 This holiday, do you want to give a pizza gift that inspires genuine awe?
This is my annual holiday harangue to demonstrate the over-the-top, pizza-gift supremacy of a thick, heavy, red steel-encased book of all things pizza for the pizza geek in your life. It dashes myths! It confirms beliefs! It opens new doors! And in a very small but significant way, for the price of a tiny, cruel oven, this book affirms that the home oven is a proper tool for making the kind of pizza many of us want to make.
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Thanksgiving leftovers transformation: Your old mashed potatoes get a glamorous new life on pizza.11/29/2025  Two years ago on Thanksgiving Saturday, I swore an oath I would never make a Thanksgiving Leftovers Pizza again. The pizza I’d made with all the leftovers was so troubling, I had problems sleeping until Christmas. Well, such oath swearing is meant to be violated. And yes, I’ve committed that violation—but to a much more successful degree this time. Part of the reason is I’ve taken inspiration from a popular New Haven pizza and made my own version of it using Thanksgiving leftovers and some bonus toppings. I decided to try this because the New Haven version (made at a famous joint called BAR) is my godfather's favorite pizza. His name is Al, and since Al is both smarter and taller than I am, and went to Yale and still lives close enough to eat New Haven pizza with frightening regularity, it seemed a no-brainer to take a stab at this. Get ready to sink your teeth into what sounds like a really odd concoction: the first ever Free The Pizza Mashed Potatoes, Gravy & Bacon Bonanza!  There is so much battle being waged around pizza authenticity and veracity. Angry people are pumping so much wasted energy into arguments that are inflated beyond their importance. If people would only put that energy into making pizza—or even understanding it—we would be Pizza Nation. How cool would that be? Or excessive, perhaps. Anyway....  Greetings from the Delta SkyClub at MSY--the airport formally known as Louis B. Armstrong International in New Orleans. It’s a small club, but the gumbo is really good. Plus, Emeril just came through, which I’m taking as a good omen. This week’s Saturday Afternoon Pizza Post is not any kind of pizzamaking tip. Nor is it another crazy piece of pizza metaphysics, or a random rant about misguided anchovy hate. It’s just a postcard from the road. We're heading into round two of rolling cameras for our movie, Little Miss Margherita: A Misunderstood Pizza In A Misunderstood Place. You’d enjoy the pizza people were talking to on this swing through New York and North Carolina. They’re some of the bounciest, most entertaining pizza geeks you’d ever want to meet.  So, if you’re like me and you suddenly find yourself traveling to Texas, you already know this: The first thing to be asking yourself is, “Where is the great pizza?” Good pizza has become abundant and ubiquitous—even in the beef barbecue state. And the first thing I did when preparing for this trip is open Google Maps, zero in on our little Lone Star State town of destination, and say to Alphabet Empire's Genie of Geography, “Pizza!” Color me shocked. Far more choices than even I expected. But then again, it’s Texas. Even the amount of pizza per capita is huge. And now: How to choose?  Sometimes, you just have to try something that’s a little bit stupid. Yesterday I was thinking, I really miss those flavors I was peddling at the pizza event. Specifically, I’d made a pile of New York-style pizzas for the Fabulous Honey Parker’s book launch event at a local club. Her new vampire comedy in the Sugar Bernstein vampire van-life series is out, she had a book signing, there was a costume contest, and I made pile of pies that included vampire-repellent pizza (“Heavy on the garlic, ma!”). I also made some traditional cheese pizzas for those more inclined to risk vampire visitation.  Today is a special day. This edition of your Saturday Afternoon Pizza Post is both mercifully short and intensely useful. So much so, in fact, that your head will spin off its carriage bolt and land squarely in a bowl of pizza sauce. Spin! Splash! Sploot! Mop! If you’re a confirmed bachelor, you’ll find this tip to be genius. If you’re an accomplished domestic engineering professional, you might wonder what’s wrong with me. Why did it take me over 20 years of making pizza to figure out this self-evident tidbit?  Nobody wants to read a pizza story that talks about The Red Beans And Rice Epiphany. Feel free to leave now. Reading this one is seven minutes you’ll never get back. It’s easy for me to say you start making better pizza when you make a conscious decision to own it. But…what does that even mean? Welcome back to the purpose and intent paradigm. You don’t have to be a professional or some kind of high-level cook. All you require is to engage in the process—something that so many people fail to do with their cooking. Here now, I confess some of my sins.  We’ve just spent several days pointing cameras at pizzamakers who are stretching dough and topping it with only tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, fresh, basil, salt and olive oil. The resulting footage is glorious. Behold: the simple joy of Pizza Margherita. And as one pizzamaker put it during the interview: Margherita is simple, but it’s not easy. That said, you can make a Pizza Margherita of your own—the wrong way, even—and you can love the result. We’re going to talk about how in just a moment. If Pizza Margherita is the gold standard of pizza, is it possible to make it in your home oven?10/4/2025  What is a pizza Margherita really, and should you be making it yourself? There used to be a group in Pizza Social that I stayed with longer than I needed to. The reason I stayed for so long is simple: they were fun (mostly) and there were no trolls--with one exception. There was this one guy who would periodically come out of the woodwork to pick a fight. His favorite fight was: “All you guys who say you judge a pizzeria on their cheese pizza, that’s just BS. If their killer pie is something else with toppings on it, then that’s how you should judge it! You’re full of crap!”  Yes, it sounds like yet another spellbinding tale from The Sherlock Holmes Baking Mystery Series. The good news is, the answer to the mystery is an important tip for every home pizza maker. It was a Friday morning. I was at my desk, pretending to craft the Saturday Morning Pizza Post when my cell phone chimed, letting me know there was pizza distraction afoot. My brother-in-law, who is a disciple of the fermented arts, sent a photo of his latest incarnation of living and metaphorically breathing pizza dough. The photo was of two identical glass containers with plastic lids sitting on a kitchen counter. Inside one was a civilized ball of pizza dough. Inside the other container was the dough ball that ate Cincinnati. It was had pushed itself up against the glass and was attempting to climb out of the container and attack the camera. It was a veritable Roger Corman kitchen horror movie in the making.  So I’m in the chip shop surrounded by the sounds of bubbling oil. Looking at the menu, listed below all the fish & chips and burger & chips and other proteins & chips, I see… Pizza. No chips. But still. Pizza? In a chip shop? What’s the most surprising and ridiculous pizza order you’ve ever placed? This was mine. I just didn’t know it yet.  The following is an edited rerun of a story from December 2022. This is an odd little story. Well, the story isn’t exactly a story. The narrative thread isn’t exactly contiguous. And the place it goes isn’t anything either you or I are anticipating.
We’ve been driving through the Mississippi Delta, land of cotton and hot tamales. (Didn’t know the hot tamale is a Mississippi invention, didja? That’s a whole other story about ethnic food reinvention...) We've made it into the North Mississippi hill country, and the town here is Sardis, population between 1,700 and 2,000, depending upon whom you believe. I’m talking to an award-winning, nationally recognized pizzaiolo about ovens—or rather, how pizza is not about the oven, but about understanding pizza. You might find yourself gleaning some tips about making pizza at home.  John T. Edge sent me an email, and I don’t even know the guy. He’s actually sent me several emails if you count all his patient replies to my ongoing inane questions about pizza in Mississippi. Like, “Do you have any idea why Mississippians are so enamored of squirting French dressing all over their pizza?” (He does not have any idea. This dynamic is apparently not even a blip on his radar.) But really, to whom else can one pose such questions? Nobody writes about the history of Southern cuisine with even a scant semblance of insight the way James Beard Award-winning John T. Edge writes about it. And he has a new book coming out, and you might like an autographed copy.  We’re making a movie about pizza Margherita. Really. We’ve been developing this project for a couple of months. It started as a silly road trip while my wife was out of town and unable to object. It has snowballed into a documentary short involving various pizza luminaries. And my wife, the award-winning Fabulous Honey Parker of V-Life and Careful-ish fame, is the Executive Producer. (She is invaluable.) We also just enlisted our Director of Photography, a 40-year filmmaking veteran with a killer track record. And we now have shoot dates lined up with some famous peeps In that pizza mecca known as (DRUM ROLL)... North Mississippi.  It’s early. The gray light of pre-dawn beckons. I could and should do a brisk, 30-minute walk through the neighborhood. I step out into the near-dark on the back porch and stare down the stump-tail cat that’s been hanging around the yard. He splits. There’s a wet blat of a flop drop of rain onto my scalp. The sky is getting ready to open. Inside! Quickly! To the leftovers! I’m often up at 5 AM, though not usually eating breakfast until the birds are singing songs of cheap and easy availability. Sometimes, however, you just gotta be and do in a dark kitchen, rain be damned. A crunchy, savory, cheesy pizza pleasure: Easy to make. Easy to love. No special equipment required.8/23/2025  How would you like to test a deceptively simple pan pizza recipe from my forthcoming book, The Lazy Way To Pizza? It is truly easy fantastic-ish. A little backstory. You may have heard this before, but like the song says: “It’s an old tale from way back when and we’re gonna sing it, we’re gonna sing it again.” Have you ever lost a pizza to time? No, this is not the Proustian question about whether you remember a shell-shaped pizza fed to you by your invalid aunt long ago in an Italian galaxy far, far away. This is about missing a real pizza, right here, right now. And when it comes to making this pizza, the pizza that I'm talking about missing, it may be the ultimate lazy person‘s pizza.  Random Slice Wednesday is made for mayhem like this. We’re not just talking mess in the kitchen. We’re talking spectacular splatter, abstract-expressionist-in-brown, action-painting art mess. You see, I was busy being “smart.” A couple of years ago I shocked my wife by bringing a cordless power drill into the kitchen. It was all about the peanut butter.  I was never interested in making a Neapolitan pizza. I know: heresy. Right? When I began making pizza, I didn’t even really know what Neapolitan pizza was. I grew up on a Southern Connecticut version of New York-style pizza. And one of my favorite pizzas was from the counter for Caruso’s Pizza in the old Grand Central Station. That was before they turned Grand Central into a food court surrounded by dozens of trains rushing for the suburbs.  The Saturday Afternoon Pizza Post is taking a break this week. We are on the road and making things happen. By the time this missive hits your inbox, the Fabulous Honey Parker and I will be seated at what is ostensibly the best pizzeria in the nation. There will be a full report on that experience and whether you need to drop everything right away and buy a plane ticket to points east. In the meantime, just a little pizza tip: if you’ve never tried the cheese known as Stracciatella, give it a shot. I’ve been chasing Stracciatella for months. I can’t find it in the grocery desert I call home. |
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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