Out of the freezer and into the fryer: what's the weirdest pizza you've ever had?

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.

It was about a quarter to eleven on a…well, whatever night it was. I can’t remember. I was in my mid-20s and living out of a sea bag. It was July and I happened to be working on a big, dangerous racing sailboat. (Seriously. We’re talking 80 feet long, a 115-foot mast and man-killing potential to spare.)
 
A couple of us from the crew (the boat raced with a crew of 27) had just finished last call at the pub. And when you’re in your 20s and doing physical labor for a living, food after beer in the middle of the night always seems like a great idea.
 
And while the pubs in England are obligated by law to close early, the chippies are not. This one was a drab little shop. Behind the counter was a drab little woman, tending the bubbling fat.
 
She was also wearing a white coat that made her look like a lab tech. And clearly, there was high-tech happening here in the high-heat fat lab.
 
She looked at me and said, “What would you like?”
 
I replied, “Uh…pizza?”

Yes, it was posed as a question, reflecting the uncertain wisdom of my order.
 
But she had no such uncertainty. “How many?”
 
How many pizzas did I want? I’d never been asked that question. So I replied, “Uh…one?”
 
The lab tech in her was quite certain and skilled as she lifted the heavy lid, reached deep into the freezer case, and came back out with a 6-inch frozen pizza. Before I could say anything--
 
WAP!
 
SIZZLE!
 
The frozen pizza was deep in the fat and she was asking for my money.
 
My crewmates were busy tucking into their fried potatoes as I received my deep-fried pizza treat.
 
What had I done?
 
I took a bite, and…
 
The only possible word was…
 
Glorious.
 
Best frozen pizza I’d ever had in my 25 years on the planet.
 
It remains difficult to comprehend the magic of deep-fat frying on a foodstuff that had boldly gone where it had never before been intended to go.
 
I’ve been thinking about this recently because I’ve been making a whole lot of pan pizza for my new book.
 
It’s a truly lazy process as long as you possess a degree of patience. It’s a no-knead dough that’s baked in a pan, which means no special tools are required (though I encourage use of a cheap, digital kitchen scale). And the cleanup is a snap.
 
I’ve literally had one of my recipe testers tell me how much he loves that there’s no flour mess to deal with—unlike with his efforts making traditional, hand-stretched pizza.
 
But to the point of fried pizza, here’s what happens when you make pan pizza: you’re baking a high-hydration dough in a really hot pan. And halfway through the bake when you open the oven door to turn the pizza, you know what you hear?
 
SIZZLE.
 
That sizzle is the sound of pizza frying in the pan.
 
And that sound of frying pizza has been on my mind.
 
The great Peter Reinhart even put voice to it this week. He had the Fabulous Honey Parker and I as guests on his show, Pizza Quest.
 
We were talking about Honey’s new book, we were talking about the movie we’re making, and we were talking about all this pan pizza coming out of our oven.
 
And while this is probably not a direct quote, he said something to the effect of, “And you know, when you make pan pizza, it gets so hot that it fries the dough in there.”
 
And that’s why I’ve been revisiting the Isle of Wight deep-fried pizza episode of my misspent 20s: every time I make Lazy Way pizza and I open the oven door, I can hear that pizza sizzling away.
 
And for what it’s worth, the “fried pizza” I’m making now tastes even more glorious than the pizza that came out of that deep fryer from the old country.
 
And lest you suspect this episode of the deep-fried frozen pizza is an anomaly, it is not.

A few years ago, I was the advertising voice of Papa John’s Pizza in the UK. If you lived in the UK, you could have enjoyed my dulcet Yankee tones pitching you BOGO pizza meal deals all week long.
 
During one of my recording sessions with the team in London, I told them about this episode of the pizza fryer in the lab coat.
 
They laughed. They told me that this was a common thing in Scotland.
 
The Scots. Really? I’m a Scot many generations back. My people are the clan Robertson, the warrior poets of the highland.
 
Ironically, I’m also a poet—though a mediocre one, and I’ve never been to war (at least not in the literal sense). But I now realize I’ve tasted the deep-fried frozen pizza of my ancestral homeland.
 
The Venn diagram just keeps getting more bizarre.
 
What about you? What’s the most downright bizarre pizza order you’ve ever had?
 
Send your story to me via the Free The Pizza contact form. I’d love to hear it. (Or if you received this missive in an email from me, just hit the reply button.)
 
If at least a few pizza peeps chime in with true pizza weirdness, I’ll put together another blog post about bizarre pizza escapades.
 
And if you’re interested in The Lazy Way To Pizza, more details will be forthcoming here in the Saturday-Afternoon Pizza Post. If you’re not on the mailing list, feel free to sign up here.  

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