 I am not a food pusher. But during a pizza night at our house, there comes that moment where I have to say, "Ya you know, I’ve got one doughball left.” There’s a lot of, “Oh, I’m full” and “No, I can’t.” But as happened last night, there’s usually one enthusiastic participant who says, “Yes, I will” And yes, we did. So I made that pizza, which we’re about to discuss. That’s because I knew my wife, who insisted that she could not eat any more, would take a bite of that pizza, look at me, and say, “Damn you.” She knows: this is The Simplest Pizza, yet is always a crowd pleaser because it sings a siren song of cheese. Despite such simplicity, it’s amazing at how much it can make you look like a genius. This is the magic pizza you want to know. It wins friends and influences people. It might even negotiate a better salary for you.
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 It seemed like a simple stunt. Why would it haunt me? At the end of 2023, I made a lightning-strike visit to Portland, Oregon—proclaimed by the globe-trotting pizza eaters at Modernist Pizza as the nation’s number-one pizza city. With a list informed by the Modernist Pizza crew’s favorite pizzerias, I hit five pizza joints in two days and wrote about the experience. In writing that story, I made a rather benign comment about Ken’s Artisan Pizza. Fifteen months later, the lesson is loud and clear: Be careful what you say on the interwebs. It can boomerang. It can come at you like Marley's Ghost carrying a pizza delivery bag--and who knows what's really inside?  Are you a fan of hot, hot peppers? As a home pizzamaker, you may not be. Or maybe you love hot peppers. But often, you're serving folks who are less adventurous. (I will refrain from calling them weenies. Sometimes, they lack proper conditioning. Or they're legitimately challenged by things such as Irish heritage. Or they're infants. Even the children of India aren't eating full-on, tongue-ripping vindaloo until age 6.) For capsicum-reluctant diners, cooking fired-up dishes—including certain arrabiata or “angry” pizzas—is challenging. One guy I know breaks out into a crazy sweat just eating a taco salad at the diner--a dish so pedestrian and benign, you have to wonder if it contains any capsaicin at all. But for some of these people so challenged (and for us!) I've started using an excellent midpoint pepper product with good flavor, enough heat to make itself known, and which is tolerable and enjoyable even for some of our pepper-fearful friends. Hailing from Turkey, it's common in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine. I feel a little like it's the lost note on the hot pepper musical scale. It's called the Aleppo pepper and it is so very tasty. Dude, it's just pizza. But can a pizzaiolo from New Jersey be an object lesson in finding the joy?4/5/2025  I saw an extraordinary thing at Pizza Expo in Las Vegas. Dan Richer of Razza, considered by some as the best pizzeria in the nation, was at the Ooni ovens booth demonstrating their new Halo Pro spiral mixer. It was arguably a glimpse at unbridled joy in the making of pizza dough. I know that a lot of people, newbies especially, approach pizza dough with trepidation. Some even regard dough as the enemy. Perhaps the requirement to knead dough gets the relationship off on the wrong foot. The idea of having to force water and flour to cooperate could be perceived as a kind of conflicted relationship fraught with animosity. I’ve said it before. Saying it again: pizza dough is your friend. And watching Dan Richer in action was an object lesson in feeling the joy that anyone making pizza could take to heart.  When it comes to my personal pizzamaking proclivities, I am the home oven guy. Just look at the subtitle of my award-winning, bestselling, self-aggrandizing book, Free The Pizza. It’s all right there: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have. I say this because learning pizza in your big home oven is so much easier and forgiving than teaching yourself pizza while also teaching yourself how to use some no-name company’s tiny no-name oven that was engineered for doing exactly one thing well: burning the hair off your knuckles. (I have one of those no-name ovens. I also have an Ooni. The difference is night and day. If you're going to buy a portable oven, Ooni is worth considering.) If you feel you’ve outgrown your regular home oven, and you’re ready for a big home pizza oven, I recommend getting the biggest pizza oven you can justify. Just buy a big oven. After 20+ years of pizzamaking, it’s my opinion that a big oven will make you much happier over the long term. Fewer burnt knuckles and fewer horrific pizza-like blobs hurled into the back yard. For this exercise, I did some oven shopping on your behalf at Pizza Expo in Las Vegas. I talked to a few people who know a thing or two about bigger ovens. I was going to talk about the biggest ovens from Ooni and Gozney, and then changed my mind. We'll talk about them later in other blog posts. Instead, we're going BIG big. |
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
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