division

The perfect pizza is not easily replicated in the home kitchen because it is a Gestalt kind of thing, a food miracle that combines all that is good and beckons a frosty malt beverage with its come hither aroma. Some folks are quite content with a frozen pizza or one from a gas station, and that’s great. They can have it, but it’s a pale imitation of what could possibly be the greatest achievement of mankind. A real pizza is baked at an extremely high temperature, with fresh Mozzarella and aged Provolone and Romano, and maybe some meats and vegetables. It has a sauce made of fresh Basil, dried Oregano and blanched Tomatoes. The crust is thin, yet has a distinct inner layer. There is no oil on the bottom like a Greek pizza, nor is it filled with Cheddar like those Chicago deep dish pies. The toppings are purely individual, but there is a rule to follow when putting them on. So let’s deconstruct a pizza and see if we can identify what makes it our raison d’ etre.
Looking at it from above we see the toppings. If you like an onion that’s what you see first. Onions are mostly water, like all vegetables, but usually are placed on top to get the proper color and texture. If there is Hamburger on your pie, it sits directly under the Onion in order to brown up. Ditto for uncased Sausage. Under the onions are other vegetables, but the ones on the bottom are the biggest and most stable, like Green Peppers. Some pizza men grate a layer of Romano under the vegetables to absorb and redirect the moisture and keep the crust from getting soggy. If you are a carnivore, this next layer is where you’ll find your meats, mostly Ham, Salami, and the occasional cased Sausage.
True pizza is not so much a vehicle for toppings, but a medley of cheese and sauce. The next place we get to in our journey to the heart of the pizza is the cheese. In some areas of the world the cheese is fresher than others. Because Mozzarella is not aged and has very few ingredients, this is the cheese of choice for traditional pies. It melts well, slices or grinds easily, and tastes great. In with the Mozzarella you’ll likely find some aged Provolone, that being the smoky flavor that complements the golden crust. The Romano may or may not be here, depending on whether or not you ordered veggies. Under the cheese is the sauce, which by all accounts makes the pizza great or merely good. Usually Plum Tomatoes are used, after they are blanched and their skins removed. Sometimes they are cooked in a pressure cooker to reduce them to a paste, other times just chopped into fine bits. Common ingredients in the sauce are minced or sliced Garlic, fresh Basil, dried Oregano (fresh is too heady) some sugar or honey, and sometimes some grated Parmagean cheese. The true pizza has little sauce and a light layer of cheese, relying instead on the crust to make it flavorful.
Underneath all that, you find the crust itself, the holder of goodness. A crust is made simply, but with love and pride. It is a miracle of chemistry and physics, soft and chewy inside and brown and crispy outside. Not too thin, but certainly not any thicker than a nickel. The golden bottom is flecked with cornmeal and little black bits from the floor of the oven, where it has been placed without a pan and spun at least once. The water used in the crust gives it its flavor, and a true pizzaman will use ice cold water when making it, preferring to let the yeast rise at room temperature. The water is the reason pizzas don’t taste good in places like Kansas or Key West, not enough Lime. The oven itself does a lot of crust flavoring, as they are usually about seven hundred degrees so the flavors are sealed in and the pie cooks in about ten minutes. The crust/oven relationship is a fickle one, each particular oven calling for a different crust recipe. For the purpose of this essay we have grouped them together as they are inseparable.
So now you have your pizza in front of you, steam curling off the toppings, crust all golden brown with a halo of red around the geese to hint at the sauce buried there. You understand what it is, how it’s put together, yet something’s missing. The finishing touch, a frosted mug of beer. This is the true illustration of “sum is more than the parts”, a shining example of what things can be if put together correctly. The next time you have pizza; ask yourself if any mere mortal could have dreamed it up. I’ll bet the answer will be no. Just as humans are composed of about eleven dollars worth of chemicals put together just so, the superstar of the food world is constructed of ordinary materials with a heavenly touch.