BIEN-ÊTRE + CULTURE
Neapolitan Pizza
In which I discuss one of the world’s perfect foods and how I learned to master the art of making it at home.
Bien-Être, French for “well-being” or the good life, is a series featuring a deep dive into my comfort foods and what they mean to me and the larger culture.
In my memory, it was in the very first issue of Saveur Magazine (1994), but I doubt that’s true. I do have very clear memories of my emotional reaction to that first issue, but can’t actually recall a single recipe or article. I wrote them an email telling them that I had devoured every image, word, advertisement, and footnote, cover to cover, and couldn’t believe how beautiful it all was.
It was likely a few years later that they printed a recipe for basic pizza dough, as part of a story on Italy, which I copied into a leather journal and referred to for years. I’ve altered the recipe over the years, but that was the start of my pizza journey. It’s only taken me 27 years or so, but I think I’m finally starting to get the hang of it.
When it’s well done, I think of pizza as one of the world’s perfect foods, like spaghetti aglio e olio, soft-boiled eggs with toasted soldiers, or peach blueberry crisp. It transcends the ingredients to offer up…
