Some Observations About Pizza

Naturally, I haven't tried every pizzeria around here so it's possible I'm missing something. The best, in my estimation, is Pizzeria Paradiso, with 2 Amys running a close second. Recently, Pete's New Haven Style Apizza opened not far from me, which got me thinking, seeing a block long line of parked BMWs, Mercedes, and Jaguars in an otherwise nondescript, very middle class northwest DC neighborhood, why is it not only that nobody makes good pizza, but that nobody seems to know anymore what good pizza is like?

The first thing about pizza is the flour. Since most flour sold in the U.S. is crap, that raises the odds against good pizza. You want flour with flavor, that can produce a pizza with a crust that's both crunchy and tender. For me, and I think a lot of people, pizza is largely about the crust. If I were going to open a pizzeria I'd want to first test a lot of U.S. flour brands, dozens of them, maybe even some flours imported from Europe. My guess is that only a couple brands would make the grade.

Which gets to the question of how to cook pizza. The only sensible way is the traditional way, with a wood-fired oven. (As an aside, why is it, I'd like to know, that in France you can find street vendors with wood-fired ovens who produce very good, very tasty pizza, when here in the U.S. the idea of wood-fired pizza cooking is so rare?!) It does take skill, and you can't hire nit-wit minimum wage labor for the job, but it isn't that complicated, either.

Let's say you've managed, through luck and hard work, to get a good crust cooked in a wood-fired oven. What happens next is pure tragedy. American pizzerias — all of them — cater to the American expectation of having huge quantities of toppings, even on the plainest pizza. But these toppings, one way or another, are full of water, such that in the oven they melt, leaving the middle of the pizza, if not the whole damn thing, a soggy mess. I've tried, by the way, at pizzerias where I know the crust is good and cooked in a wood-fired oven, to have the people making the pizza put on only half, or a quarter, of the regular quantity of toppings. "Just a sprinkle of cheese," I say, to no avail. They might as well serve their pizzas with spoons... Where the crusts aren't any good the result is an even greater catastrophe, soggy mess alternating with shoe leather.

I have to think that when Americans go out for pizza they're less interested in eating than in sharing drinks and some company. Or feeding the kids for cheap. The curious thing is that even people who know about how to make a good pizza won't make those pizzas in this market.

Outside of lobbyists' restaurants Washington DC has the makings of a gastronomic wasteland.

And I wonder whether, if we ever fix our political system, it'll become possible to get good pizza?