It would be an understatement to say that pizza is a big deal. And while New Yorkers can go on and on about the elusive, lofty standards they have coursing through their veins, they’ve got nothing on the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, the official association that officially governs the official classification of pizza Napoletana. Now that’s a big deal.

The requirements for creating a certified pie are exacting. A specific type of flour, yeast and salt at specific proportions must compose the dough; the dough must be hand-worked; the crust must not exceed a certain thickness; the oven must be wood-fired and blazing hot; etc. L.A.’s got one member of the association—Antica Pizzeria in Marina del Rey.

Trained in one of the oldest pizzerias in Napoli, Christiano Bollini is pumping out pizza as authentically Neapolitan as you can get. But satisfied bellies, not certification, are what he’s after. The proof of the pudding, really, is in the tasting—and Bollini’s makes a damn good pie, certainly the best we’ve had in quite a while. And for all you thin-crust dogmatists, this crust is the skinniest Minnie in the land. Toppings may skew more Californian than by-the-book Italian, but that hardly matters when you've got combinations like the Porco, a rich marriage of bacon, basil and two types of sausage that is a pure flavor revelation.

The dough
While Bollini eschews the minute dictates of the association—Caputo flour type 00, flour type 0 yeast, a certain percentage of salt—he does hold to the importance of yeast. “Mine’s a yeast-based dough,” he says. “I do two proofs on it…and that’s all I’ll say. I try to keep the whole formula secret.”

The technique
While tossing and flipping dough makes a good show, a rolling pin is better suited for accomplishing superthin crust. “I prefer to roll the dough out; it’s more uniform that way,” Bollini says. “The problem with tossing is that it creates a thicker, breadier rim and a thinner inside. [That kind of imbalance] will rip a hole right through it.”

A marble counter provides a cool surface to form the pie, which is then deftly scooped up and slid into the oven. That kind of skill is a true mark of a pizzaiolo.

The toppings
Pre- or par-cooking the ingredients individually is anathema: “When you have a pre-baked pie, you can always tell. We don’t pre-cook any of that stuff. We cut every ingredient evenly so that it cooks evenly. The residual juices from a mushroom or sausage—all that flavor should go right into the pie.”

The oven
The crowning glory of Bollini's Pizzeria is its wood-burning oven. The igloo—the actual functioning heart—was imported from Parma. “The thing with buying an igloo [in the States] is that it’ll have a section for the gas pipe. So it’s a fake wood fire oven,” says Bollini. “You also lose room. Where those only fit two, maybe three, pizzas, we can get four to five in there.”

The heat
The tiles along the oven floor sit at around 800-900 degrees, while the ambient temperature reaches an impressive 1100 degrees. The blistering heat at two levels is essential to the wafer-thin profile that defines Neapolitan pizza: “[While the hot tiles] form a crust on the bottom of the pie, the top needs to cook evenly, so you’d want the surrounding temperature to be a lot hotter than the bottom.”

The wood
Almond wood imbues the pizza with distinct smoky flavor, and Bollini’s goes through a whole lot of it. You can’t miss the great stack of wood near the entrance, which feeds the belly of the fiery beast every hour.

Jiyeon Yoo is Restaurants editor for Metromix Los Angeles.