Remember New England pizza like mom used to make down on the farm?

Today we’re going Greek. I’ve seen Chirstopher Nolan's The Odyssey. I’ve been struggling with the same question as everyone else who’s not busy falling for the manufactured scandals about the film: Where’s the pizza?
 
In fact, to borrow from famed Odyssey translator Emily Wilson, who wrote a review of the film for the London Review of Books, “The food looks horrible.”
 
(Addressing other issues of thematic import, she also asks where’s the sex? She says nothing of pizza. You and I may be alone in this question.)

But right now, I’m in New England.
 
It’s a leafy green bluebird day. I’m having a difficult time focusing on sociological challenges regarding long-dead Greeks of fiction.
 
That said, Greek pizza has been very much a centerpiece of our trip to the Live Free or Die State of New Hampshire.
 
Here near the edge of Massachusetts, a different kind of Greek pizza is involved. And it has linked to the Proust Effect, which is the subject of a project I’ve been long developing related to pizza memories.
 
This nascent project asks the question: “What bite of pizza takes you rushing back to another time and place?”
 
 
For me, it’s a bite of a big, juicy New York slice finished with an abundance of dried oregano.
 
That big, bold New York pizza joint flavor, the jammy, umami sauce of a reheated pizza slice, and the crackle of the well-baked bottom crust—all of that takes me back to the Caruso’s pizza counter in Grand Central Station when I was in high school.
 
It was always a late hour, typically on the way home from a half-price Broadway show. We were always running for a train. And we always had just enough time to grab one of those slices the size of your face along with a 28-ounce paper cup that said it was Coca-Cola but was filled with ice-cold Schaefer from the tap before we began heading down the tunnel to the platform for the last train home.
 
I’m finding that this week, I’ve inadvertently stepped into the Pizza Prousti time machine and dragged some friends with me.
 
 
It involved memories, hilarity, smiles, glee, anticipation and nostalgia.
 
I know: None of those things sound like they dovetail with Proust.  
 
In case you’re not familiar, author Marcel Proust penned the classic, one-million-word French novel, In Search of Lost Time.
 
To our parents’ generation, that book was known as A Remembrance of Things Past.
 
And they also didn’t read it.
 
 
I don’t even pretend to have read it.

I've read just enough to know more about it than most people.
 
I might keep reading if I wasn’t so busy doom scrolling pizza social.
 
In the book, Proust writes a scene that has become ubiquitous for literary food lovers: His adult narrator is eating a bite of madeleine sponge cake dipped in tea—and runs smack into a forgotten childhood memory.
 
It involves the same tea, the same cake, and his beloved great aunt.
 
Because of Proust, the concept of food memories linked to emotional moments has become an inspiration for everyone from university anthropologists to Disney filmmakers.
 
Yes, Disney. The animated film Ratatouille apparently relies on the Proust Effect to great effect. I’ve never seen it, but it’s on my short list—that despite my better judgment about not letting anthropomorphic rats cook my food, even in a professional French kitchen.
 
In my new book, The Lazy Way to Pizza: How To Make the Best Pizza Possible with the Least Amount of Work, I show how the style of pizza I’ve developed is based on a much-loved regional style known as New England Greek Pizza--
 
 
As I remember it from my misspent post-college youth...
 
The style is a round pan pizza that is crunchy, crispy, oily and unctuous in the best ways possible.
 
Especially for those pizza lovers who ardently claim to love extra sauce, or extra cheese, or a bulk of extra toppings, or all of the above, this is a pizza that delivers big, bold flavor and doesn’t creak under the weight of over-abundant toppings.
 
And here now, today, we’re visiting an idyllic place that even sounds like a Disney film itself.
 
It’s called Cricket Hill Farm, and is a sprawling green hillside with a rambling, colonial-era clapboard house and barn.
 
It’s all the residence of Beth, an old friend who works in TV, and her husband Bill who’s an extraordinary woodworker and photographer.
 
Situated on 10 acres of New Hampshire countryside, the lawn is lush, the trees are towering, and the birds are cacophonous in ways you think you’re supposed to remember from childhood.
 
As a hostess gift for our visit, The Fabulous Honey Parker and I presented our hosts with a copy of the new book, along with a pair of Lloyd Pans for making 12-inch round pizzas.
 
 
I also took the new Lloyd Pans on their maiden voyage.
 
I made Lazy Way pizza for our friends, and it was a time machine moment.
 
The four of us shared two 12-inch pies. One was plain cheese pizza—the pizza that is a measure of the pizzamaker’s craft because it offers nowhere to hide. The reaction was “Wow!”
 
The other pie was a meaty-meat meat-lover’s pizza with ham, bacon, sausage, pepperoni and mushrooms (the latter being, of course, the meaty-meat of the plant world) because Bill, the guy with the woodworking Photoshop chops, loves a meat-forward pizza.
 
 
I knew they’d enjoy it. But I didn’t realize what would happen next.
 
Bill was marveling over this meat-on-meat action, which he is now prepared to make his own with regularity despite having a giant Ooni undercover in the back yard.
 
Beth, however, began past-tripping in the pizza time machine.
 
That happened when I mentioned the first time I had experienced a New England Greek pizza—which came from one of the neighborhood pizza joints of her youth.
 
Quickly, there came a flurry of thumb-typing, searching and texting and trying to remember the name of the pizzeria.
 
 
Nobody knew. Nobody could find it. Nobody could come up with it.
 
But all were clear on one thing: Yes! That pizza with the crunchy, pan-baked crust and big, cheesy, saucy, olive-oil forward flavor that her family always ordered the night before Thanksgiving every year.
 
With all the artisan pizza puffery that’s happening nationwide, it’s easy for the pizza of our youth to become lost in the sauce of distant memories from more innocent times.
 
And the arguably artisan version of this pizza past that I’ve cobbled together using low-friction techniques is scratching an itch that people didn’t know they have.
 
This is not an appeal to you to buy my book. Not that I would stop you. It’s a fun read and the pizza is a delight. (And I offer autographed book plates for both the Kindle and print editions.)
 
 
Really, this is just a reminder about how powerful food memories can be in our lives.
 
The food may have even been objectively unremarkable.
 
It doesn’t matter.
 
That food is forever linked to whatever was happening in the moment.
 
Our past lives on in our mental catalog of tastes and scents. Important moments loaded with longing we didn’t realize and fueled by flavor we’ve forgotten but will suddenly recall with joy.
 
 
Our hosts embraced their new pizza prototype with glee and time traveled back to good old days and it was so much fun to watch happen.
 
As much as I’d like to credit the pizza with inspiring that, it’s really about what they brought to the party with their pizza memories.
 
They brought joy to a pizza night linked to nostalgic recollections.
 
It’s so much fun the way people have been embracing this “new,” Lazy Way to Pizza.
 
Experienced pizza makers are saying they love the flavor bomb as much as the virtually nonexistent cleanup.
 
Newbie pizza makers are in disbelief at what they’ve accomplished in getting from zero to pizza in a single, simple effort.
 
 
It’s a total thrill.
 
Have you tried The Lazy Way to Pizza and have a thrill to share?
 
I’d love to hear about it.
 
And if it happens to involve not just making pizza, but reliving a pizza memory, feel free to share that, too.
 
(I’ve already heard from one guy who says this pizza completely nailed his memories of a Greek pizza joint in Connecticut—where he still occasionally visits today.)
 
Free the pizza—the lazy way.
 
----
 
The five-star rated The Lazy Way to Pizza e-book edition is now on sale at Amazon. As it says in the book description there:

The only special tool: A pan. The only special ingredient: Patience. (Just a pinch.) The only oven: the one already in your kitchen.

Your friends and family won't believe you made this pizza yourself--especially after that incident with the burnt water topped with boiled toast. This is for real: one of the best tasting pizzas you've ever put into your mouth. The cheese, the tomato, the olive oil, the crunch--it's so good, you might never order delivery pizza again. You might even call this pizza "artisanal."

"This pizza made as instructed is one of the best pizzas l've had...an artisan-level experience while remaining one of the easiest pizzas to execute."
--Kevin Godbee, Chef and creator of Pizza Is My Life
(from the foreword to the book)

For more info, click here.
​