A centuries-old Neapolitan pizza style has arrived in the Bay Area
Pizza a portafoglio, a type of street food in Naples, is prepared at Sforno in San Francisco. (Benjamin Fanjoy/For the S.F. Chronicle)
When my parents lived in Naples in the 1990s, I remember ordering pizza from the side window of an ancient pizzeria. Rather than a slice, I was handed an entire pizza. But it was portable: folded into quarters and steaming inside a paper wrapper. Biting into the multiple layers at once melded together the familiar flavors and textures of milky mozzarella, silky tomato sauce and chewy, ash-scented crust, but in a new way.
This centuries-old Neapolitan specialty - the original street food version of pizza, in its centuries-old birthplace - is now sold in San Francisco at Sforno, a tiny pizzeria on a Hayes Valley side street. The restaurant specializes in pizza a portafoglio ($9), or wallet pizza - so named because the folded layers resemble the layers of a billfold. Open since late December, Sforno is likely the only place in the Bay Area to find portafoglio, according to owner Silvia Veronese.
"It's very, very typical from Naples," said Veronese, a native of Verona, Italy, who has lived in the Bay Area for 20 years, working in tech. "It's not quite dinner; it's more of a snack."
Folded pizza was originally served in Naples by street vendors starting in the early 1700s, where it has also earned names invoking handkerchiefs (pizza a fazzoletto) and little books (a libretto).
Kristina Bedendo prepares pizza a portafoglio at Sforno. (Benjamin Fanjoy/For the S.F. Chronicle)
In that sense, the restaurant offers a step back to tradition amid the sprawling array of pizza styles now available in San Francisco, where Jules blends influences from New Haven, New York and Bay Area sourdough crusts and slice shop Outta Sight uses toppings like Peking duck and butter chicken.
The portafoglio is the best seller for to-go orders at Sforno, which only has three small tables and has begun to attract long lines on weekends, when it often sells out of pizza by 8 p.m., Veronese said. (The restaurant, Veronese's first, was still finding its footing during a recent Chronicle visit, when it ran out of a few ingredients.)
"We didn't expect to grow so much so quickly," she said, adding that the restaurant only produces a certain amount of dough daily because it must ferment for two days and has limited kitchen space.
Davide and Kristina Bedendo prepare food at Sforno in San Francisco. (Benjamin Fanjoy/For the S.F. Chronicle)
Sforno is working toward certification from the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, an organization that aims to uphold standards for Neapolitan pizza. Its pizzaioli are from Naples and trained at the city's famed L'antica Pizzeria Da Michele, Veronese said.
To make pizza a portafoglio at Sforno, cooks prepare a margherita pizza 13 inches in diameter, bake it for 90 seconds and wrap it in paper - ideal for a walk to Patricia's Green just a block away.
Portafoglio also capitalizes on getting the pizza at its prime, compared to taking it home in a box. "Our recommendation is just to eat the pizza when it comes out of the oven," Veronese said.
Sforno makes about a dozen kinds of pizza each day, such as one topped with mortadella, burrata, parmesan and pistachio ($24) and La Jalapeño ($23) with chiles, olives and caramelized onions. The oven is the only heat source, so cooks also use it to roast red peppers and bake potatoes for the toppings, sparring with pizzas for space.
A panozzo, a sandwich that uses pizza dough for the bread, at Sforno in San Francisco. (Benjamin Fanjoy/For the S.F. Chronicle)
Another Neapolitan specialty that's hard to find elsewhere are the panozzi ($15), or sandwiches made with fresh-baked pizza dough as the bread. The pizzaiolo bakes a strip of dough until it puffs into a pillow shape, whistling with steam from the oven, then splits it open and adds mozzarella before returning it briefly to the heat to melt. Next he adds thin-sliced prosciutto, arugula and burrata for one version, or porchetta, caramelized onion and potato for another.
The restaurant is in the process of getting a beer and wine license but offers an array of Italian sodas, including the food-friendly Lurisia bitter aperitivo, and regional desserts, like a Caprese flourless bittersweet chocolate cake with chopped hazelnuts ($7.50).
