diavola pizza — Italy

Diavola pizza is a round, thin-based pizza built on the standard tomato-and-mozzarella pie and pushed toward heat, with slices of spicy salami and often a drizzle of chili oil added before or after baking. The name, meaning roughly "devil's style" in Italian, points squarely at the chili rather than at any particular topping combination, and the level of heat is largely left to the cook. The pizza is reported from Neapolitan and Italian pizzerias broadly, sitting alongside Margherita as one of the standard entries on a pizzeria menu rather than as a regional specialty tied to one town. It is eaten as a single-portion meal, cut into wedges at the table, the way most round pizzas are served in Italy. A yeasted dough is stretched thin, spread with tomato sauce, and topped with mozzarella and slices of spicy salami — cured meats such as spianata calabra or ventricina are common choices — then baked briefly at very high heat until the crust blisters and the cheese melts. Chili oil, dried chili flakes or fresh basil may be added at the end, off the heat, so the chili keeps its bite. What sets this pizza apart from the Margherita it is built on is simply the addition of heat: the base, the cheese and the baking method stay the same, and only the salami and chili distinguish the pie. Pizzerias vary the type of salami and the amount of chili freely, so the heat level of one diavola can differ noticeably from the next.