Pizza... sicilian style ... trace style

I have been worried about missing out in Italy. Missing out on great food... pasta, bread, pizza. How can we be Italian and allergic to gluten? I love salad, and the meat and cheese anitpasto makes your mouth melt. By day three though, I am craving the pasta dishes and pasteries.

Yesterday I've learned a fantastic thing. The Italians understand my allergy - I'm for serious.

I made my own pizza crust at home and took it TO the pizzarria. We uttered the magic phrase "Posso mangiare solo cose senze glutine" (I can only eat foods with no gluten) and with smiles and nods... my pizza crust was filled with all my favorite items and cooked up in a special oven and I had Italian pizza last night!

Pizzarrias here in Sicily are really interesting things. There is no pizza before bedtime.

Every weekday, around 12:30, everyone quits working, all the shops close, and it is offically "respota"... time for a rest. A late lunch, maybe a nap. In the late afternoon, when people head back to work, the pizzarias begin warming up their big stone ovens... with a wood fire. It takes a few hours for the stones to get toasty enough to bake a pizza. They scrape the wood and embers to one side of the oven and about 7:30pm open for business to start twirling dough and loading it with fanciful toppings and sliding them in to the stone oven to bake to perfection. The heat lasts till about 11 or 12 when it's time to close up shop.