Hi John & Teri, finally the late arrival from Rome... yes of course, just about every pizza chef here has their secret and "authentic" recipe of their own. I live in Rome where their style is very thin and crispy, but the classic Napolitana is much thicker. So also depending on the region, their style can also differ. But all in all, pizzas in Italy taste quite different from what you are used to abroad, the most important key is the quality, fresh ingredients and the wood burning oven, where you can cook the pizza at very high temperature very quickly.
Here are a few particulars in Italian (or at least Roman) custom when it comes to pizza...
-they don't have a ready made "pizza sauce", they just use the crushed tomatoes or passata(tomato sauce) with herbs sprinkled on.
-sometimes at the restaurant they may ask you if you want your pizza red or white, which means with tomato sauce or without.
-white pizzas, without tomato sauce, are equally popular, also there are sweet pizza versions, too.
-at restaurants, they don't make enormous pizzas to be shared with multiple people, each person order their own pizza. At takeaways, they do make large reclangular pizzas and sell them by slices, people tend to fold them in half, make a sandwich of it and eat it.
-some of the popular items outside Italy, such as pepperoni, hamburgers, doner kabobs, "canadian bacon & pineapples", BBQ chicken etc. are utterly unheard of as pizza ingredients, though they can get very creative in their own way.
Here is some interesting info and story about Italian pizza...
Also I posted our own pizza recipe some time ago, which is located
here....
If there is further questions, feel free to ask me!!