Is this pizza the way it should be? Learning the fine line between authentic and absurd.

Authenticity is all the rage! Forget the machine! Rage against the inauthentic. Especially the inauthentic pizza machine of Domino’s Papa John’s Pizza Hut et al! Rage unbridled!
 
So much rage. So little pizza. For 2025, I propose less rage, more pizza.
 
Pizza prevents rage. Think about it. Can you possibly rage when you’re eating a slice of pizza? No, you can’t. Fresh bread, melted cheese, savory, saucy tomato—it’s a little dopamine rush in the shape of a pie wedge. Rage is impossible. Pizza is joy. Perhaps even love.
 
And the only way to make that love more authentic is with a more authentic pizza.
 

So many people are making pizza at home these days. And so many claim their pizza is more authentic than your pizza. Or mine. “Look how authentic my pizza is. Your pizza is garbage. It’s not wood-fired. The only authentic pizza is wood-fired at 900 degrees and made with 00 flour and San Marzano tomatoes.”
 
Here’s the problem with that formula: it was decreed in 1984. I have serious doubts about whether the 900-degree, wood-fired, 00-flour, San-Marzano equation is the authentic formula for the first pizza ever made.
 
If you read enough about pizza history, you start to find out nifty tidbits like there are ancestral versions of pizza that we might not even recognize.
 
Like the earliest, most authentic of pizzas was baked in the field on the inverted shields of Etruscan warriors. Or maybe it was Ligurian. I authentically can’t remember. Still. It’s so romantic.
 

Muscular fighting men laying about the campfire whipping up soup in their helmets and pizza on their shields. Ah, the good old days. Let’s see Seal Team Six do that with their Kevlar armor, eh? Does a pizza MRE even come close to such authenticity? (An MRE will get you authentically bound up, though. Go ahead, ask a SEAL.)
 
After witnessing the many, raging arguments about what is actually authentic, and perhaps even ill-advisedly engaging in one or two myself, I thought screw this. I’m going back to the most authentic of all possible pizzas.
 
I started digging through pizza history texts. And yes, they are out there. Slim volumes would be an overstatement. They are slim sections or slim paragraphs hiding within books that are just slightly larger. Cookbooklets, if you will. 
 
Unless, of course, we’re talking about Modernist Pizza by Nathan Mhyrvold and company. Nothing slim about that book.
 

When plopped down on the bathroom scale, its three thick volumes inside their red steel case weigh more than 30 pounds. That book is authentically massive and contains a lot of authentically deep research.
 
But I stumbled upon something better and much slimmer and, well, easier to read on the sofa than a 10-pound hardback volume the size of a paving stone.
 

It’s a cookbook from 1989, which means it predates widespread internet arguments and the attendant joy of social media know-it-alls regarding authenticity. Plus, it was written by a peripatetic gourmet, so it is its own kind of authentic.
 
Among other cuisines, the book delves into Italian cooking. I wondered if there was anything about pizza inside there. So I turned to the index and…
 
Surprise! Just over four pages of pizza, including an AUTHENTICALLY HISTORIC recipe!
 
Now, in the process of hunting down this recipe, I had stumbled on a minor detail about those Etruscan or Ligurian warriors baking pizza-like objects on their upturned shields.
 

It had always troubled me that a competent warrior would potentially compromise and diminish his primary defensive weapon by putting it over a bonfire and using it as a cooking vessel.
 
Well, it also seems that those shields were made of wood. Or so I've read. 
 
Can I prove it? No.

But the pizza apocrypha of warrior-shield pizza must say goodbye. Oh, well. That spares me the additional trouble of finding some kind of authentic way of baking pizza in a pot lid or an old cover from a dented Weber kettle.
 

We’re going to use the home oven and a pizza steel. I’ve got it and it’s authentic enough, i.e., it’s flat and it’s hot and I’m too authentically lazy to remove it from the oven. I mean, come on, it weighs almost as much as my copy of Modernist Pizza. Oof. So what if the ancients didn’t have A-36 construction-grade steel plate? At some point, authenticity becomes the pursuit of nonsense.
 
The pizza recipe I discovered inside this old cookbook is for a flatbread made from ground up chickpeas. Or maybe they’re garbanzos. For the sake of authenticity, I was going to go with "garbanzo" because it sounds Italian. But much to my authentic surprise, the word “garbanzo” is Spanish.
 
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The word “chickpea” comes from the more Latin-based chiche pease. So it feels more authentic to go with the potentially and authentically belittling and inaccurate “chickpea,” even though chicks have never, ever eaten these inauthentic pea-like comestibles.
 
(You’ve seen chickpeas. They’re huge. You’ve seen baby chicks. Their beaks are tiny. Unless they’ve got some kind of sideshow freak-act chicks who can unhinge their jaws to swallow a softball—relatively speaking—there’s nothing authentic about a relationship between baby chicks and these legumes.)
 
So, we’re not baking on a shield, a pot lid or the dented cover from a Weber kettle. We’re going to bake in an electric oven. Perhaps a compromise to authenticity. But I’m already tired and I haven’t even begun soaking my garbanzos. (That sounds like a problem related to lumbago. Back to chickpeas!)
 
 
Here’s what I truly love about the chickpea pizza recipe here. In the recipe notes, the author says, “You’re probably not going to like this.”
 
I mean, not literally. But close enough. He recognizes that this is a chapter on pizza, and our expectations are for a post-Colombian exchange tomato-saucy, cheesy baked disk of 20th century processed wheat-flour flatbread.
 
Yet he’s starting us off in pizza pre-history with a recipe for baked chickpea mush mixed with salt, olive oil and herbs.

 
Yay, authenticity!
 
I grabbed some organic dried chickpeas from the pantry. I was thrilled to have them because, authentically speaking, organic chickpeas would have been the only kind they had back in the early days of AD.
 
The recipe calls for soaking the chickpeas overnight. Those 1st century warriors would have soaked the legumes at ambient temp, maybe in a battle helmet.
 

I inauthentically put the soaking legumes in a Tupperware and into the fridge. That's because hey, it’s just smart food safety. Authentically, just for the record, I would never go into battle wearing a Tupperware as a helmet. But I authentically also have no desire for ptomaine, if there even is such a thing. (I think ptomaine may have gone out with lumbago, probably in the early 20th century.)
 
The next day, I cooked those soaked beans on the DCS gas range top, which clicks like a sonofabitch because the spark module is worn out and nobody can get the range top apart to replace it because its rusted shut.

Welcome to authentic high-humidity living!
 

Although, really, if I were to be totally authentic about this, I’d be out in the yard cooking these beans in my helmet over a campfire.
 
I cooked the beans for 90 minutes as per the recipe, then removed them from the heat, drained the liquid, and dumped them into a food processor just as the Etruscan or Ligurian or Persian or Delta Force or whatever other warriors might have done had they had food processors. Their pre-modern food processor would more likely have been a big mortar and pestle. But how do you schlep that into the field when you’re dressed for battle in an iron skirt, a baking shield and a sword? Maybe they mashed the chickpeas on a flat rock with the flat sides of their bladed weapons. I dunno.
 

But I do know this is an exercise in authentic food, not authentic antique kitchen implements, so we’re good. No excuses required.
 
So, I ground up those garbanzo chickies into meal, adding back the reserved cooking liquid as necessary. Then, salt and olive oil became involved. But based on my expertise with flour, water, salt and yeast, we’re clearly not looking at a pizza dough here. This substance has been abused into more of a batter. And it’s beige. Beige and mealy. Still: authenticity is our goal. And so far, this is more authentic than anything anybody crowing about authenticity on social media is gonna give you.
 
After making the batter, the recipe calls for spreading it in a 14-inch pizza pan. I do not possess a 14-inch pizza pan. I do not make round pan pizzas. I make square pan pizzas, which is more authentic in the vaunted history of Detroit-style pizza. When I make round pizzas, I make them authentically New York style even though it’s inauthentic relative to Neapolitan style, but both styles are pan-less and baked straight on the hot oven deck.
 

Despite not having a 14-inch pizza pan, I do have a 9-inch cake pan. And since, as per Google AI, the area of a 9-inch cake pan bottom is close enough to half that of a 14-inch pizza pan according to the formula Area = π * (radius)^2, we’re going with that.
 
Pressing the chickpea pizza batter into the well-oiled pan, I’m wondering about the instruction to top this thing with dried herbs. It has to bake for over half an hour, and those herbs aren’t exactly going to thrive during 35 minutes in a 375-degree oven.
 
Nonetheless, I don’t second-guess the recipe. Dried herbs away!
 
I’ve decided to bake the authentic disc of ancestral pizza delight on the oven rack beneath the steel, as the steel my be too hot.
 

After about 20 minutes of baking, I check the pizza thing which is still looking beige and pale. In yet another about face, I decide baking it on the steel isn’t going to hurt it. Might even help it. So I remove it from the lower rack and plop it up there on the higher rack on the raging hot 21st century metallic plate.
 
The Etruscligurian Persians didn’t have plate steel, but I’ve come to the realization that authenticity of spirit may be more useful here. If I’m not going to bake this baby in the yard on a pot lid, I might as well just ride the slippery slope to virtual authenticity.
 

Besides, who else has the cajones to make garbanzo pizza dough? You’re not seeing this anywhere from Gourmet to Google+, from FaceTok to TicBook. Warrior pizza, my friend. Warrior pizza.
 
At an authentic 35 minutes, as per the 20th century recipe, I check on the disc o’ chicks. It’s browning somewhat around the edges, but is still a bit soft on top. I let it ride for another 7 minutes, until it appears to be firming up with something resembling a brown crust. I don’t know that this is an authentic Maillard reaction. After all Maillard didn’t even talk about the reaction named for himself until 1912, which is about 2,000 years (give or take) after warrior-shield pizza.
 
Pulling the pan from the oven to let it cool, it’s pretty clear that there’s no gluten network at work here. What I’ve baked is a fragile cake of a pizza predecessor. Keeping it pizza shaped is going to require some authentic dexterity on my part. Inverting the pan, I drop the cake out into my hand and quickly shuttle it onto a large plate—and it stays whole. Yay!
 

It’s hard to imagine how the ancients might have handled this so-called pie. It clearly wasn’t being sold in big slices out the window of the local warrior-pizza slice joint.
 
Nonetheless, as per the recipe: authentic!
 
I summon my wife from her computer work station to enjoy our new authentic ancient chickpea creation.
 
Of course, I have nothing to serve alongside it. My enthusiasm for this project has not extended very far from the actual ancestor itself.
 
I cut Honey as aesthetically pleasing a wedge as possible. She breaks off a bit (which is easy to do—it’s crumbling like the cookie of proverbial wisdom).
 

She says, “It’s kinda dry.”
 
I agree.
 
“This is something I might like if it were part of something else.”
 
Agreed again.
 
I’ve wondered what they might have eaten alongside this crumble-cake of chickpizza. There’s not a lot of intel available on page one of a Google search beyond two words: cooked vegetables.
 
We pick at the pie for a bit longer. “Should I save this? Will you eat it?”
 
“Sure. It’s healthy.”

Authentic enthusiasm!
 

So the next day, I do it all over again, now shedding all vestiges of authenticity. Now that I have executed this big ol' biscuit using dried beans and long cooking, let’s send in the tins!
 
I grab a can of garbanzo beans from the pantry (organic equals authentic!) and drop them into a food processor and grind them up into a paste with some oil and salt.
 
There are occasional chunks of unground garbanzos in there, which seem like a good idea. 
 
I pour it all into the 9-inch cake pan and whip it into the 375 oven on top of the pizza steel. (Been here before. All heat is good heat!) I also add a sesame-seed sprinkle so it looks less like military surplus hardware and more like it might not taste as bad as it looks. ​
 

Then, I begin preparing the fresh veggies. I don’t really know what pizza warriors would have handy besides zucchini and summer squash and maybe some eggplant and onions and garlic. I have everything except the eggplant, so I slice it all up and toss it into a sauté pan.
 
Then, figuring it really needs some contrasting color, I go all post-Columbia Exchange and use an inauthentic tomato. They wouldn’t have seen these in Italy as food until probably the late 1500s. But this thing really needs some help.
 
Whipping up a kind of pseudo ratatouille, I serve the cooked veggies alongside a wedge of chick flat for a fresh and healthy lunch of the authentically light kind.

 
Get ready for one of the best compliments a cook can hear: “Wow, this is surprisingly filling!”

So says my wife with something resembling forced enjoyment.
 
“But is it authentic?”
 
“It’s filling.”
 
She likes that it’s flavorful and high in fiber. It fits more nicely into her authentically healthy workout and good-eating regimen than any of my Detroit, New York or artisan-style pizzas.

 
It has no cheese or wheat flour. It barely has inauthentic tomato. And it’s made from something in a can.
 
However authentic it is, I’m going to have a hard time convincing anyone that I’m a paragon of food history preparations.
 
But I can at least be indignant and holier than thou in social media.
 
I can take a stand.
 
it’s authentic.
 
How about you? 

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