Engendering Epiphany

Engendering Epiphany



As I mentioned in "Love's Labor" at Spot-On, one of my brother's and his kids were in town for a visit this past Labor Day. They stayed with my parents so I volunteered to take on the cooking. I smoked a pork butt and made pulled pork for dinner Friday night, they did pot-luck Saturday night and I returned to make pizza on Sunday night. (On Labor Day proper they returned to NYC.)

I talked to Loren, my brother, about food before they came down and learned his kids were finicky — even about pizza — but I figured if I got them involved in making their pizzas they'd be more willing to eat it. I was right and they polished off the pizza with relish, which Loren asserted was unusual. Cool. But far more interesting though, was my father's reaction.

I suddenly had a small epiphany of my own: pizza crust is bread.

Dad likes my cooking and is famous for eating anything. So when he told me a couple of times Sunday night that it was the best pizza he'd ever eaten I put it down to his natural enthusiasm and supportiveness. But when he called me today about another matter and mentioned yet again, "that was the best pizza I've ever had." I realized he'd probably never had a good pizza before and had never appreciated how extraordinary a dish it can be.

This particular version wasn't particularly extraordinary. It was crust, tomato sauce, mixed cheeses, onion and bell pepper, olives, and Italian sausage and pepperoni: a typical "Supreme." But that's what I was in the mood for and I was the chef — so that's what we had. Nevertheless, although alike in kind to a something you might buy at Papa John's or Pizza Hut, it was very different in intent. My intent was something very good to eat, not something to sell.

Years ago, when I was living in Eugene, Oregon and had started baking bread again I suddenly had a small epiphany of my own: pizza crust is bread. It's not a cracker as so many thin-crust pizzas make it, nor is it a sort of billowy, flavorless cake as so many "hand-tossed" versions seem to be. No. The crust is bread designed specifically to hold toppings. The first thing you should taste in biting into a piece of pizza is the bread. So I made a pizza relying on my latest epiphany. Meaning I made a standard crust recipe using bread flour. Yeah, I know, lame. But it bore out my epiphany (as did the fact that I let it rise a bit after shaping it).

Over the years since I've settled on a recipe that is somewhat (but not overly) chewy, full of flavor, puffs just enough during cooking, and doesn't have an under-crust reminiscent of a cracker. It is bread, for sure, but one whose purpose in life is pizza.

Step two in my pizza quest was finding a good sauce. The one I use for standard pizzas is a basic red (tomato) sauce that I use in other dishes as well. It's a good background sauce that adapts well to other dishes. It's flavor is simple on the surface and complex underneath with rich undertones from the tomato and anchovy pastes.

Cheese. I think of my mixture as a knife. I combine mozzarella for the blade, Fontina for the point, provolone for an edge, Parmigiano for sharpness, and (stay with me here) a touch of sharp cheddar to polish the edge. I once taught a pizza making-class to half dozen kids and I made a series of pizzas with nothing but crust and cheese and on each iteration I added another cheese to the mix. The kids were convinced.

On this particular pizza the Italian sausage was also made by me, the onion and bell pepper were fresh, the pepperoni from the grocer, and the olives were Sicilian with a lovely garlic note. Each topping was the best I could provide. Each bite combined a couple of different toppings, each topping large enough to clearly taste, but not so much stuff in a single bite as to become a mish-mash of flavors. And, beneath every bite, a clear flavor of bread — a clear theme uniting the whole with the cheese and sauce working as supporting players.

This was a pizza, made from scratch, by someone who loves pizza. I don’t think my father had ever had a pizza made like this before — no wonder he was impressed. Imagine living your life thinking all photographs were black and white while knowing the world is filled with color and suddenly discovering color photography. I think my father saw colors where he'd never seen them before. Epiphany.

Technorati: Food | essay | kevin weeks | seriously good | pizza