• Welcome to Talking Time's third iteration! If you would like to register for an account, or have already registered but have not yet been confirmed, please read the following:

    1. The CAPTCHA key's answer is "Percy"
    2. Once you've completed the registration process please email us from the email you used for registration at percyreghelper@gmail.com and include the username you used for registration

    Once you have completed these steps, Moderation Staff will be able to get your account approved.

Patently Perfect Pizzaz Pies: The Pizza Thread

LBD_Nytetrayn

..and his little cat, too
(He/him)
I see this stuff about making pizzas at home, but all with tomato sauce, which... fair.

But I tend to prefer what I understand to be a "white" pizza, with a cream sauce. That especially pairs well with pepperoni, I find (a pepperoni personal pan pizza with Alfredo sauce from Pizza Hut is like a small piece of heaven for me).

Any recommendations there?
 

Torzelbaum

????? LV 13 HP 292/ 292
(he, him, his)
I guess being forced to consume themselves is the only fitting punishment for Bagel Bites but I think that would violate the 8th Amendment.
 

ThornGhost

lofi posts to relax/study to
(he/him)
Recently I've been working with a limited ingredients pool due to some digestive problems my wife has been having and I've come to appreciate a pizza made on tortilla with pesto instead of tomato pizza sauce.

Preheat the oven to 350
Take a flour tortilla and apply pesto, cover with an Italian cheese blend of choice and then mushrooms
Put it in the oven for about 12 minutes

It's a very herb-forward and exceptionally crispy personal sized pie. We've also made it with salmon. I've been a fan of pesto pizza for a while but using it on a tortizza style pizza really puts it over the edge. Go easy on the pesto and cheese for an acid-friendly version.
 

Daikaiju

Rated Ages 6+
(He, Him)
Tried the Cheeseburger pizza btw... It's not bad, but definitely something I'd only have once a year.
 

zonetrope

(he/him)
I live in New Haven now, and the variety of pizza here is pretty mind-blowing, especially coming from Ann Arbor, where you can pretty much only buy giant, doughy frat-party pizzas. Every place has its own distinctive style, and residents' allegiances run deep.
 

zonetrope

(he/him)
Mostly that mozzarella and red sauce are considered toppings in their own right rather than a default, and the pizza is cooked incredibly fast in a coal-fired oven, which gives the crust a chewy charred texture that's way better than the word "charred" makes it sound.
 

Büge

Arm Candy
(she/her)
It means it travels back in time and tries to introduce modern ideas and devices to Arthurian England, ultimately ending in tragedy and death.
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
In the early 2000s, our hometown had a Brazilian-style pizza place. A little overspiced, but it was interesting and they baked cream cheese in the crust.
 

Mr. Sensible

Pitch and Putt Duffer
You can also make pizza in a cast iron skillet. If you don't have a pizza stone, this is a good way to get a really nicely done crust in a standard home oven.
This is good advice, and you can even grill your pizza this way. My brother has a 14" cast iron pizza pan and we've made some damn tasty pies on the charcoal grill with it.
 

Droewyn

Smol Monster
(She/her, they/them)
As a native of the Detroit metro area, I feel as though I would be remiss if I didn't post about Buscemis' pizza, as it is my all-time favorite.

DJ9YhnzUEAA7il4


They make round pizzas, but the real stars are their original Sicilian and Detroit-style pizzas. And while you can get the whole range of usual toppings, simplicity is best here as it would be a crime to overpower the flavor of the thick, chewy crust and the spicy/sweet, tomato-paste-based sauce. We've been doing a lot of ordering out since COVID, but there's really nothing that compares to walking to the back of the dimly-lit liquor store and ordering pizza by the slice -- middle piece, please, I'll wait if I have to -- that'll be handed over wrapped in neat little aluminum foil squares that won't make it out of the parking lot intact.
 

Patrick

Magic-User
(He/Him)
Detroit-style pizza is legit, and blows Chicago-style "pizza" out of the water
Man, calling deep dish pizza not pizza is lame. Are you from NYC or something? Are you tapping into a well of comedy from like 10 years ago?

Deep dish is a great sometimes food. it's heavy as hell and I don't order it very often, but it's nice to have available for when I want it. I really don't understand why people feel the need to attack it like it'll make their regional pizza style better somehow. Just let it coexist and talk about what's good about your favorite pizza instead.
 
I think indulging in healthy rivalry over inherently trivial matters is fine, and good even. (It's basically the core philosophy behind organized sports.) Just so long as things are kept civil and the importance of which isn't blown out of proportion. I do find it generally uncouth that to talk something up, people feel the need to make a negative comparison to something else, so I see your frustrations and apologize for inflicting that. But that's also something that is just human nature and something everyone does and is hard to regulate and/or untrain yourself to do all the time. I also think it's not something that's inherently bad, it is a natural part of the human decision making process. It's just the way that you do it that makes it bad/toxic. And I think that you can definitely go too far in policing tone to the point where dissent and negative emotions are never given a home/venue for expression which is a different kind of toxic and unhealthy, but I digress.

For what it's worth, I'm not from NY, I'm from CA - I'm used to everyone and their mom saying our pizza out here is dogshit, so I figure it's all fair game/in good fun.

I really don't understand why people feel the need to attack it like it'll make their regional pizza style better somehow. Just let it coexist and talk about what's good about your favorite pizza instead.
This is a philosophical matter that I've actually thought a lot about. Like all things, I'm sure the reason is complicated and varies from person to person, but pizza is in a unique position in American culture that naturally brings this kind of competitiveness out in people. For me, the two biggest reasons are:

1) Basic sports-brain: Yes, people ought to value and respect each other's food/cultural/regional preferences, but competitive drive and tribal affiliation is part of human nature and something that can be enriching and rewarding if harnessed responsibly. Competitive sports is an obvious realm of this, where people can get heated up about something ultimately trivial, and then when it's all over go back to being friends/coworkers/etc under a mutual understanding that it's all just a game with no real impact or stakes in everyone's everyday lives. Competitive multiplayer video games is another realm of this and works to varying degrees depending on if the people involved can regulate themselves enough to stop saying gamer-words at each other. But this kind of regional competition extends to pizza in an almost unique way in the food world. Most "regional" food is truly limited to a specific region due to long traditions (North-East seafood; Southern BBQ; Tex-mex; etc) and/or is pretty standardized across the country due to modern distribution and the power of the Information Age. Pizza is a food that has unique regional traditions all over the entire country, and those traditions have spread and mixed thanks to the steady/rapid flow of people and information throughout the country.

2) Pizza is a uniquely shared food: Most of our culinary experiences that have been crafted in this country have been touched by how they're consumed. Most people when going to a restaurant wouldn't share a bowl of soup among each other because the nature of the food itself doesn't lend itself to sharing easily with our cultural moores. Yes, you can divy up soup into smaller proportions, but if everyone is just getting their own bowl, everyone can also just order their own bowl and cater it to their own tastes. Most meals are like this when you go out to eat. There are also of course, individual-sized pizzas. But most people going out (or taking out) specifically to eat pizza in a social setting, will get one to share. And we do this in a way we don't do this with the vast majority of other foods. And our culture is not particularly adept at sharing/handling compromise when everyone is otherwise ordering their own food to eat for themselves at all other times. With a pizza, you have to pick a style/toppings that everyone can agree to. And that's going to inevitably lead to rankled feathers on occasion, when some people feel they're compromising too much, or being asked to pitch in for something they don't even like. Ordering a pizza as "half and half" helps some of the time, but you can't get a half-deep dish, half-thin crust pizza. So that low level of resentment from the failures of compromise can build up and help inform people's opinions. I know it's affected mine. I wish I could get back just some of the money my friends forced me to spend on pizza I didn't like, and all those unpleasant experiences have definitely affected my willingness to eat those other types of pizza over the years.


Deep dish is a great sometimes food. it's heavy as hell and I don't order it very often, but it's nice to have available for when I want it.
I have often made the joke about deep dish being a casserole, not a pizza. I only half mean it. I do think that for myself, a lot of the appeal of eating a pizza is in the experience of eating it as hand-food. Especially when coming from a cultural background where hand food is generally looked down upon: it was always fun to get a legitimate excuse to eat food with my hands as a kid. So it always felt wrong or dissatisfying to eat a pizza with a fork and knife. But deep dish pizza is to me, a lot like having a burrito over a taco - they're still going to taste good, and they're still mostly the exact same ingredients that taste pretty similar once it's all being smashed up inside your mouth. It's just the different delivery system and which one you prefer on any given day that makes the difference. I actually like deep dish just fine, but it's never my default and rarely would I choose to pick that way to organize the ingredients over another.

Another reason for why my appreciation for deep dish is lacking these days is because I've relatively recently developed GERDs, and anything with tomatoes sets it off hard. Pizza in general has become tough to swallow (literally) but deep dish is like an extra level of stomach abuse when the amount of tomatoes and sauce in a deep dish is generally way higher in proportion to other styles of pizza.
 
Last edited:

Daikaiju

Rated Ages 6+
(He, Him)
True Deep Dish always struck me as a sit down meal you enjoy with firends and family. Slow down and savor kinda thing.
 

LBD_Nytetrayn

..and his little cat, too
(He/him)
Detroit-style pizza is legit, and blows Chicago-style "pizza" out of the water
Man, calling deep dish pizza not pizza is lame. Are you from NYC or something? Are you tapping into a well of comedy from like 10 years ago?

Deep dish is a great sometimes food. it's heavy as hell and I don't order it very often, but it's nice to have available for when I want it. I really don't understand why people feel the need to attack it like it'll make their regional pizza style better somehow. Just let it coexist and talk about what's good about your favorite pizza instead.

"So for now, let the battle be here, on this strange, primitive world. And let it be called...



I think indulging in healthy rivalry over inherently trivial matters is fine, and good even. (It's basically the core philosophy behind organized sports.) Just so long as things are kept civil and the importance of which isn't blown out of proportion.

...whoops.
 
True Deep Dish always struck me as a sit down meal you enjoy with firends and family. Slow down and savor kinda thing.
It is also really good to eat while sitting by yourself on a curb, with your hands, drunkenly at 2am. (Yes, most things are pretty good in that scenario, but pizza is extra good, and when you're hammered you stop caring so much about a deep dish getting everywhere.)
 

Patrick

Magic-User
(He/Him)
I over reacted a bit. I don’t mind that people prefer other pizza, but something about claiming that deep dish isn’t pizza at all is a sore spot for me. I specifically asked about NYC because the last time I was there several people tried to argue that deep dish isn’t pizza after I mentioned I was from Chicago. Like, we weren’t even talking about food. It was weird.

i’ve had a number of pizzas in California & they were all good. I don’t think they were any kind of regional specialties though.
 
I think arguing about how their everything is superior to the rest of the country is just a New York thing.
 

Büge

Arm Candy
(she/her)
2) Pizza is a uniquely shared food: Most of our culinary experiences that have been crafted in this country have been touched by how they're consumed. Most people when going to a restaurant wouldn't share a bowl of soup among each other because the nature of the food itself doesn't lend itself to sharing easily with our cultural moores.

Ah, but you forget about that other uniquely American dish: chili.
 

Paul le Fou

24/7 lofi hip hop man to study/relax to
(He)
Pepperoni is good. It's spicy salami, which is also good. It's great on pizza because a little goes a long way to add a lot of that spicy-tangy flavor so many people love (which is why it's in such thin slices), which is key in a lot of basic pizza styles - topping balance and not going overboard. It's delicious when crispy, which is a thing that happens. But also if you're in the "MORE TOPPINGS" camp, you can put a ton of pepperoni on there without the pizza turning into a mountain of toppings ready to collapse at any time.

My standard go-to pizza these days is pepperoni and veggies - usually olives, onions, and mushrooms. All-veggie pizzas just don't have that kick I'm looking for, but with some pepperoni on there, it all comes together. Even most meat-lovers pizzas are basically "a buncha meat that kinda blends together + pepperoni, which is what you're all really here for anyway." I dunno, I've always preferred strong, bold flavors to subtlety in foods, like Indian, middle-eastern, southeast asian, east asian cuisines, etc. Pepperoni brings that to pizza for me.

Note, the above is all generalities and common pizzas. A really good pizza doesn't need pepperoni or anything to be delicious, and of course I love fancy pizzas "flatbreads" like the aforementioned caramelized onions and goat cheese, or prosciutto and duck egg, or whatever. But if I want a pie or a slice from a pizza joint, 9 times out of 10 I'm getting that pepperoni on it.

Please, pizza aficionados, what is the best method for reheating it?

The easy way is to toss it in a toaster oven.

The best way with slightly more legwork is to put it in a pan with a lid over medium or medium-low heat until the toppings get hot. Then, drip just a couple drops of water into the pan away from the pizza and keep the lid on until they boil away to get a bit of steam in there. Nice and crispy and hot, but the lid and steam keep it from getting too dried-out.

Hot take incoming: I think pepperoni might be the single worst topping on a pizza ever conceived.
Detroit-style pizza is legit, and blows Chicago-style "pizza" out of the water
Woo, two bad takes that take bad together.

Man, calling deep dish pizza not pizza is lame. Are you from NYC or something? Are you tapping into a well of comedy from like 10 years ago?

Deep dish is a great sometimes food. it's heavy as hell and I don't order it very often, but it's nice to have available for when I want it. I really don't understand why people feel the need to attack it like it'll make their regional pizza style better somehow. Just let it coexist and talk about what's good about your favorite pizza instead.
It's a really tiresome meme, definitely. Especially because Chicago-style deep-dish pizza is Very Good and the haters can go jump in Lake Michigan.
 

Daikaiju

Rated Ages 6+
(He, Him)

MCBanjoMike

Sudden chomper
(He/him)
We got a pizza oven! It's an Ooni Koda, a small propane-powered oven that makes 12" pizzas in about a minute at up to 900F. It's kind of our Christmas present from my parents, but I wanted to get a hold of it ahead of time so I could...make pizza for my parents with it. Assuming it's ever safe enough to see them over the holidays, that is. Anyway, the oven only arrived yesterday and we have to do a 30-minute test burn to check the gas connections and burn off any residues or whatever that could be left over from the manufacturing process. That'll be done tonight, and tomorrow we'll actually use it to make pizza! I am very excited. 12" is a little small as pizzas go, but the larger model of oven is a lot more expensive and takes up more space. Plus the pizzas cook super fast, so who cares if you have to wait for the next one? We also got a pair of pizza peels so we can make-a da pizzas on them ahead of time, reducing the dead time between cooking. I will report back on Friday with the results!
 
We got a pizza oven! It's an Ooni Koda
I saw this on Slickdeals last week. I was sorely tempted to just impulse buy one, but we don't have a place to store it. 😂

12" is on the small side for when you're buying pizza from a restaurant, but in practice at home, you almost never make pizzas that big. Because you're not being constrained by restaurant economics, and it's easier to manage just making more personal sized ones with assorted toppings.
 

Torzelbaum

????? LV 13 HP 292/ 292
(he, him, his)
Here's an unofficial* poll question for all of the pizza lovers here:
When you are ordering a pizza - how often do you get only a single topping compared to how often you get multiple (different) toppings? (For the purposes of this question getting extra of the only topping does not count as more than one topping.)

I'm not sure what the exact ratio is for me but I think recently I have been getting multi-topping pizzas more than I have been getting single topping pizzas.

*It's unofficial because the response really requires something other than a binary response.
 
Last edited:
Top