A squash blossom pizza emerges from Gjelina’s oven after being baked at 760 degrees. (Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times)
In the wood ovens of Pizzeria Mozza, Nancy Silverton has more or less reinvented the very idea of pizza, airy and burnt and risen around the rim, thin and crisp in the center, neither bready in the traditional Neapolitan manner nor wispy the way you find them in the best places in Tuscany. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Wild spinach pizza. (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)
The pizzas at Casa Bianca are thin-crusted and crazy-cut like the South Side Chicago bar pies on which founder Sam Martorana modeled them. (Ringo H.W. Chiu / For The Times)
Sotto’s margherita pizza. The pizzeria is a nominally Southern Italian place dedicated to local produce and sustainable, artisanal-produced meat. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)
Sotto chefs Steve Samson, right, and Zach Pollack, left, come from Ortica, the South Coast Plaza restaurant that redefined Orange County pizza. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)
Mother Dough owner Bez Compani is serious about his pizza. He has been known to close when the dough isn’t right. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
A customer enjoys a margherita pizza at Mother Dough. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Settebello owner Brad Otton holds a pizza in front the pizzeria’s 900-degree domed wood-fired oven. (Leila Navidi / For The Times)
