person jeered.

Others claimed the author of the post just wasn’t using pizza cutters ‘right’ or that they simply needed a new, sharper one.

Cutting pizza with a pair of scissors – sometimes known as ‘pizza shears’ – may not be that popular outside of parts of Italy, but the method has certainly had its moment in popular culture.

In the 1986 film Cobra, starring Sylvester Stallone, the actor retrieves a box of cold pizza from a fridge and sits down at a desk to eat it.

But instead of just grabbing the singular slice left in the box and eating it like that, Stallone picks up a pair of office scissors and proceeds to cut a section of the pizza with them.

He then snacks on the smaller slice he snipped off while watching TV and tending to his gun.

The memorable moment may have had fans of the film scratching their heads at the time – but it turns out Stallone was right all along.

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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk