Often a guilty pleasure, could pizza actually be good for you after all?

Pizza is healthy for you. Seriously, provided it's made right, that is.

And pizza, as most of us know it, is not made right.

When Enrico Sgarbossa arrived in Australia seven years ago, the pizza chef had never tried Domino's.

supplied Domino's might be takings to the skies with drone pizza, but is it really pizza?

"To be honest, I like Domino's because for me, it's not pizza. In Italy, it doesn't exist," the 28-year-old says.

It's not just Domino's that is not "real" pizza.

"From my experience, I can tell you, there are pizzerias that make the dough in two hours and they use half a kilo of yeast inside 10 kilos of flour to make it rise quicker because they don't have the skills, they don't have the time, they don't have the patience," says Sgarbossa.

AARON McLEAN/CUISINE Zucchini pizzette with chicken

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"Everyone can do pizza, not everyone can make a good pizza. Mix flour and water together and something will come out. But to make one that will digest easy, that's light, full of taste ... there has to be skills."

He would know. Sgarbossa, from Bassano del Grappa, is a master pizza maker and qualified flour mill technician who won the Giro Pizza Di Europe in 2014 and took third place this year.

The young Italian, who has recently opened his own pizzeria, Al Taglio (pronounced "al tah-leo") on Albion Street in Surry Hills, also comes with a recommendation by Massimo Bottura, whose restaurant was named the best in the world earlier this year.

"Real" pizza, Sgarbossa explains, is a sourdough that has been left to rise for 24 to 48 hours and contains minimal yeast.

Not only does it add depth of flavour to the dough, sourdough is easier to digest, allows us to absorb nutrients in the flour more easily, the fermentation process produces gut-healthy lactobacillus bacteria and it gives us less of a blood sugar spike.

"Sourdough is a healthier option because the acidity of the dough reduces the glycemic index," dietitian Dr Joanna McMillan explains. "Some people also have a problem with yeast – although not everyone – so they may find sourdough more easily digested."

Sgarbossa adds that, in Italy, there are "a million" different flours for different uses.

"00 is usually the best for pizza but it's not full of vitamins – it's really poor," he explains. "That's why they say it's poison, it's not healthy. There's not too much vitamins and grain in there for our bodies to digest properly."

So although he uses 00 (a grind of flour that is very fine) to "cut" the dough, he uses organic spelt, whole wheat and purple flours from Queensland mill, Kialla, which have more fibre, nutrients and are naturally low in gluten.

"We eat pizza every day for lunch and dinner," says Sgarbossa, who is remarkably lean and healthy-looking for such an "unhealthy" habit. "It has to be healthy and easy to digest so that you can eat it twice a day."

Twice a day, I ask incredulously? Yes, he replies.

"I eat here every day, my staff eat here every day. I want to eat good every day of my life," Sgarbossa says. "Cheap food doesn't exist – you pay or you pay with your health."

As far as flours go, spelt is an ancient grain, McMillan explains, but if they still use white spelt flour "it's likely to be high GI and loses all the fibre and many nutrients of the whole flour".

She adds that as well as the base, toppings and portion size determine the health of your pizza.

"Gorgeous simple vegie toppings, lean proteins like seafood or lean meats (not processed meats) are all great – the cheese also adds protein so I love a simple vegetarian pizza more like a traditional Italian proper pizza," McMillan says. "Then serve with a big salad or pile a bunch of rocket or spinach on top and you have a great nutritious meal."

Sgarbossa agrees that portion sizes are a problem, but believes it's also the quantities of certain ingredients that are bodies our not used to.

"We abuse gluten – cake, biscuit, bread, cracker, pasta, everything," he says. "Now people have yeast problem because the bakery industry uses a tonne of yeast. That's why some people get a little bit sick because we're not used to having big quantities – but it's big quantities of everything – if you eat one kilo of carrots a day every day you'll get sick."

Keep it "real" though, and you have yourself a health food in pizza.

"Healthy pizza is entirely possible," McMillan exclaims. "Hurrah to that."