6 Rules of Pizza
Salad is a side, not a topping
One thing I’ve learned traveling around the U.S. is that there is a lot of weird pizza out there. Pizza made with baking soda. Or biscuit mix. Pizza made with tasteless sauce from huge cans and pre-grated cheese that doesn’t really melt. And pizza heated up in a microwave on Amtrak (beyond gross). Not to mention some really weird toppings. All of this is so wrong, wrong, wrong.
I live in Western New York in a city with a large Italian American population — Sicilian American, to be precise. I spend a lot of time in NYC and always try to find time for a slice of the classic New York street pizza, a triangle you fold lengthwise so the point won’t droop as you shove it into your pie hole. And for years I’ve been making pizza — tweaking and searching for that perfect home version. But a recent pizza at a posh local restaurant, not Italian, brought me home to how good a perfect pizza can be.
It was wood-fired: The sauce was fresh and bright, spread thinly, and dosed with a healthy amount of red pepper flakes. Whole milk mozzarella, not fresh mozzarella, and a complete layer of very thinly sliced pepperoni. The crust was thin, blackened on the edges, and crisp on the bottom. With each bite, all these flavors stood out, while perfectly complementing each other. It was heaven and I inhaled it.
