Pizza is Everywhere - Crust is Crucial

Pizza is a staple of the American diet. The statistics of pizza consumption in the United States are prodigious- according to Pizza.com, "Americans eat approximately 100 acres of pizza EACH DAY, or about 350 slices per second" and "About 3 billion pizzas are sold annually in the U.S.".

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However, without an official Pizza Bureau to enforce standards and quality, there's no uniform standardization. This results in a bewildering array of styles and toppings. The situation is complicated by the various means pizza is delivered to the consumer- he can eat it there, take it with him, have it delivered, bake it from scratch, or defrost a frozen pie. We don't expect to find a finely-honed gourmet pizza in a gas station convenience store freezer! By the slice from a window or in a truck speeding off to a famished rendezvous, pizza is everywhere.

Pizza's origins are lost in the dim mist of antiquity. Rumors circulate that pizza was invented in New York City, but take no heed. Evidence suggests that pizza was brought to the United States of America by Italian immigrants. However, the historical record is unambiguous in this matter: Italians didn't invent the pizza. The Greeks, who maintained colonies in southern Italy for approximately 600 years (roughly from 730 B.C. to 130 B.C.) brought pizza to Italy with them. Ancient Greek written records confirm that the Greeks ate pizza. Though again, evidence suggests pizza had been imported from Asia Minor to Greece even earlier.

Just what is a pizza? There are four main aspects of the basic pizza:

1. Crust
2. Sauce
3. Cheese
4. Toppings

There should be a balance struck between these four basic pizza elements. Crust is crucial. Contrary to popular belief, too much cheese is bad. Good cheese is very important. You can tell good cheese from bad cheese right away, and gooey mozzarella cheese is what pizza is all about. Did you know that authentic mozzarella is made from water buffalo milk? Cheese is a too complex a topic for this article, but there's gobs of cheezy info on the web.

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Here are some important toppings that should be available:

Cured Bacon - Lean Ground Beef - Broccoli - Feta Cheese - Romano Cheese - Ham - Italian Meatball -Fresh Onions (red or white) - Fresh Mushrooms - Black Olives - Green Olives - Fresh Green Peppers - Jalapeno Peppers - Spicy Pepperoni - Pineapple (some consider this a controversial topping, and I understand that though I don't agree) -Spinach - Italian Sausage - Fresh Tomatoes - Filets D'Anchovies -Broiled Chicken

Sauce should be chunky- not sweet or thin. All too frequently, one encounters bland seasoning. It has been said that seasoning pizza is akin to applying perfume- the right amount in the right place emits a subtle and enticing aroma; too much is cloying. Pizza should be served with crushed red pepper flakes for shaking on top.

Too much cheese or sauce or an improperly constructed pie can inflict the dreaded pizza slide on the unwary consumer. This phenomenon occurs when one bites into a slice and the the hot cheese slides off the crust. The painfully hot cheese dangles from one's lips, searing one's chin, scalding one's tongue. Instinctively the jaws unclench, and the steaming gooey mass collapses into one's lap. The pizza slide must be avoided. A pizza suffering from severe slide will be rapidly rendered untasty.

There's talk of filled crusts and double-layered pizzas. Are these just marketing gimmicks and fads, or will these innovations stay with us? How is the "pizza slide" impacted by these new developments? I have yet to try any of these new-fangled pies, and I don't want to.

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Chris gives us the Italian perspective:

I like your post, but I must argue the finer points of pizza history! First, I shall endeavour to relate the history as I understand it, and then explain why this seems more plausible.

Soldiers stationed in Italy during WWII developed a taste for the local delicacy of crusty bread with tomato sauce on top. This needs no deep delving into. Italians are notorious for two things: putting tomato sauce on whatever they can find, and sopping up whatever sauce is leftover with bread. Bypassing all intermediate steps, and putting the sauce on top of bread was a very short step indeed. Anyway, these returning GI's brought their taste for pizza with them, and pizzerias opened in NYC to satisfy their craving. Shortly thereafter, cheese was added to form what was then called "Gourmet" pizza.

Why should we believe this story? Because the tomato is a new world fruit! The Greeks couldn't possibly have brought pizza to Italy when they were occupying it way back when! Whatever the Greeks were eating, it couldn't have been pizza. Could bread, no matter how flat and laden with cheese, that doesn't have sauce really be called pizza? I think not.

Roomerkind replies:

In the pre-tomato days, another sauce would have been used, such as olive oil. More research is needed concerning the pre-tomato sauce pizza.