Unexpected love notes and surprising advice from a woman who (unintentionally) inspires you to make better pizza.

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!)

​You may know that fabled chef and cookbook author, Marcella Hazan is often noted for a vitriolic hatred of the garlic press.
 
A friend recently rekindled my interest in Ms. Hazan, and I began thinking, What the heck is that garlic-press hate about, anyway? I had suspicions regarding its basis. But I wanted confirmation.
 
If you don’t know about Ms. Hazan, she was once considered the “doyenne” of traditional Italian cooking in the US.
 
(I admit to taking lifelong enjoyment from the word “doyenne.” But I use it here in quotes because that was the exact word used to describe her in Wikipedia. Of all places.)
 
Until Ms. Hazan’s cookbooks, Italian cooking for us ham-fisted Yankee louts meant throwing a box of hot, wet, under-salted Ronzoni spaghetti into a pot of piping-hot sauce poured fresh from the jar, stirring it all with a big spoon, and then powdering it mightily with Kraft grated parmesan shake cheese. (Which, by the way, contrary to a certain pervasive and stupid urban legend, does NOT contain sawdust.)
 
 
A native of Italy, Marcella Hazan was a one-time science teacher, as well as a talented and opinionated cook with an extraordinary life.
 
She was a self-taught chef who didn’t begin cooking until adulthood. She became a darling of the New York culinary scene—thanks in part to New York Times food writer and uber-critic Craig Claiborne.
 
Mr. Claiborne once said of Ms. Hazan, “No one has ever done more to spread the gospel of pure Italian cookery in America.”
 
Claiborne also once said, “Cooking is at once child's play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love.”
 
Judging from Ms. Hazan’s writing, the cooking as well as the writing are clearly such acts.
 

Although, for some of us, making pizza might be an act of selfish love.

As much as we enjoy making pizza for others, I suspect it all starts with a thought like, “I love this stuff. How can I justify making even more at one time?”

Yes? No? Just me? Oh, well.
 
Marcella Hazan’s fame began with the publication of her 1970s cookbooks, The Classic Italian Cook Book: and More Classic Italian Cooking.

Both books were updated and re-released in the ‘90s as a single book, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. How's this for amazing: almost 25,000 ratings on Goodreads.

(And yes, that link above is an Amazon affiliate link. If you happen to make a purchase, Amazon sends a meager handful of pennies skittering across my dining-room table at no additional cost to you.)
 
 
All this preamble to say: Ms. Hazan's book is where I went to hunt some direct quotes about the evil of the garlic press.
 
I did not expect to find them expressed in almost the same pen stroke as little love notes to garlic:
 
“When young and fresh, the cloves are tender and moist, and the skin is soft and clear white. The flavor is so sweet that one can be careless about quantity.”
 
“The gentlest aroma is that of the whole clove, the most unbuttoned scent is that exuded by the chopped.”
 
But of course, disapproval was inevitable…
 
“The least acceptable method of preparing garlic is squeezing it through a press. The sodden pulp it produces is acrid in flavor and cannot even be sautéed properly.”
 
Acrid sodden pulp. Have three words ever conveyed such disdain for injustice done a foodstuff with such effortless veracity?
 
 
It seems the press is too coarse and tactless a tool for Ms. Hazan’s beloved garlic.
 
I had suspected to find disdain. I did not expect it to be conveyed with such sodden, pulpy poetry.

But as an inveterate peddler of fresh garlic on pizza (usually alongside shrimp), I get it.
 
For me, it’s almost always chopped garlic. I never wanted to start pressing garlic all over a pizza. All that garlic pulp and garlic juice, it’s just messy, pungent, unpleasant and unmanageable. It is destined to deliver a pizza with a puddle.
 
But…garlic-press hate?
 
I wonder if “hate” is too strong a word. She doesn’t care for the tool and recommends you don’t use it. She even has strong opinions.

But in our present age of rage, these opinions get cast as “hate!” Get their attention by forging a hook featuring a nasty barb!
 
 
I happen to have a strong opinion about pizza “influencers” who tell you to make dough an hour before you make pizza.
 
Saying I “hate one-hour dough” is extreme. I don’t care for it. I also think it’s dishonest to lead someone to believe it’s going to taste great. Making that recipe once should cure a newbie of ever wanting to make pizza a second time.
 
But is it hateful?

It’s more like a disappointing byproduct of the I-want-it-yesterday culture. I will do everything in my power to save you from it.
 
Is it therefore also extreme to say I “love” a 3-day cold-fermented pizza dough? Probably. I don’t know that love is quite the right emotion for a batch of water, flour, salt and yeast.
 

That said, I am fond of what that dough begets.

I often metaphorically refer to pizza dough as “a friend.” It is often said that "pizza dough doesn't lie."

I also really enjoy making pizza for people who say things like, “You’ve ruined me for any other pizza.” Mr. Claiborne might have said that my effort at such ruination is an act of love.
 
Aside from any potential love, pizza is possibly associated with an underpinning of gluttony. (I’m trying to get better about that part.)
 
Maybe a more attractive word than “gluttony” is “lust.”
 
There’s a fat book: Lust For Pizza.
 
 
It also doesn't seem an overstatement by saying Marcella Hazan’s cooking and writing are acts of love.
 
Reading her book, you find it peppered throughout with little love notes to ingredients, as well as advice that one might find tangential to pizza.

For instance…
 
 
“The microwave separates the cook from cooking, cutting off the emotional and physical pleasure deeply rooted in the act.”
 
Pizza is obviously never going to be made in a microwave. But the act of making pizza abounds with physical pleasure. (Hey, I heard that. Get your mind out of the gutter.)
 
I think anyone who makes pizza and learns to enjoy it is especially connected to the “emotional and physical pleasure deeply rooted in the act.” How can you not be?

There is no other cooking I know of (except maybe wok stir fry or wood-fired barbecue) where the cook is so connected to their food and the making of it.
 
And pizza wins the hands-on award hands down. Kneading, stretching, saucing, topping, launching, retrieving, slicing—pizza may be the most hands-on kitchen preparation ever.
 
 
“[Both the revised and the new] recipes in this book move on the same track, in pursuit not of novelty, but of taste.”
 
Augh! Pizza novelty! It makes me nuts!
 
At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon (because I am one), I will point out that pizza novelty knows no price point, ranging from a pizza covered with barbecue sauce, to a stuffed-crust pizza, to a pizza topped with caviar and gold leaf. (Yes, there is such a thing. I'm sorry.)
 
Does any of this really need to happen? And does anyone say, “That tasted great!” It all seems more like pizza stunts designed to start conversations and separate consumers from dollars.
 
Not that I have an opinion.
 
 
“It is a pattern of cooking that can accommodate improvisation and fresh intuitions.”
 
I suspect we all like improvising and intuiting in our cooking.

Pizza, interestingly, does not allow much improvisation with the dough. Sure, you can experiment.

But you’re not improvising much beyond adjusting ratios of water, flour, salt, yeast, and possibly oil and sugar—except perhaps by intuition.
 

Pizza toppings, on the other hand, are an improviser’s playground.

Some the most interesting pizzas I’ve made have been the result of asking, “What if…”

See also: étouffée pizza, deconstructed clam chowder pizza, and the forementioned shrimp & garlic pizza.

(What’s the difference between those latter items and the pizzas mentioned as novelty? Two words: good food.)
 
 
“Of all the ingredients used in Italian cooking, none produces headier flavor than anchovies. It is an exceptionally adaptable flavor that accommodates itself to any role one wishes to assign it.”
 
If you’ve known me for any length of time, you know I’m a fan of the lowly anchovy. Most Americans are not.

That’s because most Americans have only ever been fed bad anchovies cooked badly on a bad anchovy pizza.
 
Ms. Hazan expresses a great admiration for this tiny fish, and writes about it with (surprise!) poetry.
 
Perhaps we’ll talk about her anchovy admiration in a subsequent Saturday-Afternoon Pizza Post.
 
In the meantime, if you’d like to sample her Essentials Of Classic Italian Cooking, just click the link. 
 
 
By the way, I confess: I own a garlic press.
 
I don't use it often. They’re a royal pain in the butt to clean.

But the GDE (Garlic Drenching Effect) is perfect for making garlic bread. I also sprinkle it with no-sawdust shake cheese (despite chef Ina Garten’s professed hatred of it) for the added umami-bomb effect of that culinary compound designed by nature to make your tastebuds dance the Pasodoble: glutamate!
 
I’m not proud.
 
But good garlic bread is unabashedly what it appears to be: a drunken bleacher bum deep in the shadow of his own goalposts, running the wrong direction, unshaven, unsubtle, unsophisticated and unstoppable. The more pressed cloves, the better. No apologies. Sorry.


P.S. It just occurred to me to go hunting for any specific feelings Ms. Hazan had about pizza.

Seems I should’ve done this sooner:
 
“Pizza is made for improvisation and brooks no dogmas about its toppings.”
 
Take that, all you pineapple haters. 

And if you want to make a donation to Slice Out Hunger to feed Angelenos displaced by the wildfires, feel free. Just click here. I’ll thank you by emailing you a photo of a slice of pizza. (As long as you don’t choose to remain anonymous. And if you choose to remain anonymous, I will thank you now. Thanks!)

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