Walk down any street in Rome, and you will see pizza places advertising “Forno a legna.”
Forno is stove, legna is wood, so “forno a legna,” is a special wood fire stove that is used to cook the delicious flat pizza in this part of Italy.
I never thought to stop and wonder where all this wood to fire up the stoves comes from. Not until the night that BLASTING music piqued my curiosity and I wandered to the window to find all the hubbub emanating from this:
All of the sudden, people with wheelbarrows materialized and started loading up on firewood.
Wait. What? WHAT is going on? The music, the wheelbarrows, the wood- in the middle of the city!
I was perplexed until I realized that they were carting the firewood into the pizza parlor across the street, and I had a very slow-dawning “A-ha!” moment. The legna has to get to the forno somehow, and in these parts you’ll know it has arrived when you hear the music.
