Okay, with both Lileks and Anne weighing in on pizza experiences, it’s time for my own opinion on the blessed disks.
Like Lileks, I like lots of sauce. No, not so much that everything slides off the slice when you pick it up to eat it — though that usually happens because of too much cheese. But enough so that it’s a primary component, not a flavoring, of what you’re eating. With all due respect to Anne, sauce that is “spread out in a thin spiral from the center of the crust, so that the coverage is complete, but you can see the barest hint of creamy dough peeking out from beneath it” is called “skimping” in my book.
Oh, yeah, and it should be tasty and spicy, not just canned tomato sludge.
On the other hand, if you have a really thin layer of sauce, than a very thin crust is appropriate. Actually, I tend to like thin over thick crust in the context of most generic pizza delivery pizzas, just because too many of them use big pads of dough to make you think you’re actually getting something for your $25-plus-tip, when what you’re actually getting is bread with a bit of flavoring on it. Bleah.
I appreciate a crust with edges that are tasty, but it’s the least important part of the pie.
Cheese? I’ll agree with Anne here, in that too many pizza places slather on the cheese such that it ends up pooling all the grease from the other ingredients (or from itself), and ends up tying all the pieces together such that you loose the toppings from your slice when you try to remove it, pick it up, or bite it.
Pepperoni, by the way, should be nicely crisped on the edges from the pizza oven.
Man, I gotta get back to Chicago some day.
I am with you on the pepperoni, Dave. Thickly sliced, rubbery pepperoni should be illegal on a pizza.
Agreed. If I want that, I’ll pull a dry salami out of the fridge.
Hmmmmm … that actually sounds pretty good right now.
The Sauce thing depends on the type of pie you get. A NYC style = very little, but flavorful sauce. Chicago Style = More sauce to act as a good binding agent.
In both cases the Sauce should not over power the rest of the pie. On Papa Muphy’s and Papa John’s all you can taste in the sauce, so you might as well just get a cheese pie and save the money.
I’m much more into Chicago style than New York — and most New York pizza I’ve encounter has been horrid.
I’m not suggesting a Sauce pizza, by any means (save that for the pasta). But it should be definitely one of the tastes involved.
What I want from a terrific ‘za — no delivery-type stuff — is good bread. Whole-wheat crust that you can smell from blocks away. Lots of rich sauce on top of that, and you can stick whatever you like on top.