An underground pizza joint started by a guitar-playing pizzaiolo who teaches himself how to sling pies and becomes a media darling--all from the comfort of his own home. (You can do it, too!)

2/25/2023

This is the Elusive Butterfly of pizza stories that has it all. There’s an anonymous pizzaiolo, a hard-to-find location, an LA Times #1 rating, and that fabled west-coast snow leopard of pizza: a legit New Jersey slice in the City Of Angels, a trendy, tinselized town where a decent pizza fears to tread.

(I lived in Los Angeles for about two decades, and it was the land of pizza disappointment. Everybody was still residually agog enough over celebrity chefs cranking out small pizzas dotted with smoky fish, stinky cheese and carpet tacks that they didn't really care about the crust beneath the smoky fish, stinky cheese and carpet tacks. Somebody turned that pizza model into a chain of pizza joints and the rest is global pizza history. Things are somewhat better now. But I digress.)

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Modernist Pizza pulls back the curtain on the mysteries of cheese and what it means to your flat little world of pizza-making (Part 1)

2/22/2023

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The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 9, "Cheese," Part I
(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)

Modernist Pizza
Written by Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya
Published by The Cooking Lab; First edition, October 19, 2021
Hardcover: ‎ 1708 pages, 32.7 pounds, 13.78 x 10.24 x 15.94 inches
List Price: $425.00
Amazon discount price as of 03/08/23: $294.99

Does the phrase “ooey-gooey” make you want to turn the page? Maybe it’s just me. But the Modernistas went there. It’s at the very beginning of Volume 2, Chapter 9, the chapter on Cheese.

They first acknowledge that the only cheese-less pizza most people expect is Pizza Marinara. They then say that people generally expect cheese. And finally, they reference the many advertising images of “ooey-gooey cheese.” Ack.

I guess this confirms that while Mhyrvold & Migoya are science-based thinkers, they also live in the real world. Personally, I’ve tried to avoid the phrase “ooey-gooey” for my entire career as a writer. This might be the first time I’ve ever even committed it to print. That said, I have not tried to avoid cheese in any way. And this is a head-first dive into cheesy delights.

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Danger, danger, pizzamaker! The single biggest mistake when making pizza at home? Listening to someone like me.

2/18/2023

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“No self-respecting Neapolitan pizzaiolo would ever do it that way.”

“Pizza sauce should NEVER be cooked!”

“Use parchment paper!”

Here’s a word of advice: Be wary of any advice you get from the Toxic Global Opinionsphere of PizzaNet.

Why should you take my advice on that? Maybe you shouldn’t. Just because I’ve written an award-winning, #1 bestselling book on pizza making and it’s available at Amazon, it doesn’t mean I actually know anything about making pizza. (It’s true. The first two sentences of the book are, “I am not a professional chef. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”)

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The Midweek Modernist Pizza Report: From jamming it in a can to saucing it up, hello tomato (and beyond)! Part 3

2/14/2023

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The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 8, "Sauce," Part III
(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)

Getting beyond the tomato! Yes, I know. It’s hard. For me, a non-red pizza is a challenging thing, with the occasional exception of a white clam pizza.

But there are lots of people out there who like a white pizza or a green pizza. My ever-suffering pizza-widow wife among them. So maybe this part of Modernist Pizza can bring solace and inspiration.

Let the experiments begin! The Modernistas have worked up an alternative way of making béchamel. White sauces for pizza typically use flour as a thickener, “which can dilute the flavor and leave an unpleasant goopy texture in the baked pizza.”

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Making pizza at home with one of the single best and easiest ways to make your family say, "Wow!"

2/11/2023

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I was recently reminded of the power of this simple ingredient. We’d thrown a wildcard NY-pizza party for 10. If you’ve read the story about that event, you know that people’s heads exploded.

Whenever I use this ingredient, one refrain is, “I’ve never tasted pizza like this before!” A friend who’s had my pizza twice now says, “Oh, this will ruin you for any other pizza.”

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The Midweek Modernist Pizza Report: From jamming it in a can to saucing it up, hello tomato (and beyond)! Part 2

2/8/2023

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The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 8, "Sauce," Part II
(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)

Now, about those canned tomatoes. Unsurprisingly, some strains of tomato have been developed to withstand the rigors of machine picking for canning. Says Modernist Pizza, “The thicker the flesh, the fewer seeds a tomato will have, and the seeds, along the jellylike membrane that envelops the seeds (called the parenchyma), are where the flavor resides.” Yay, parenchyma!

There’s also a comprehensive discussion of how tomatoes are canned. What’s good is tomatoes bred for processing are harvested at the full-ripe stage, which is their most flavorful. Less good is that some processors adjust flavor with additives, like sugar, salt or citric acid. The Modernistas prefer tomatoes without the additives.

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Unleashing New York pizza in the Mountain West, fear of failure, and the otherworldly magnetism of The Homemade Pizza Effect

2/5/2023

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It’s Sunday afternoon. Why is your “Saturday Afternoon Pizza Post” coming out on a Sunday?

Because your pizza geek was overwhelmed this week. There’s also a takeaway from the result of that overwhelm that was unanticipated—and underscores the unique, otherworldly magnetism of Homemade Pizza Effect.

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The Midweek Modernist Pizza Report: From jamming it in a can to saucing it up, hello tomato (and beyond)! Part 1

2/1/2023

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The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 8, "Sauce," Part I
(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)

“To many, if it doesn’t have some kind of sauce on top, it’s probably not pizza.” Thus begins the chapter of Modernist Pizza that might seem innocuous. Only after you dive in is it clear just how much the global tomato crop means to life, the universe and pizza.

The first page of Volume 2, Chapter 8, “Sauce,” sets us up for the importance of tomatoes—while simultaneously dashing any requirement for tomatoes.

Sauces can be green or white, made of cream or cheese, egg, stock, or even soup. Yes, soup. And I admit, while I’ve never used soup for pizza, I have made pizzas with leftover gumbo and leftover etouffée. Soup-adjacent sauces, if you will. Seems my efforts fit right into the Modernist paradigm. (Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn and all that…)

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Saturday Afternoon Pizza Posts

The Homemade Pizza Blog At Free The Pizza

An underground pizza joint started by a guitar-playing pizzaiolo who teaches himself how to sling pies and becomes a media darling--all from the comfort of his own home. (You can do it, too!)

Modernist Pizza pulls back the curtain on the mysteries of cheese and what it means to your flat little world of pizza-making (Part 1)

The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 9, "Cheese," Part I
(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)

Danger, danger, pizzamaker! The single biggest mistake when making pizza at home? Listening to someone like me.

The Midweek Modernist Pizza Report: From jamming it in a can to saucing it up, hello tomato (and beyond)! Part 3

The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 8, "Sauce," Part III
(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)

Making pizza at home with one of the single best and easiest ways to make your family say, "Wow!"

The Midweek Modernist Pizza Report: From jamming it in a can to saucing it up, hello tomato (and beyond)! Part 2

The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 8, "Sauce," Part II
(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)

Unleashing New York pizza in the Mountain West, fear of failure, and the otherworldly magnetism of The Homemade Pizza Effect

The Midweek Modernist Pizza Report: From jamming it in a can to saucing it up, hello tomato (and beyond)! Part 1

The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 8, "Sauce," Part I
(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)

Author

Archives

Categories

​Saturday Afternoon Pizza Posts

The Homemade Pizza Blog At Free The Pizza

The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 9, "Cheese," Part I​(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)

The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 8, "Sauce," Part III​(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)

The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 8, "Sauce," Part II​(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)

The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 8, "Sauce," Part I​(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)

Author

Archives

Categories

Saturday Afternoon Pizza Posts

The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 9, "Cheese," Part I
(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)

The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 8, "Sauce," Part III
(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)

The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 8, "Sauce," Part II
(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)

The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 8, "Sauce," Part I
(To see the entire 50,000-word review, click here.)