I have some very distinct memories of pizza. In my hometown, up the street and a few blocks away is Tony’s Pizza. We would get it on weekend nights and some weeknights too. Pepperoni. Mushrooms. Onions. Sometimes olives. When I got a little older I would go there with friends on a Friday night or during the day in the summer. I remember the old Italian men working there and the central station with all their mise and all the boxes stacked up the walls. They sponsored local baseball teams and had their photos on the wall. The dining area was sparse: there were (are?) orange linoleum covered booths with brown trim. The menu was rounded off with a nice selection of hot sandwiches (meatball subs of course). They had UB40 and The Clash and REM on their old jukebox.

That pizza was good. But there are/were so many more for such a little state. Most notable is possibly Casserta’s in Providence. I still make a point of going there every trip to RI. They make their pizza in a sheet pan and the only toppings you can order are cheese, mushrooms, olives and pepperoni. The basic comes with just sauce. My all time favorite though in RI was Fellini’s. Long closed, I caught it on the cusp. It was different and thin and the slices were big. You would fold them in half. The sauce wasn’t too much and it had a nice acidity. For RISD and Brown students it was a haven and they must have served beer but for me and my friends in the afternoons after school it was our place to hang out and have an afternoon snack. Classic of the early 90‘s the back room was smoke filled.... oh, and my then girlfriends aunt worked there and we got free pies all the time.

At this same time in California there was an ongoing evolution of pizza. In 1980 the California seasonal, local cuisine merged with the old world wood burning oven style pizza well associated with Italy. Two sources can be credited with the higher quality of pizza we have come to know. A man named Ed LaDou was the pizza chef at Spectrum Foods' Prego Restaurant in Cow Hollow (SF) when he served Wolfgang Puck a pizza that influenced him to launch pizzas at his famed restaurant Spago (Puck also made LaDou his pizza chef). At the same time, just across the Bay in Berkeley, Alice Waters and Jeremy Towers were making pizzas and added their take with seasonal, local vegetables, different cheeses and other types of meat than pepperoni.

What was happening in California and other food focused locations started popping up in places like Seattle and Portland and one could see it as being complementary to the increase in the quality of the coffee (no, NOT Starbucks or Seattle’s Best or Tully’s or Peet’s) movement (that seems to only be beginning in SF now). In 02, 03 the artisanal style pizza started to emerge in Seattle. By 04 there were several nice pizza places in Seattle that had opened featuring high quality ingredients, great crust and a bit of a show. Sometimes you could even see an Artoflex in the window.

In the Bay Area there has long been a nice selection of places to get pizza. For quite some years we have had Pauline’s and The Cheese Board Pizza Collective and Arizmendi and Goat Hill and Zachary’s. Over the last several years new places have been opening in SF and the East Bay and notables include Pizzaiolo, Pizzetta, Delfina Pizzeria, Little Star, Pizza Nostra and not quite open yet Flour and Water.

Pizza has become a bit of a scene on the coasts. LA, NY, SF, Seattle, Portland. Of course this is happening in other cities and many shops have been missed in these call outs but the pizza train seems to be gaining momentum again. Last summer the Taste Pavilion at Slow Food Nation featured two wood burning pizza ovens with volunteer staffers from Pizzaiolo, Chez Panise, and probably several other venues. Here are some photos…

~The production line was shoulder to shoulder of tossers and toppers. There were several peels for building the pizzas on.

The pizza line, which was also the bread line, was quite long and it was after the Bread Baker’s Guild of America informational booth. Here are some samples of the pizza that was donated to the baking crew. It was amazing.

The inspiration to write this post was an article in the NYT titled Crust Fund by Sam Sifton as well as a recent review in The Times of Co., a new pizzeria in NY. Crust Fund is essentially an encouragement to make pizza at home without worry. The slant was a little surprising though and I wasn’t too interested in the point of the article (that you can make good dough and use simple, good ingredients and that it is going to be great, even if it looks not so good) because I think people shouldn’t settle for lesser things and that they should be encouraged to do the best they can (which includes making a pizza that looks and tastes amazing).

Sifton begins the article with a brief review of a new book titled How it Ended by Jay McInerney.  He sums the essence of the book up with the statement that “everything pretty much works out” and he then makes the bridge to his DIY pizza article by saying the “general optimism of his (McInerney) may be applied to making pies.” So just go for it and what ever happens happens.

There are many components to a pizza and they are all important but I think one needs more than a lackadaisical approach. Maybe it is my bias as a baker but I think that more times than not, the dough is overlooked. In Crust Fund, Sifton talks about the importance of the dough, but on only on a superficial level that likely leaves the reader with more questions. Without good dough, it is tough to have a good pizza. And… to do it over and over again, at home, it would be useful to have some sort of basic understanding of ingredients and process.

This article followed a pretty good review of Co., one of the new pizzerias in NYC. This place is from Jim Lahey of Sullivan St Bakery, more commonly known as the man who made the no knead bread dough popular with Bitman. The Times commented that there is a disclaimer in the restaurant that sometimes the pizza might not be round, or that it may be a little dark, and that was that. Was this the inspiration for the article?

I have been tuned into the happenings in the pizza world to a degree for some time but after reading the Crust Fund and Co. review, it put the current pizza craze into perspective for me. I truly hope more people make more pizza at home with good ingredients and that we continue to have more unique pizzerias open to inspire us. I don’t think we have seen the end of this trend. Working with the dough is by far one of the most challenging aspects of pizza at home but it is very possible to make nice pizza with little more than an oven and a pizza stone. We can re-create those pizzas from our youth or last week with the right type of dough and toppings. My next blog post will feature an in-depth review of the ingredients and process for pizza dough and it will provide some tips for success at home. With recipes. Thanks for reading if you read this far… Brian.