Pizza Makes the World Go Around
“I realized that pizza is… a way of connecting with the world and with ourselves. When we eat pizza, we are not just nourishing our bodies, but our souls as well.” Elizabeth Gilbert
The first time I ever saw a slice of pizza, I was a 10-year-old boy in Flatbush, a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. The year was 1950. A new take-out pizza restaurant had opened on Avenue J, and people were lining up to get a slice of pizza.
The aroma of burnt cheese wafted out of the store. It was an unfamiliar smell to the young Jewish boy who had never eaten anything that wasn’t kosher, except for the obligatory Chinese food on a Sunday. Through some twisted logic, my family decided that it was OK for observant Jews to have wonton soup and pork spareribs so long as you were not sitting facing the kitchen. Woody Allen, who grew up in my neighborhood and went to the same elementary and high school as I did, joked about this. He said that it wasn’t that God didn’t want Jews to eat Chinese food, just in certain restaurants.
But our rabbi had given us no advice about eating pizza. All of my friends had come to love pizza and asked me why I wasn’t joining them. The truth was that I had a hard time eating unfamiliar foods. But one day I broke down and went into the store, bought a piece of pizza, and after the third bite I was hooked for life.
The Origins of Pizza
Pizza is a very old food. Not, hopefully, the slice you are eating now. It is a type of flatbread that has been around in some form for thousands of years. Various ancient cultures, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus civilization, produced flatbreads including pizza and pita. The word pizza was first documented in AD 997 in the southern Italy city of Gaeta. Some historians believe that the origins of modern pizza can be traced to pizzelle, a type of paschal bread that was made into Passover cookies. Some historians believe that the origins of modern pizza can be traced to pizzelle, a type of paschal bread that was made into Passover cookies. Roman Jews would eat these after returning from synagogue on this holiday.
Pizza was always a cheap food for the masses. Today’s pizza originated in Naples, Italy in the early 1800s. It was a fast and inexpensive dish for Neapolitans on the go. The innovation that led to flatbread pizza was the use of tomato as a topping. By the late 18th century, the poor of Naples added tomato to their yeast-based flatbread, thus creating modern pizza.
A 1738 restaurant named Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba is regarded as the world’s first pizzeria. By 1807, 54 pizzerias in the city sold their delicious pizza. This number grew to 120 in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 2014, Italians consumed 3 billion pizzas for an average of 17 pounds per person per year.
Pizza became popular in the 1940s when Italian immigrants brought pizza to the United States. In 2015, Americans consumed 3 billion pizzas. That amounts to 46 slices (23 pounds) per person.
Memories of Sally’s Pizza
On my first date with the woman who was to become my wife, we went for pizza on nearby Coney Island Ave. The restaurant was a few blocks from the synagogue that I attended until my bar-mitzvah. A friend suggested that we order a pizza with garlic, an idea that was new to us. It was delicious, dripping with olive oil hot out of the oven. We finished it in 15 minutes and considered ordering another pie, but we were too full.
A year later, in 1961, we married and moved to New Haven. I asked around for the best pizza in the city and learned that Sally’s Pizza was considered the best in Connecticut. (I recently googled the best pizza restaurants in the United States and Sally’s was still number one.) Their free-form Sicilian-style pizza was wonderful, but the lines around dinnertime were out the door and around the block.
At that time Sally’s only cooked a few pizzas at a time, so even when you got into the restaurant you had a long wait. We got into the habit of ordering a pizza every Friday night, together with a dozen clams on the half shell. We spent four years in New Haven and had hundreds of their pies. When we got to California, we couldn’t find anything comparable but did the best we could.
My Personal Pizza Creation
About 30 years later, when I was now in my 60s, our middle daughter gave birth to two children, Ethan and Emily. I finally had grandchildren and wanted to spend as much time as I could with them. They bought a house near ours in Larchmont, so it was easy for me to visit. When my grandchildren began high school, I spent Tuesday nights with them making pizza for dinner.
I found it a wonderful way to get close to them and for a few hours share a part of their lives. We had a fixed routine: I would pick up two pizza doughs and a container of sliced sausage from a local pizzeria. My daughter would provide a can of black olives, red peers, shredded mozzarella, and two jars of tomato sauce. They always had lots of garlic handy. My son-in-law share my affection for Sauvignon Blanc, so there was usually a bottle cooling in the refrigerator.
Ethan would take out two rectangular metal trays and oil them. We learned that pizza dough needs to warm to room temperature before stretching. When it felt warm enough, he would stretch the dough to fit the trays. I turned on the oven and set the temperature to 500o. Emily spread out the tomato sauce on both doughs, leaving a sauce-free border, and then sprinkle on the mozzarella. At that point, we would discuss the toppings for each pizza to use that evening.
We had to wait about 20 minutes for the pizzas to be done. Meanwhile, we would discuss interesting ideas. I was teaching high school physics at that time and was continually seeking ways to explain theories of, say, how the universe began. I tried these out on my grandchildren, who were not yet taking physics. My grandchildren would ask me great questions, and I did my best to clearly explain my answers. Through these evening conservations, I got to know them and had the chance to try out ways to explain physical concepts to teenagers. I cherished our conversations, which went on for four years until they went off to college.
Basile’s in Hoboken
One Spring morning a few years ago, I biked to Hoboken, New Jersey with my friend Bill. It was a beautiful five-mile ride along the Hudson River, and we were hungry by the time we arrived. Pizza was on our minds. We pulled up to a traffic cop and asked him where we could find the best pizza. He smiled and said, “Tell me what you guys want most in a pizza.” He then recited a list that makes pizza the beautiful food that it is: fresh ingredients, oven char, sauce, cheese, topping, and crust. Bill said, “Crust, of course.”
The policeman said, “OK. You will find the best crust you ever ate at Basile’s, on the corner of Washington and 1st Street. They sprinkle panko on the pan before laying down the dough. It makes the crust crunchy and delicious. Try it and tell me if I’m right. I’ll be here for an hour.”
So, we went to Basile’s, and he was right. We rode our bikes to Basile’s and chained them to a signpost. It was noon and the sun was shining. We watched the people passing on Washington Ave at lunch hour. We ordered inside Basile’s and brought our first slices of margarita pizza. We sat down outside on metal chairs around a tiny table. The pizza’s crust was unique and delicious. We stopped talking until we had eaten the first few bites. We ordered seconds and ate and talked for another half hour. Sated, we unchained our bikes and started the ride home. As we left Hoboken, we stopped to thank the cop. He said, “My pleasure! Glad you enjoyed it. Basile’s has been open for 30 years, under different names. They say Frank Sinatra used to go there whenever he visited his hometown.” Wow, I thought. Maybe we had sat at Sinatra’s table!
I love to make pizza. My pizza is either round or rectangular, depending on what tray I bake it on. Both shapes are delicious. Sometimes I make Pizza Marinara, whose crust is topped with tomato, oregano, garlic, and virgin olive oil. It was traditionally prepared by seaman’s wives for their seafaring husbands upon returning from fishing trips in the Bay of Naples.
Other times I make Pizza Margherita, which is topped with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and fresh basil. Its colors evoke the green, white, and red colors of the Italian flag, and in 1889 it became the favorite of Queen Margherita of Savoy. Making this type of pizza makes me feel connected to the Queen.
I confessed in the Introduction that I buy prepared pizza dough from a supermarket. It always works. I have had no luck with making dough of any type, hang tried, and failed again and again. My family members who are versed in the mystery of baking enjoy making fun of me. No pizza of mine for them!
Pizza and human beings go together on a deep level. Its ingredients are basic: dough made from wheat flour, cheese from cow’s or sheep’s milk, oil from olive trees, and sauce from tomatoes. When I’m happy, I eat it and it makes me happier. And when I’m down, I order a slice and cheer up. I’m sure that pizza will remain one of the truly great foods invented by humanity.
