If Pizza Margherita is the gold standard of pizza, is it possible to make it in your home oven?

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!”

I don’t know who peed on his cheese pizza.

But he was almost always annoyed and combative right out of the gate. And the fundamental problem with his argument, besides being unnecessary, is yes—the cheese pizza is a barometer.
 
And even more important than the cheese pizza is its precursor, the Pizza Margherita.

Margherita is like the nascent cheese pizza. It’s the minimalist’s cheese pizza.

It’s the original cheese pizza before cheese pizza became a New York-style extra-large cliché with low-moisture mozzarella and a heavily seasoned sauce.

If you don't know, this is a pizza with just tomatoes and salt, fresh mozzarella cheese, fresh basil, and a drizzle of olive oil. 

How hard could it be? Well...
 
I’ve had several pizzamakers tell me things like Margherita is “the gold standard,” the “mother of all pizzas,” and “the barometer of how good a pizzamaker someone is.”
 
I also readily admit, Margherita is not my favorite pizza.
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And if Margherita is not your favorite pizza, maybe that’s because, like me, you’re not trying hard enough to care.
 
Not that I'm suggesting you're apathetic. There's only so much bandwidth for caring, especially when your government is shut down and every new headline is another sensation-bomb of a political explosion that makes you feel as if real life has been reduced to an ongoing series of Roy Lichtenstein paintings. (Oh, Brad. WHAAM!)

But I do believe Margherita is the essential pizza.
 
When a pizzamaker shares a Margherita that makes me go, “Heeeey!” in a fluctuating three-tone monosyllable, you know it’s a pizza that matters.
 
I’ve interviewed several pizzamakers, and there’s a consensus that Margherita is a measure of one’s worth as a pizzamaker. The simple reason is its simplicity.

 
Margherita requires that your crust, tomatoes, cheese, basil and olive oil all be good enough to make the pizza stand up on its own hind legs and bark mightily without help from any other lowly topping.
 
Let’s face it, you could put sauce, cheese and extra pepperoni onto a freshly baked size 10 penny loafer and people would scarf it down as long as it was still hot.
 
Pepperoni and cheese is almost like a universal solvent. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel—no, it’s like shooting pepperoni in a barrel.
 
Or throwing pepperoni at fish in a barrel, which is less messy.
 
Strategically charred pepperoni on melted cheese has a very high “Gimme that” quotient. That spiced up Italian-ish cased meat product has enough salt and fat and pork going on that it just works. It’s the Philosopher’s Stone of food products, turning an otherwise leaden pizza into a disc of gold.
 
But a pizza Margherita requires more of the pizzamaker—and even of the pizza eater. The pizza maker needs to understand why and how to raise the bar. The pizza eater has to understand why it matters.

 
Or screw it. Just go grab a slab from your favorite New York slice joint. Whatever makes you happy. But you're likely here for the same reason so many are: you're a pizza seeker. 

I realized recently I have never taken Margherita seriously as a pizza maker. Over the last few days, I’ve been trying a little harder, following more rigid guidelines about how to make the proper pie.

In other words, I'm doing what I normally do: making the mistakes so you don't have to. Like the one below. 

ABOVE: One of my recent Margherita missteps which, as you already know, was eaten anyway because how bad could it be? It's pizza. 


I plan to share the results of my effort as a recipe for you in a forthcoming Saturday Afternoon Pizza Post.
 
Sadly, that day is not today. I'm still working on it. 

And by the time you see this missive, I will be in the car with my Director of Photography, Steve Mims and my Executive Producer, The Fabulous Honey Parker, driving to that unlikely place known as the North Mississippi Pizza Crescent (which has become world famous since I named it an hour ago) to begin shooting our documentary film, Little Miss Margherita: A Misunderstood Pizza in a Misunderstood Place.
 
We’re going to be gone four days. We’re going to begin rolling camera this evening and eat a lot of excellent pizza.

I also suspect we’re going to have a heck of a lot of fun.

And when it's released, so will you. 
 
Until then, more Margherita for you and your home oven are soon to come.

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I live in a house full of pizza. There is so much pizza coming from my home oven that we finally had to enact a moratorium while we catch our breaths and eat a few carrots. Would you like to be so prolific with pizza? My weird little award-winning book is one way to make it so. It's less a cookbook than an entertaining guidebook about how to get from zero to pizza using the oven you already have. Besides learning to make great pizza, there’s not much else you can do with it. In fact, you can’t even use it to level a table leg if you buy the Kindle edition (which is less expensive than the print editions and has links to instructional videos and printable kitchen worksheets). To learn more about Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have, click here. ​