Truth, Love, Peace, Beauty, Pizza!
People have asked me about my unfettered and potentially fatal love affair with food. They have asked me to explain to them what food is my favorite and why. Well, as to favorites, I really don't have one. I do have certain food experiences which were exquisite and left memories of contentment in my brain and I can speak of steamed mussels (with sourdough bread to soak up the cooking liquor) and comfort foods like macaroni and cheese. I can speak of taste experiences like sautéed morel mushrooms with garlic and wine. I can talk about the "perfect" paella my friends and I made while camping which sent me to bed loving humanity. I can speak of all these foods and express that perhaps they and other gourmet treats are my favorites (or maybe it was that prime rib cooked perfectly and served with the brown sauce with the herb infusions). Perhaps if I spent another week I could talk of other foods but when you talk about "binge foods" there has to be a pride-of-place mention given to...(wait for it!)... PIZZA!
What is it about the simple pizza which makes me head towards that particular food when I am seeking to use food as a drug to assuage my bruised and battered ego? Perhaps it is the fact that the mixture of bread and tomato sauce is a match made in heaven. Perhaps it is the joy of melted cheese - fats and protein transformed into a chewy mess which goes straight to my serotonin and dopamine receptors. Perhaps it is my love of sausage and anchovies which I love to indulge with slices of both upon the top of said pie. But in reality it is ALL. Pizza is the perfect junk-food. It is bread, tomato, melted cheese and salty protein sources like anchovies, pepperoni, linguica etc. These all get mixed together and come out of the oven hot and tasty and ready to scarf!
But what makes a good pizza?
Let's talk about the heart of pizza, which is the bread. The quality of the bread determines why some pizza's are good and others are horrid. Pizza Hut and other chains sell pizzas with horrible bread and seem to think that by covering these abominations with cheese and sauce they can get away with calling them pizza. They cannot. A good pizza, in my opinion, is primarily bread and you cannot make a good bread in a pan. Chicago-style pizza is not good bread. It is the NY style which is superior and it is not wrong when people say that nobody makes bread like the people in New York City. The secret is two-fold. One is the water, the other is the yeast. The water in NYC is perfect for bread. It is slightly acidic and clean and this seems to inter-react with the hard spring wheat flour that is used to make a superior bread. The water in the West of the USA is too alkaline and I recommend anybody in those areas to add a teaspoon of cream of tartar to their pizza-making water to make the bread work better. The yeast, however, cannot be duplicated in the West. If you want to make a good pizza, I recommend having good yeast imported from NYC. With the imported yeast and acidic water you will make a good bread, once you have a good bread the rest will follow and a good pizza will be easy to make.
The next step is the sauce. I have never tasted a pizza made with anything else but tomato sauce to be correct. The tomato sauce is irreplaceable and Wolfgang Puck and his celebrity gourmet cutsie-pies can go jump! But you have to make a good sauce by cooking the tomatoes with spices and herbs and simmering the sauce at least 8 hours to get the deep tastes necessary into that sauce. You cannot just open a can of Heinz tomato paste, add some salt and pepper and "pizza seasoning" and think this will do. It will not. The subtle flavors of a good sauce travel from your nose and mouth into your system, transcend the blood/brain barrier and build the horribly exquisite nature of a great pizza.
Then the cheese comes next. You cannot skimp and hope to survive any pizza taste test. Good whole milk mozzarella is the best, you can add other cheeses and I personally like adding a bit of Pecorino Romano for flavor but without the stringy, tangy nature of fresh mozzarella, you have lost. If you want to go truly upscale, get the buffalo-milk mozzarella still in the brine and let it sit in a cheesecloth to drain and then slice very thin and place upon the pie in slices instead of grating and you have found the ultimate. It is the juxtapositioning of cheese/bread/and sauce which makes pizza work. Topping then become a matter of personal taste because you already have a great pie!
But if you want a great pizza, try anchovies. Those who say that they don't like anchovies aren't ready to live! The salty and deeply subtle nature of a good anchovy is unimpeachably perfect.
And there you have a great pizza. I have, in the depths of a pizza binge, been able to eat one and a half of these beauties (large) before my belly becomes so distended that you could thump it like a melon and I will be unable to rise from the sofa for hours. The self-satisfied coma which follows will cure any bout with unfeeling family members, demanding bosses, unfaithful lovers or scarily stupid presidents. And that is the perfect high.
(Chocolate Horror Count... still 0)
What is it about the simple pizza which makes me head towards that particular food when I am seeking to use food as a drug to assuage my bruised and battered ego? Perhaps it is the fact that the mixture of bread and tomato sauce is a match made in heaven. Perhaps it is the joy of melted cheese - fats and protein transformed into a chewy mess which goes straight to my serotonin and dopamine receptors. Perhaps it is my love of sausage and anchovies which I love to indulge with slices of both upon the top of said pie. But in reality it is ALL. Pizza is the perfect junk-food. It is bread, tomato, melted cheese and salty protein sources like anchovies, pepperoni, linguica etc. These all get mixed together and come out of the oven hot and tasty and ready to scarf!
But what makes a good pizza?
Let's talk about the heart of pizza, which is the bread. The quality of the bread determines why some pizza's are good and others are horrid. Pizza Hut and other chains sell pizzas with horrible bread and seem to think that by covering these abominations with cheese and sauce they can get away with calling them pizza. They cannot. A good pizza, in my opinion, is primarily bread and you cannot make a good bread in a pan. Chicago-style pizza is not good bread. It is the NY style which is superior and it is not wrong when people say that nobody makes bread like the people in New York City. The secret is two-fold. One is the water, the other is the yeast. The water in NYC is perfect for bread. It is slightly acidic and clean and this seems to inter-react with the hard spring wheat flour that is used to make a superior bread. The water in the West of the USA is too alkaline and I recommend anybody in those areas to add a teaspoon of cream of tartar to their pizza-making water to make the bread work better. The yeast, however, cannot be duplicated in the West. If you want to make a good pizza, I recommend having good yeast imported from NYC. With the imported yeast and acidic water you will make a good bread, once you have a good bread the rest will follow and a good pizza will be easy to make.
The next step is the sauce. I have never tasted a pizza made with anything else but tomato sauce to be correct. The tomato sauce is irreplaceable and Wolfgang Puck and his celebrity gourmet cutsie-pies can go jump! But you have to make a good sauce by cooking the tomatoes with spices and herbs and simmering the sauce at least 8 hours to get the deep tastes necessary into that sauce. You cannot just open a can of Heinz tomato paste, add some salt and pepper and "pizza seasoning" and think this will do. It will not. The subtle flavors of a good sauce travel from your nose and mouth into your system, transcend the blood/brain barrier and build the horribly exquisite nature of a great pizza.
Then the cheese comes next. You cannot skimp and hope to survive any pizza taste test. Good whole milk mozzarella is the best, you can add other cheeses and I personally like adding a bit of Pecorino Romano for flavor but without the stringy, tangy nature of fresh mozzarella, you have lost. If you want to go truly upscale, get the buffalo-milk mozzarella still in the brine and let it sit in a cheesecloth to drain and then slice very thin and place upon the pie in slices instead of grating and you have found the ultimate. It is the juxtapositioning of cheese/bread/and sauce which makes pizza work. Topping then become a matter of personal taste because you already have a great pie!
But if you want a great pizza, try anchovies. Those who say that they don't like anchovies aren't ready to live! The salty and deeply subtle nature of a good anchovy is unimpeachably perfect.
And there you have a great pizza. I have, in the depths of a pizza binge, been able to eat one and a half of these beauties (large) before my belly becomes so distended that you could thump it like a melon and I will be unable to rise from the sofa for hours. The self-satisfied coma which follows will cure any bout with unfeeling family members, demanding bosses, unfaithful lovers or scarily stupid presidents. And that is the perfect high.
(Chocolate Horror Count... still 0)
posted by S.A.M. Tanner at 6:19 AM
5 Comments:
You have put more thought into pizza than I dared dream was possible. And good thoughts, too - you gourmand!
Good job with the choco-horror count!
My friend,
During my unfortunate exile up (well, down for me) here in Canada, I learned one lesson very well and that is ...
PIZZA IS GOD-GIVEN, PROVEN MEDICINE
for curing any sort of blues or alienation. Pizza is the most excellent of treats on Fridays, after every single potential ally has failed to call.
Thank for your ver excellent attention to this most important matter.
Oh, my god, I am having a gargonzola attack just now. No time to say goodbye, must really rush ...
Gorgonzola is another of those mystical foods...
Dangerous to know and wonderful to have known.
i didn't even make it past the fourth paragraph.
Pizza is food to the enth power! there is no substitute. when you get that stupid question from a new love interest, what is your favorite food? oh my.
if a man shows up at my door with a portabella, roasted garlic, fresh chiffanade basil, and goat cheese pizza....on a simple tomato base, and self rising crust? there is no telling what he can expect to receive in return. (hypothetically of course...LOL)
because i will always have the perfect bottle of wine to go with a righteous pizza. its the only food worthy of adulation. except pasta....or this killer middle eastern restaurant in Dallas...or that vietnamese place in Houston...tee hee.
Hello my name is melanie, and i am a food aholic! no wait Connisour.
heres to our meal together in sunnyvalle! wOOt!
;-)
My husband's binge food of choice is pizza. I suggested that when he gets a craving he ought to have a piece to satisfy the desire before it grows out of control. He has tried to explain to me that eating one piece of pizza is not fun. It is all about eating so much pizza that you are stuffed. So much that you must remain perfectly still for 20 minutes or else you risk throwing up. I must admit that I don't get the attraction. But I have witnessed first hand its power.
Food is such a difficult addiction because you can't quit cold turkey. And it is hard to help...oops! See, I am turning this post into all about me. Sorry about that. Just sometimes it gets hard to be the supportive one.
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