In a world that appears so fragile, with so much anger and self-absorption, it is pizza that keeps me grounded
Even if you do your best to ignore the news, as I try to do, it’s hard to escape the feeling that we seem to be descending into madness on a planetary scale, at an accelerated rate. Our problems seem insurmountable — so large and complex that nothing we do on an individual level could possibly have an ounce of effect. Apathy seems like an entirely rational response, but that way leads to even greater darkness. Might as well end it all if there’s no hope of it ever getting any better, so we have no choice but to pursue hope.
My own journey has been to focus on simple pleasures, particularly those I can share with my family and others I care about. The ancient Greeks, who believed in many varieties of love, had a name for this. There was Eros, the romantic ideal, or Philia, the love of friendship, and even Philautia, which is self-love, but the highest form was known as Agape, a profound and unconditional love, a selfless love. What the early Christians called the love of God.
As John Lennon once said, “Love is the answer, and you know that for sure.”
Love is the answer and you know that for sure.
I was reading an article this morning by Talia Levin in which she rhapsodizes so poetically about the joys and comforts of the humble grilled cheese sandwich that I was moved to tears, along with a bit of drool. It was called “Notable Sandwiches #75: Grilled Cheese,” and while there was no explanation as to why this exalted bit of gooey fat and caramelized, starchy goodness had only merited 75th, I found the dissertation quite intoxicating.
“In this world so full of slaughter and fire,” she writes, “where doubt and monstrosity abound, this much is clear to me: the grilled cheese is a small and perfect thing.”
I, too, am a great fan of this simple pleasure, popularized in the early part of the 20th century due to the introduction of inexpensive sliced bread and processed cheese. It really hit its stride during WWII when Navy cooks began making them for soldiers, directly out of the official Navy cookbook. The open-faced version was known as a “Cheese Dream,” and the Brits called them “Cheese Toasties,” but the grilled cheese took the West by storm.
In this world so full of slaughter and fire, where doubt and monstrosity abound, this much is clear to me: the grilled cheese is a small and perfect thing.
No matter how fancy or plain, this little miracle consists of two pieces of bread, a few slices of soft cheese, and either butter or mayo spread on the outside for texture and flavor, then cooked on a flattop until the crust is lightly browned and the cheese is thoroughly melted. Despite the name, there is no grilling involved, but there might not be a simpler gift of joy and decadence in Western culture. To this day, I’ll never turn down a grilled cheese if my wife (or anyone else) offers it. It’s like asking a cocaine addict if they’d like a bump. Well, duh.
The author claimed to be agnostic when it came to grilled cheese; whether you preferred Wonder, or 12-grain peasant bread, Kraft slices, or aged cheddar, heated in a pan or seared with an acetylene torch, it mattered not to her.
“You have composed something perfect with your own hands,” she wrote. “You have made something that will warm and satisfy you. You have, for a small moment, partaken of the act of creation that grants the human animal its sliver of divinity. You have done so by means of the grilled cheese sandwich.”
The one thing that comes close, for me, and is equally revered by nearly every other person on the planet who has ever tried it, is pizza. It’s not as simple to procure or as easy to make as a grilled cheese, but it stands alone as a symbol of all that is good in the world, a perfect combination of flavors and textures delivered humbly and simply. Another of life’s simple pleasures that can sometimes make life seem worth living.
Originally from Naples, but by way of the New World — which introduced tomatoes to the Italians in the first place — Neapolitan pizza is the undisputed OG. However, it was New York that established pizza as a staple around the world, and the reason for its prevalence and predominance in modern culture. I’ve had decent pizza all over the world, from Singapore and Moscow to Düsseldorf and Buenos Aires.
From wood-fired to gas ovens, fresh mozzarella made from buffalo milk to low-moisture, shredded cow’s milk, simple sauce to spiced, and even a difference in flour, the small Neapolitan pizzas, eaten with a knife and fork by Italian peasants, became the NY slice, eaten on the go by working-class Americans.
The wood-fired Italian ovens reach temperatures of 1000ºF and produce a fluffy, chewy crust with the fresh mozzarella melting quickly in the high heat, whereas the gas-powered ovens in NY operate at lower temperatures and use shredded low-moisture cheese that can withstand the longer cooking times. In addition, the wheat traditionally used in America, especially in the mid to late 20th century, produced a thinner, crispier crust that could support heavier toppings. They are both outstanding, representing distant cousins of the same bloodline, each delicious and unique in its own way.
I’ve been making pizza for nearly 30 years now, although it wasn’t until 2021 that I broke the code on making truly transcendent pies. I don’t remember precisely what inspired me, but I bought an extra-large ⅜” pizza steel to replace the old ceramic stone ones I’d been using for years, and then I discovered “00” Italian flour. I began experimenting with higher hydration doughs, and the combination of these three factors completely transformed my pizza game.
Until I looked it up, I would have guessed that this happened ten years ago, but it was just half that, which means for two and a half decades, I was making pretty mediocre pizza, which is why I once thought Boboli’s (commercially available pre-made pizza crusts) weren’t all that bad.
It didn’t happen all at once, but I must have done some reading that led me to discover that heavy steel was a much better conductor of heat, especially in a home oven that usually caps out at 500ºF, as well as the existence of super fine Italian flour, used for making pastas, pastries, and, low and behold, Neapolitan pizza.
I suspect it all began with a trip to Brooklyn with my wife, and being blown away that pizza could actually be that good. It was heavenly and demonic at the same time. A gift from God, you would travel to hell and back to obtain. I began looking into buying an outdoor wood-fired pizza oven, then sobered up and decided I should start with upgrading what I had. Surprisingly, it worked.
It’s rare that you can replicate what is possible in a commercial kitchen at home, and while I am not making wood-fired pizzas, I’d put my pies up against almost anyone’s. I don’t get that same char, and there’s not the same smoky complexity, but otherwise, it’s pretty fucking good.
Pizza is another of life’s simple pleasures that can sometimes make life seem worth living.
I do have a few secret ingredients that I’ve added over the years; the most obvious is that I add natural smoke flavoring to the extra-virgin olive oil I spread on the outer crust before sprinkling it with kosher salt. This gives it the salty-smoky flavor I crave. The other is a flavoring additive I buy from King Arthur’s and add to the dough before mixing. I use store-bought sauce, which I think works perfectly fine, despite enthusiasts finding the very idea to be heresy, and then a combination of shredded low-moisture and fresh mozzarella.
Once cooked, I finish it with freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and some combination of fresh basil, hot honey, olive oil, smoked hot pepper flakes, and fresh ground black pepper. I don’t tend to do a lot of toppings, but a few of our favorites are pickled peppers such as jalapeños or pepperoncini, pepperoni or soppressata, and my wife’s personal favorite, arugula with a balsamic glaze drizzle. I have been known to throw together a BBQ chicken pizza for the grandkids, but the most popular request is plain.
Not only is my pizza undeniably good, but I truly enjoy making it. I love the entire process, from mixing the dough to arranging my mise en place, and look forward to it with an earnestness that borders on childlike obsession. I never assume perfection, but I am in constant pursuit of it, so I’m always tinkering. Since the variables are often in flux, I never quite know how it will turn out, but my Overton window of quality has narrowed to a place where even the pizzas that don’t turn out exactly as planned are still pretty damn good.
Like many things in life, my philosophy is based on achieving a balance of flavors. Not too much of anything. I found a canned sauce that has a fairly neutral, but fresh flavor with no added sugar, and I apply it sparingly. I employ a light touch on everything. It’s rarely true that if a little is good, a lot must be better. This is rarely, if ever, true, and my favorite example is when my sister in law made an apple pie years ago with so much nutmeg that it was inedible.
I have never understood anyone who orders extra cheese on their pizza, which is nothing more than pointless gluttony with zero upside in flavor or texture. More cheese adds nothing of substance, outside of weight. Just because you enjoy cheese doesn’t mean more is better. Good cooking is about balance. A light coating of sauce, a minimal covering of shredded cheese so that you can still see sauce throughout, and a few dollops of fresh mozzarella for that creamy goodness.
Just the right amount of everything.
More cheese adds nothing of substance, outside of weight.
There’s a Netflix series called Chef’s Table, and in 2022, they focused on pizza in a six-episode arc. The first episode featured Chris Bianco, a Bronx-born pizza chef out of Phoenix, Arizona, who began by making his own mozzarella before teaching himself to make pizza. That first episode was inspiring, but the rest were sort of the same story. It’s fun food porn, but it’s like buying a pizza cookbook. Once you learn to make the dough, the rest is just equipment, ingredients, and improvisation. You can put anything you want on a pizza, and most people feel free to do so, so I don’t see a lot of need for a cookbook or a television series.
I found Bianco’s story particularly interesting because he spent a lot of time perfecting the individual ingredients, everything from the custom blend of flour he developed after a lot of experimentation, to the craftsmen he partnered with to produce his mozzarella, and the farmers who grow his produce. He might very well have been the first to introduce me to the importance of flour, but I think he just reinforced the idea that ingredients matter.
Early in the episode, Ed Levine, the founder of Serious Eats, tells the story of how he spent a year traveling America and Italy, consuming a thousand slices of pizza in the process, and when he finished, he published a story proclaiming that the best pizza in the world was in Phoenix, Arizona. Not New York, Philly, or Naples. Phoenix. It seemed like a joke. The food critic at Vogue said, “You’re insane.”
“Go to Phoenix,” Ed told him. “Eat the pizza. Then talk to me.”
The critic called him from the airport on his return and said, “You were right.”
“Chris has this really abrasive exterior,” explains his wife, Mia. “He says fuck a lot and all those things, but he’s so, so sweet. He just wants to make people feel good, and that keeps him up at night.”
He just wants to make people feel good, and that keeps him up at night.
That’s a special drive and a different sort of chef than maybe what we’re used to seeing in our celebrity-obsessed culture. A guy from New York who moves to the desert and decides to make pizza. He wasn’t trying to win a third Michelin star with his hoity-toity approach to haute cuisine. He chose the lowly pizza and elevated it to the best in the world because he was obsessive about it.
I believe that an expression of love should always be our very best, and not just what we have left over. Chris’s approach is the definition of agape, a selfless dedication to the service of others, and I find that commendable, as well as inspiring.
In the past few weeks, I’ve gotten really into Jim Harrison, the poet, novelist, essayist, and celebrated gourmand, a larger-than-life American from Montana who dominated the literary scene and became famous, as much for his legendary appetites as for his literary accomplishments. If you know him at all, it’s probably for writing “Legends Of The Fall,” the 1979 novel that became a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Julia Ormond, and Aidan Quinn.
A mere twelve years before he died in 2016 at the age of 78, Jim and eleven other distinguished guests sat down to a thirty-seven-course meal in France, with thirteen wines, that lasted eleven hours. He published an essay in The New Yorker titled “A Really Big Lunch.”
At the end of the piece, Jim wrote, “My mother, a Swedish Lutheran, liked to ask her five children, ‘What have you accomplished today?’ If I’d told her, ‘I have eaten thirty-seven courses and drunk thirteen wines,’ I would have been cast into outer darkness. But then this was the Iron Mom, who also said, with a tiny smile, in reference to my life’s work, ‘You’ve made quite a living out of your fibs.’”
You’ve made quite a living out of your fibs.
One of Jim’s fervent beliefs was that for any artist to have a chance at making a lasting impression in life, one had to put the art before everything and everyone else. I think you could argue that he left quite a lot of wreckage in his wake, but he became the artist he set out to be, and he did it on his terms.
This has been a common ethos among the best artists and writers throughout recorded history. To a man or woman, they were often difficult, obsessed, passionate, and self-centered. The art, and the artists themselves, always came first. In truth, very few of them realized any financial or critical success while they were still alive, but the great ones were all a huge pain in the ass to everyone else around them while they walked the earth. Genius has a steep price.
I never went out of my way to be an asshole, but an asshole I often was, especially in my prime earning years. It wasn’t intentional or even conscious, but I was focused on creating something of value. I believed, rightly or wrongly, that my endless artistic expressions had to come first. Like Harrison, I’m sure I’d read that somewhere, and felt free to use it, if not openly, then as a justification for my ridiculous behavior. How was I ever going to be great if I didn’t put the work first? Isn’t that how it was done?
I still think that’s probably true. Greatness takes focus and sacrifice and is not always conducive to personal relationships, but since most artists don’t gain any recognition while they are alive, and history is rather hard on arrogant, selfish pricks, I’m not sure it’s worth it in the end. The Bible says, “For what shall it profit a man, should he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
It’s important that we understand what is important to us in the end, what we truly want our legacy to be. In life, as in cooking, we must find balance. Not too much of any one thing, but a balance of flavors that complement one another. Not everything is meant to be mixed or consumed at the same time, but collecting the best ingredients gives us the best chance for a meaningful and memorable meal. No one wants to eat alone, so that’s something to consider. A life worth sharing is a life worth living.
Tonight I made pizza, easily my wife’s favorite thing about me, and I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. At first, I thought she just might be pulling my leg or egging me on, but it’s been years now, and it seems genuine. We’ve been married almost thirty years, and she can’t keep a secret or hold a grudge. She’ll be the first one to tell me if something I’ve cooked is not her cup of tea. I’ve never even known her to care all that much about pizza, but she literally swoons over mine. I’ll take the compliment for what it is.
As I said, I delight in the process, but it’s a multi-step day that begins in the morning and ends with the cleanup after dinner. I take over the kitchen, and there are a lot of accoutrements. Dishes, brushes and sauces, peels and cutters, three kinds of cheeses, multiple spices and drizzles, fresh herbs and charcuterie. It smells wonderful and feels festive, but it’s not a small amount of work. The good thing is, I’ve been doing it so long that I don’t have to think about it much, and it doesn’t feel like work. Still, she is always appreciative and quite vocal about it.
She doesn’t actually follow my work all that much or show a lot of interest in my writing, so it feels good to be able to do something for her that makes her feel loved and appreciated. Tonight she told me she was thinking of hiring me out to parties of women, you know, so she could earn some extra spending money.
Now that’s love.
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