Na Pizz!

We’ve known each other long enough that you’ve probably observed that I go on tangents. Pasta one week, then gnocchi, then squash, guazzetti, ravioli, fish, whatever. Well, I’ve been on another. *Na pizza!*

First, we need to disambiguate: there is pizza, and then there is Pizza. To develop our taxonomy, we need to isolate pizza into constituent groups, the two largest being, of course, Italian Pizza and American Pizza. Italian pizza can then be further divided into Neapolitan Pizza, Sicilian Pizza and Everything Else- the myriad of focaccie, panzanelle, farinate and, well, everything else that’s flat and gets topped. (I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere.)

American pizza is a little trickier to divide, but let’s try. The two largest groups of American pizza are Garbage and Not Garbage. Garbage divides further, but we needn’t spend too much time on it. Basically, Garbage subdivides into Chains, which includes anything you get a circular for: Papa John’s, Domino’s, Little Caesar’s, Pat’s and a thousand others; and also Ghetto Pizza, which are run by the slum lords of pizza. In New York they are the countless nameless places with Coke signs open way later than any pizzeria should be, shoveling out scrap pies that I wouldn’t eat no matter how drunk I was, and yet people throw themselves in front of traffic to defend them on message boards because “the pizza guy has a mohawk” or “you can get two slices for $1.49.”

Not Garbage is tricky territory, and pulses run high on the subject. First let’s subdivide into Like Italian Pizza and Not Like Italian Pizza. Not Like Italian Pizza includes a lot of things familiar to you, like California Pizza Kitchen, Chicago-Style Pizza and that stuff so common on the west coast with the chewy, brown hammertone crust, usually dusted with breadcrumbs or coarse cornmeal. These things aren’t pizza exactly, but they are a tangential course on the topics of dough, sauce and cheese. Like Italian Pizza brings us to the neighborhood pizza shops of the Northeast, and many of the newer sit-down places of the West Coast.

Let’s isolate the most important element of what makes that pizza Like Italian Pizza: a thin and crispy crust. This does not mean paper-thin crackery crust, but it does mean pizza baked on a stone, not in a pan or on a screen, that is thick enough to have a top, middle and bottom, but not thick enough that you could separate the layers. The thin, raw sauce and mozzarella that go with it are supporting to characters in the Drama of Crust. This is still a very broad category. In Italy, pizzas are individually sized and come unsliced to the table. They’re eaten with a beer and a knife and fork. In America, a pizza may be 16” wide or wider, and come sliced on a big aluminum tray or corrugated paper box for everyone to share. It could also come in the Italian style. It could also come in any way in between.

So, Like Italian Pizza is then divided into Just Like Italian Pizza, A Lot Like Italian Pizza, and Recognizable As Italian Pizza. These are what we are mainly interested in and all these things have the same major constituent elements, so we can discuss them as one.

Next time, **The Crust**

Listening: The Mars Volta Frances the Mute “Cassandra Gemini: E. Sarcophagi”