SC - Views on British Food

[Phil & Susan Troy]

First off, my apologies for the delay: I have a spam filter running and it seems
to have mistaken several posts and e-mail messages as fitting the criteria for
deletion...I'll have to adjust this.

THLRenata at aol.com wrote:

> Adamantius writes:
>
> >>since very few places in America grasp the basic
> concept either. They make some very nice dishes _called_ pizza in places like
> California and the Chicago area. They just aren't pizza.<<
>
> So, tell us, Master A -- just what *is* pizza?

Hmmm. How to explain. Rule number one seems to be that pizza simply means a flat
bread. What most people mean by pizza, though, is a pizza margarita, and its
variations, which involve a tomoato-ey topping and cheese. Basically Henri and
Antea are correct about what constitutes a pizza margarita. The people who first
made them used very specific ingredients and methods to attain a very specific
effect, and either the pizza maker achieves this or doesn't: there are no half
measures. Extremely fine, white, high-gluten flour is used, kneaded just right,
and then hand-thrown, either on a board or marble slab, or stretching by hand,
the method most often seen in the States, to produce a fine web of gluten strands
across the upper and lower surfaces of the pizza. This is what gives pizza its
characteristic crunch, and the fluffy chewy layer under the outer crust.

Unlike other breads, pizza is not left to rise for any length of time after
forming: the reason it has large bubbles in it is what is known as oven spring.
The large bubbles come from steam, not CO2-producing yeast, which is why a pizza
needs such high heat.

My experience with virtually every chain or franchise pizzeria is that they don't
achieve the effect. The places in America where they _do_ achieve this tend to be
small pizzerias where the people making them have been doing it for years. It's
also very difficult to make a good pizza and have it travel for anything more
than a mile or so, maximum. Putting a steaming hot pizza into a cardboard box for
transport for more than a couple of minutes is disastrous.

Lessee now, what else? It's probably easier to say what pizza is _not_. Pizza is
not made in a pan of any kind. It is _never_  topped with cheddar cheese, ar
anything mixed therewith. It rarely, if ever, has any additional toppings other
than tomato (and I do mean tomato, not tomato sauce), seasonings, and cheese.
Anchovies are acceptable, and mushrooms or sausage are all right, if not strictly
canonical. Same for peppers or onion. Pineapple is _right out_. In general more
than one or two toppings in addition to the tomato and cheese are looked down
upon in Naples, which appears to be the birthplace of what most people call
pizza.

The city of Naples, BTW, more or less claims the legal right to call itself the
birthplace of the pizza. I actually read an interview on the subject of pizza
with the mayor of Naples and the chairman of the Neapolitan Chamber of Commerce,
and they were pretty clear about what constitutes a pizza, and what doesn't
(although it was ever so slightly tongue-in-cheek). They discussed a specific
date (1762?) for the invention of the pizza margarita, and although this seems a
bit late to me, I've been unable to document the pizza most of us know any
earlier than that. I have no reason to believe that previous incarnations would
have been the same thing sans tomato, either.

> Granted, one of the best pizzas I ever ate was in Venice, Italy (as opposed to
> Venice, CA, where I've also had good pizza) but aside from my chosen topping
> -- fresh mussels steamed in wine -- it was not all that different from other
> pizzas I've had before or since.

I can't decide if that means you've been extremely lucky (as I've said, there is
real pizza out there, it's just that most of the people selling what they claim
_is_ pizza, isn't) or consistently unlucky. I have no way to even guess, but I
have to confess that the idea of mussels, probably out of their shells, in a
pizza oven at a temperature upwards of 800 or 900 degrees Fahrenheit, seems
ill-advised. Maybe the cooking is brief enough to heat them through without
drying them out.

In any case, I concede again that inauthentic pizza, or even pizza that doesn't
qualify as pizza (anything sold by Pizzeria Uno or by Wolfgang Puck at Spago,
f'rinstance) can be perfectly fine food, even if the mayor of Napoli would
disagree.Adamantius (and don't get me started on bagels!)
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com


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