The Glory of Pizza

I made pizza last night. As I sat there at the table looking at my rustic disk of flat bread with fresh Mozzarella di Buffalo and Fontina cheeses, it just made me shake my head in wonderment. How on Earth did this glorious culinary tradition become the fodder for late night delivery and miles and miles of grocery store freezer space of mini-frozen/microwavable/reduced fat/low-carb Frisbees of plastic cheese dripping cardboard? And I cringe with cultural embarrassment when I see ads boasting, “It’s as good as delivery!”. Sure a slice of Papa John’s holds a lot of great college memories… but it is hardly something to strive for!

The concept behind pizza couldn’t be more simple. The dough is made strictly (according to the Italian government) with only: wheat flour, water, salt and yeast. The sauce is an uncooked blend of tomatoes (28oz. can of San Marzano), garlic (1 Tbsp granulated), basil (1 tsp dried), oregano (1 tsp dried) and salt (1 tsp kosher). That’s it. Basta!

Looking back though, I honestly do see how hard good pizza is to make, because I failed at it so many times. The person who taught me how to make pizza was a chef from Rome named Roberto. He made a cracker thin crust that he rolled out with a 3 ft. long by 1 inch dowel rod; that’s right, no flying, spinning, hand tossing… rolling! When I moved back to the US, I went out and bought a pizza stone and a flat wooden pizza peel. Trying to recreate Roberto’s thin crusts, I ripped through more than I’ll ever care to mention.

I’ve had to shut off the oven, and wait for it to cool down so that I could go in and scrape off the nuclear meltdown that happens when the middle of the crust dissolves in the wet sauce with cheese oozing and sticking to the stone. You need sandpaper to remove it all (not kidding!). I’ve had the kitchen temperature be too low, and the dough take four hours to rise, which meant dinner time at 11:30 at night. I’ve left too much excess flour on the dough which made the pizza come out powdery to the point of not being able to breathe in as you eat it for fear of starting a coughing or sneezing fit. I’ve sent olives and all sorts of toppings rolling off the pizza and down into the oven or onto the stone as I tried to perfect the quick snap of sliding the pizza onto the stone. I’ve been too timid and missed the stone by about four inches leaving pizza drooping off the front end of the stone, and then gone back in to fix it and shredded the pizza into the above mentioned nuclear meltdown. I’ve had crusts that didn’t rise at all, some that rose like a rescue life saver ring, and some that had huge air pockets the size of soccer balls. In fact, I’ve been disappointed so many times, pizza is a living testament to itself that only something so freaking good would be worth all this pain and heartbreak to perfect.

But after about 300 pizzas, you really start to hit your stride. The good news is that the traumas of failure run so deep that you never really lose the skill. I’ve taken entire years off from pizza making, only to find that my hands remember exactly what to do the next time; like reconnecting with an old lady friend, if you know what I mean [wink].

If you have some free time, and you care at all about the quality of food you eat. Please try making your own pizza. Few feelings in the world can beat the first bite of “real” pizza that you’ve made yourself. A word to the wise though… do a couple of practice runs before you inviting people for dinner.