 Seems I’ve been repairing my pizza all wrong. Maybe you have, too. Hard to believe this tiny homemade pizza tip is coming to you from The Great Grand Perennial Palace Of Pizza known as the Las Vegas Convention Center. The tip is simple genius, it’s one of the single most useful snippets of pizzamaking intel ever, and I had to share it. Backstory: I’m in Vegas at the 41st International Pizza Expo. That’s the trade show for all things pizza. As someone once said to me, “There’s a trade show for pizza?” I replied that it’s a $65-billion a year industry. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a trade show for that. But using this miniscule bit of pizza wisdom I’m about to share is free, invaluable, and eminently useful in making a pizza at home. If you’ve ever felt the despair of tearing a hole in your pizza dough, you’re going to love this.
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 “Pineapple On Pizza.” That could be a syrupy love song. Or a punk protest song. Or both. Is there any more discordant and divisive topic around pizza than this intense and pointless debate? But get ready. I have a controversial opinion of equal pointlessness that you will not care about. Our beloved tomato, that key pizza ingredient for the contemporary masses, was once the pineapple of its time. The history of the tomato in European cuisine is well known: brought to Europe from South America in the 1500s, nobody would eat it. Ever. The tomato was primarily a decorative plant. That lasted for about 200 years because the tomato was “known” to be dangerous. To borrow a quote from the Neapolitan historian, Antonio Mottozzi (author of Inventing The Pizzeria), “it had been long believed to be poisonous (not to mention an aphrodisiac). These were twin reasons for banning the tomato.”  Is it possible to get too fussy about flour for homemade pizza dough? I ask this as a guy who’s fussy about the flour for his homemade pizza dough. Is there a point of diminishing returns that matters only to the person instigating the flour fuss? Will anybody on the receiving end of the homemade pizza ever be able to tell the difference? Or even care? Since a lot of newbies ask me for advice about flour (among other things), I thought we’d perform a little experiment. We held a flour showdown between four brands of that fabled flour of pizza perfection, “00” pizza flour. The results may surprise you. Or you may just not care. (See? Already, the apathy begins. Wait until you taste the pizza!)  Here at Free The Pizza, we are dedicated to the idea of making great pizza whenever you want with the oven you already have. It’s kind of a pizza liberation movement, freeing you from the tyranny of takeout or investing in tiny, cruel ovens. Sometimes, we’re offering newbie advice. Other times, we’re ranting on the state of pizza as we know it. Here and there, a possibly apocryphal history lesson. And once in a while, we’re digressing into a wild space having little to do with pizza. For instance, today was going to be a joyous screed about my brand new pizza shoes. Really. Special new shoes for making pizza. (But I’m still using my old pizza helmet.) Then, after sledding downhill on the routine wildcat excitement of this morning’s scintillating news headlines, we at Free The Pizza have a new goal: We want to be part of the Bread & Circuses of our time.  Have you been hoping to make pizza? Do you live and die by the recipe as written? I have some troubling news. It may make you recede to a corner, assume the fetal position and rock: pizza recipes are a moving target. Pizza recipes do not always work as you hope. You may get frustrated. You will make mistakes. You will cry—unless you are like me and you lack tear ducts and are genetically stoic. If you want to learn to make great pizza, a recipe is a good guide to help get you started. But it’s a guide only. Pizza is practice. Learning to make great pizza as a matter of routine means you have to be willing to make decisions—and mistakes. You also get to own those mistakes. That’s the bad news. The good news is, those mistakes are usually edible and enjoyable enough. |
AuthorBlaine Parker is the award-winning author of the bestselling, unusual and amusing how-to pizza book, Free The Pizza. Also known as The Pizza Geek and "Hey, Pizza Man!", Blaine is fanatical about the idea that true, pro-quality pizza can be made at home. His home. Your home. Anyone's home. After 20 years of honing his craft and making pizza in standard consumer ovens across the nation, he's sharing what he's learned with home cooks like you. Are you ready to pizza? Archives
March 2025
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