To most, it is crust, tomato sauce, cheese and the occasional pepperoni. Most days it gets the job done. It just happens that most days, I'd like a little more. More choice. More artisan and less run-of-the-mill.
There exists one pizza style that is rare - almost impossible to find. It's the one with a reasonably noshy crust with a cracker-like veneer capable of lifting awkwardly heavy or sloppy toppings of sliced tomatoes or juicy mushrooms and spinach. Where the crust turns a dark chestnut at the edges and the toppings singe and actually smoke a bit. A pizza that is usually imperfect in shape. A pizza with a personality and uniqueness.
The common pizza is neither unique nor remarkable. I'm certain that this is all because of technology. The modern pizza oven is a conveyor type. Set the temp and speed, pop in your pie in one side and out the other end emerges the pizza of today. It gets controlled heat from the top and bottom as it sits on a wire pizza screen. Fool proof for a reason.
Remember the first time you saw a deck oven? Those wide doors would swing down with noticeable mechanical announcement and a pizza guy would grab his pizza peel and almost acrobatically arrange, rotate and fish out wonderfully huge pizzas. Even a plain pizza had that crisp crust, a light smear of tomato sauce and enough cheese to make each bite melty and chewy - all of which was heated to absolute blistering temperatures. And the secret was that there was no secret. You saw the magic happen right in front of you. And it was that oven that made the difference. It's about the surfaces. The bottom of that pizza sat ON a thermally charged stone or sheet of steel. The natural convection of heat in the oven blasted around the crust and off the ceiling 16 inches above the pizza. Very high heat. Higher than those EZ Bake conveyor ovens.
Brick ovens are essentially a kiln for your pizzas. It takes a couple of hours to get that thermal mass up to working temps but patience pays. Once you achieve the high temps, pizzas fly. They no longer take 12 minutes like in a conveyor oven. They can be ready in 3-4.
My cousin Brud Holland made a brick oven.
He's a Chef and Baker and he knows. This is where great breads are baked and because pizza is essentially bread, you'll need the right oven to do it. I want one, bad.
I've got the rest down. Crust. Toppings. Cheeses.
But not the oven...
Not yet.
But a Chef/Man can dream.
Pizza. The lost art of the pie. It's been Americanized with stuffed crust meat-loving 30 minute crazy bread dippin' 5.99 everyday pizzas. It's the American way. It get's the job done. But if you want the job done right, you gotta get out the flour and start a fire.
