Pizza Letters: Regarding ‘American brewpub pizza’
As perhaps an éminence grease of pizza blabbing, I am asked on occasion by journalists to offer my opinion on trends or issues in the pizza world. Because I don’t formally blog these days, my answers often become impromptu blog posts in and of themselves — with an audience of one. Sometimes I miss boring the world with my pizza observations, so I figured I’d share my correspondences here.
For this installment of Pizza Letters, I share my correspondence with Nick Schonberger, who ended up writing this post on First We Feast: An Ode to American Brewpub Pizza. This was the exchange that actually inspired this series. I thought, “Damn, I wrote a lot! I wish I were still blogging, because this is fun!” Without further ado…
Hi, Adam,
Hope you are well.… I was hoping you could help me with some pizza taxonomy. There is a certain type of wood-fired pizza favored by brewpubs. To my taste, it is a bit thicker than a Neapolitan version, and the toppings run wild, and increasingly the sauces, too.
I was hoping to either a) get on the phone with you to discuss or b) just get a few thoughts about the type that I can incorporate in an upcoming piece I’m writing….
Hi, Nick,
Hmmm. I don’t know if I’ve ever taxonomized what you’re describing. Honestly, that style or take on WFO [wood-fired oven] pizza has sprung up between the time I/Slice/Serious Eats stopped updating the Pizza Styles Guide and now. But I think I know what you’re getting at. I’ve always called anything like that “Neapolitan-inspired” — and I believe the pizza geeks at Pizzamaking.com would refer to it as “Neo-Neapolitan.”
My guess as to why it differs might be that it’s to appeal to American tastes and preferences, both in terms of the crust and the toppings. Despite the growing legion of Neapolitan purist diehards, I still think that Americans as a whole like crisper, sturdier crusts and TOPPINGS GALORE, which necessitate those crusts. If you go the pure-Neapolitan route, you’re left with minimalist pizzas, served uncut, with “soupy” centers. While more and more people are developing a taste for this style, simple anecdotal evidence (the dominance of Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s) indicates that ‘Mericans still love pizza that’s sliced, loaded, and that you can eat with your hands.
Whether it’s a conscious decision on the part of these pizzerias to play to that or just the result of them following their own preferences, I cannot say. Obviously the answer will be different depending on the pizzeria in question.
Once you understand fermentation in terms of the brewing process, I’d imagine it’s not a huge leap to develop a curiosity about baking (or vice versa). And what better food than pizza to go with beer?
Why does it seem to be happening at brewpubs, you might ask? That I can’t say, though I would suspect that the common bond of fermentation has something to do with it. It’s necessary to both — with pizza it’s happening in the crust as the yeast eats and produces the gas necessary for rising as well as the by-products that can give a crust good flavor. Once you understand fermentation in terms of the brewing process, I’d imagine it’s not a huge leap to develop a curiosity about baking (or vice versa). And what better food than pizza to go with beer?
I’m sure you’ve seen this in your research, but there are a handful of pizzerias and/or pizzeria/brewpubs incorporating spent grain into their doughs. I don’t know who did it first — or if anyone can claim doing it first … I’m not super familiar with the history — so I don’t know if it was a pizzeria that approached a brewery about getting the spent grain or if a brewpub pizzeria started using it. The first place I started hearing about it was some pizzeria or brew-pub pizzeria (BPP) in Portland, Oregon (of course).
As for the wild toppings, I don’t know. I think we’re starting to see the pendulum swing from the minimalist ways of the early/mid–2000s pure Neapolitan movement to pizzerias that take inspiration from that, build on it, and experiment with it. (First you’ve gotta know the “rules” to break them, right?) Couple that with the RISE OF THE MILLENNIALS and all the eyeroll-inducing trend-watch stories that talk about how Millennials like wild-ass flavor combos, and that might explain the toppings and inventive saucing. In my own experience, though, which obviously is just me projecting, as a pizza-maker myself, I get tired of making and eating the same combos over and over and like to experiment. So that may also be where that’s coming from.
Anyway, that’s probably more than you wanted to hear. If you have any questions, LMK. Email is better, but I can do phone if you really need a phone Q&A.
Hasta la pizza,
Adam
