 Is it possible to get too fussy about flour for homemade pizza dough? I ask this as a guy who’s fussy about the flour for his homemade pizza dough. Is there a point of diminishing returns that matters only to the person instigating the flour fuss? Will anybody on the receiving end of the homemade pizza ever be able to tell the difference? Or even care? Since a lot of newbies ask me for advice about flour (among other things), I thought we’d perform a little experiment. We held a flour showdown between four brands of that fabled flour of pizza perfection, “00” pizza flour. The results may surprise you. Or you may just not care. (See? Already, the apathy begins. Wait until you taste the pizza!)
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 Here at Free The Pizza, we are dedicated to the idea of making great pizza whenever you want with the oven you already have. It’s kind of a pizza liberation movement, freeing you from the tyranny of takeout or investing in tiny, cruel ovens. Sometimes, we’re offering newbie advice. Other times, we’re ranting on the state of pizza as we know it. Here and there, a possibly apocryphal history lesson. And once in a while, we’re digressing into a wild space having little to do with pizza. For instance, today was going to be a joyous screed about my brand new pizza shoes. Really. Special new shoes for making pizza. (But I’m still using my old pizza helmet.) Then, after sledding downhill on the routine wildcat excitement of this morning’s scintillating news headlines, we at Free The Pizza have a new goal: We want to be part of the Bread & Circuses of our time.  Have you been hoping to make pizza? Do you live and die by the recipe as written? I have some troubling news. It may make you recede to a corner, assume the fetal position and rock: pizza recipes are a moving target. Pizza recipes do not always work as you hope. You may get frustrated. You will make mistakes. You will cry—unless you are like me and you lack tear ducts and are genetically stoic. If you want to learn to make great pizza, a recipe is a good guide to help get you started. But it’s a guide only. Pizza is practice. Learning to make great pizza as a matter of routine means you have to be willing to make decisions—and mistakes. You also get to own those mistakes. That’s the bad news. The good news is, those mistakes are usually edible and enjoyable enough.  America, what have you done with pizza now? Of all the possible media outlets, Better Homes & Gardens is detailing your sins of Costco food-court hot dogs and pizza, and your new “hack” with which you are “obsessed.” That's right in the headline at BHG.com: "Costco Shoppers Are So Obsessed with This New Food Court Hot Dog Hack." The subhead reads, "The Costco food court is definitely a judgment-free zone." Well, Free The Pizza is not so kind a zone. Allow me to don my pizza-colored robe and bang the pepperoni gavel as I judge freely. Speaking as a longtime dabbler in pizza nonsense, it’s difficult for me to express just how disappointing all this is. America, you can do better.  Somebody recently asked, “Where do you get yeast, and which one is best for pizza dough?” And the first thing I thought was, Well duh. You get yeast from the air. That, of course, is not the first answer everyone else has. They will likely say, “Well duh. You get yeast from the supermarket.” Which is not untrue. And that was not a double negative. Or was it? I think, yeah. No. Whatever. And just by the way, if you’re reading this and you happen to be a mycologist or a fermentation specialist, know that I’m speaking as a layman who’s fully aware that you can tell me I’m speaking out of my pizza hole. So be it. I will publish any required corrections to my non-scientific blather, and I thank you in advance for your participation.  Please forgive the inflammatory nature of the headline and its oblique connection to making great pizza at home. The pizza in question is closer than you know. Today, I was reading a pizza magazine called (oddly) Pizza Today. The article was about the evolution of traditional American pizza styles. It included some of the usual suspects, like Detroit pizza and Philly tomato pie. There are also some styles that you’ve never heard of—and which likely haven’t even been heard of by the people who eat them all the time. See also: Ohio Valley Pizza and New England Beach Pizza.  I pay attention to the pizza cooking questions over at the Troll Haven known as Quora. People occasionally ask about pizza, I answer, and maybe win a fan or sell a copy or two of Free The Pizza! But more important? I help prevent people from making pizza at home that's so bad they’ll quit before they’ve started. If you’ve never heard of Quora, well, it’s a social site where people ask questions and impatient know-it-alls answer them with scorn and derision. And then, there’s me. I hide my scorn and derision behind a smiling façade of self-serving servitude. (Oh, who am I kidding? I'm a total ham about this homemade pizza thing.) Last week, a six-year old question popped up in my feed, and I thought, What the heck? I’ll answer it anyway. Somebody will see it. Nope. Not just somebody. Since I answered it five days ago, 17,000 people have seen it. Over 130 have upvoted it, and a couple dozen have commented. Here it is: another secret ingredient for fantastic homemade pizza--and you can’t buy it anywhere.1/25/2025  As you may know from hanging out here longer than is healthy for any sane human being, I have been known to peddle in secret ingredients for homemade pizza. Today is no exception. I’m going to share a secret ingredient that is free, in limitless supply, and impossible to buy. If you’re a seasoned home pizzamaker, this may not interest you. I don’t blame you if you bail out as soon as you discover what I’m about to say. This secret ingredient is something that I try to persuade every home pizzamaker to use. They often want a different secret ingredient, and they ask me, “Well, what do you think of X” or “How about if I do Y instead?  Last week, I’d planned on presenting a screed about the garlic press. The LA wildfires distracted us from that. I instead went on a ramble about how we’re hosting a Slice Out Hunger Wildfire Relief pizza party tomorrow afternoon. It's a Sunday slice happy hour. I plan to make 18 pizzas in three hours. That's 144 slices. We’ll see if my aging GE Profile home oven can keep up with such reckless ambition. We’re still distracted, but today I will execute that rant about the garlic press for your reflection and/or amusement. But not without a poetic preamble--and an eventual confession that I am guilty as sin. So strap in, hang on, and suck down some over-the-counter stimulants. They might help. (I’m huffing Starbucks Italian Roast right now. Surprise!)  We’ve been a little distracted this week. If things had gone as planned, you'd be seeing a pizza-adjacent article about Marcella Hazan’s hatred of the garlic press, and what that might mean for you as a home pizzamaker. But then came the news about Los Angeles. The Fabulous Honey Parker and I used to live there. We have at least one friend whose home has been incinerated. Watching the destruction unfold has been a surreal experience. [If you’re a TL;DR type, and you’re never going to read any further, click here and click "Donate," or scroll down to the info for pizzerias, home pizzamakers, and “Pizza Fans.” It tells you what you need to know.]  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.  Dutch says things that surprise you. He’s often stretching pizza dough while he does it. In fact, it’s just a little challenging to participate in the conversation. This big guy from New York is there, making these little pizzas. In one moment, he’s telling stories, and in the next, he’s speaking in Zen koans about pizza. Just before Christmas, I was sitting there in Dutch’s pizzeria. It's called Tribecca Allie, and it’s in Sardis, Mississippi. The town is two square miles with a population of 1,696. I was there eating one of Dutch's Margherita pizzas, which is a baffling and beautiful pie. He asked me, "Is it as good as you remember it?" I said, "No. It's better." I can’t quite figure out why it’s so good, other than it has something to do with his crust. I began thinking about the first conversation Dutch and I had just over a year ago. There were some good takeaways.  I wasn't sure what to get you, so I made you a pizza. This is a special, lazy dude’s holiday pizza. What could be more Christmasy than a red and green pizza inspired by a city sometimes considered the heart of Yankee yuletide ceremony, Boston, Mass? What you don’t see coming here is the Greek angle with almost zero representation of my own Anglo-Saxon holiday heritage. When I lived in Boston, I used to work next-door to Boston House Of Pizza. (Don’t bother Googling it. The one I knew is gone. And there are something like 237,000 Boston Houses Of Pizza, each independent of the others.)  Still struggling over what gift to give your pizzamaker this holiday? Here’s an unusual suggestion: just give up. Right now. Just go into your closet, close the door, ball up in the fetal position, and rock to visions of sugar plums, whatever those are. Already doing that? OK. Here’s another suggestion. Books. As you know, I have a pizza problem. It might be pizza love, if that’s even a thing. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it’s unnatural. Whatever. But if there’s one thing that entices me as much as pizza, it’s books. My book problem long predates the pizza problem. That means the Venn diagram overlap of pizza and books is a special sickness that I enjoy. And I can also share with you to help you solve your holiday gift giving dilemma.  Ho, ho, ho! This happens every year. It’s happening again. So, get ready. Now is the time where we examine that perennial life question, “This Christmas, should I ask Santa Claus for that 32-pound, three-volume pizza book that comes in a bright red, stainless-steel case?” And the answer is, No. Of course not. You don’t want it unless you’re a glutton for pizza punishment. New York Pizza Love: The bio-chemistry and immigrant history of an epic American success story11/29/2024  If you love New York pizza, and want to make a pizza you can love, it requires having more than just an oven. It helps to have chemistry and context. That’s why your Saturday Afternoon Pizza Post is a day early. It’s Black Friday, and there’s a lot of pizza oven lust going on out there. To alleviate the pain of pizza-oven big-sale FOMO, it seemed it might be useful and fun to share some of the context. I’ve always believed context helps us be better pizzamakers. Knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing is so much more satisfying than mere blind doing.  This past Thursday, we were having lunch in New Orleans. And you know what that means: Day drinking! We were in one of the town’s more famous dive bars. Inside, it’s small and dark and perpetually 9pm until you pay the tab and step out the door and go back into the sunlight which taunts you for your weekday misdeeds featuring alcohol involvement. Our bartender was an endless font of wisdom on everything, from stride piano (his professional specialty when he’s not tending bar), to the regional brewery scene, to sandwich preparation formats and techniques. I asked him if there’s any pizza in New Orleans that he likes. I asked because it's a very, very foodie town, but not really a pizza town. However, pizza is on the upswing.  Yesterday, I unwittingly wandered into the place where pizza joy goes to die: a group filled with self-assured social-media pizza experts. Trying to be useful, I ended up losing sleep. This particular group is dedicated to the secrets of a certain style of regional pizza. There’s lots of chest-thumping pizza chauvinism in there. People make statements like, “Yeah, maybe it’s tasty—but that’s not how they do it in [INSERT NAME OF CITY HERE].” I could name the city—but such things happen all over pizza social. There is discrimination against neither style nor geography. I don’t want to make it sound like this one pizza place online is unique. This special fervor is universal. It’s also easy to fall victim to absolutists spreading mythologies about elusive butterflies of pizza-making that are utter glibbertygok. (Don’t bother googling that word. I already tried. It doesn't exist.) Direct from the Garden State, tantalizing tomatoes for making your homemade pizza go "pop!"11/9/2024  It's Thursday morning. Outside, the sun is shining. Inside, this place is dimly lit and looks like a punk-rock nightclub. But I'm busy disappearing down a rabbit hole of bright tasting, sunlit pomodoro fantastico. We're in the City of Brotherly Love, inside the lobby of a storied, 1908 theater, now known as The Fillmore Philadelphia by Live Nation. And it's filled not with demi-monde nightcrawlers and leather-clad punks, but with middle-aged, coffee-swilling pizza professionals ready for networking and making deals. In my hand is a little white, paper sample cup. I have a tiny wooden spoon, and I'm greedily consuming Jersey Fresh tomatoes and thinking, "Wow." My tastebuds are enthralled. Good tomatoes should make your tastebuds sing. They should make you do a little dance. And I'm doing that little dance in this unlikely place because (as you know) I have a pizza problem.  Whatcha gonna do with leftover pizza dough? In my house, we just make more pizza. Breakfast pizza. Lunch pizza. Seriously. We work at home. If I decide I want lunch pizza, it takes about 10 minutes of active prep to make a pizza. The rest of it—like preheating the oven and warming the dough to room temp—that’s all passive time. |
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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