I have tasted the future and it is scorched and puffy, layered with red sauce and topped with melted mozzarella.

If ever there was a national pizza moment, this is it. It seems serious chefs all got the memo to start studying the ancient craft of pizza making, adding gourmet touches in search of their own piece of the pie. (It doesn't hurt that the economy is more in tune with peasant bread than pampered beef, of course.)

I have had the pleasure of dining at two of the nation's foremost pizza purveyors, Jim Lahey's Co. in Manhattan and Nancy Silverton's Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles, and am happy to report that we've got some worthy contenders of our own.

To qualify as makers of new-generation gourmet pizza, these restaurants do Old World style baking in a brick or stone oven that might burn wood, gas or, in the case of the Brooklyn-style, coal.

In the words of baking guru Peter Reinhart, ``crust is at least 80 percent of the pizza experience. The crust is the unifier . . . and the toppings play off of it.''

To my mind -- and in Neapolitan tradition -- the perfect crust has some lightness and bubbles in its puffy edge (the result of long proofing), and comes to a thin conclusion in the center. As for sauce, it should be made of fresh crushed tomatoes or canned ones imported from the famed San Marzano region south of Naples, cooked briefly if at all to retain bright flavor.

These pizzas are eaten with a knife and fork and, though it's fun to share, the dough usually is so thin that one pie per person is about right. For comparison purposes, I had margheritas (tomato sauce, basil and mozzarella) everywhere, but also tried a good number of exotic toppings, which I mention when noteworthy.

I've sampled more good South Florida pizza in the past three months than I have had here in my lifetime. I may have missed your favorite spot, but I can guarantee these nine are worth a visit.

LAURENZO'S

Since 1951, Laurenzo's Market in North Miami Beach has been keeping fans up to their ears in all things Italian. And for decades, it has kept the fires burning in a classic wood-burning oven that looks like a little white trullo house from Puglia. It's the pizzamaker, Calabrian-born Carlo Amarini, who's new. The current pies are tasty, though some get slightly soggy in the center from a too-cool oven. Not to worry, says Chef Carlo, who came onboard in February; a new oven is in the works.

ANTHONY'S

Anthony Bruno (Anthony's Runway 84) opened a namesake pizzeria to satisfy his cravings for New York-style pizza, and now presides over a mini empire of more than a dozen Anthony's Coal-Fired Pizzas that recently expanded into Miami-Dade. Brutally hot coal-burning ovens (more than 800 degrees) create crusts with edges as dark as, well, as coal. Best toppings include broccoli rabe and sausage.

The pie is a bit thicker than most, and if the original margherita pizza was meant to look like an Italian flag, Anthony's must be meant to mimic the moon with its dark craters of sauce amid blackened pools of cheese. Which is not to say it is not a triumph: When done just right, it can be a revelation in crunchy, crusty, blistered goodness.

FRATELLI LA BUFALA

This charming pizzeria at the corner of Fifth and Washington has been a Miami Beach magnet for Italians since it opened in 2005. Family tradition and a super-charged wood-burning oven are the secrets to the quintessential pie made with real buffalo mozzarella imported from a brother's farm in Naples.

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