New York Style Pizza

While I am not a true New Yorker, I am a true Italian and I love my pizza. When I was younger I was a fan of the chain restaurants pizza. Pizza Hut and Dominos were among my favorite. It wasn't until I was in college and started going into New York more often that I realized how horrible those really were. New York pizza is untouchable and anyone who tries to mimic those pizzas should just pack it up now.

If you look at the crust of a New York pizza, you will see how crisp and dark it is. Most New York pizzas are baked in a brick oven. Only one of these restaurants can say that they use a coal fire brick oven but mainstream brick ovens are the norm and do the job just as well.

One thing I always hated about other pizzas was that the cheese was put on so thick that when you tried to eat it, the cheese slid right off. This was usually because someone put way to much cheese on the pizza. It does not make for good pizza. How many times have you gotten upset when you got home with a pizza pie only to find out that during all the movement your car did on the way home, the cheese came right off it. New York style pizza does not have this problem because they use the freshest ingredients they can find. You can tell the difference between pizzas that have been made using fresh mozzarella and pizza's that have been made using pre-shredded. You can not only see the difference, you can also taste the difference. Fresh mozzarella flavors the whole pie because the oils that are in it leaks right on to the pie itself. The bread absorbs the flavor and in return you get a pie that is delicious with each bite.

The sauce is key also. I use to hate pies that were overloaded with sauce. There were also pies that had chunks of onion or peppers in the sauce. A true New York pizza uses a very thin layer of sauce that isn't dressed up with lots of onions and peppers. Most pizzerias add a little something special to their sauces to make it their own and the rest of us will remain clueless as to what it is. I have heard some really good guesses in some pizzerias. Some people seem to think that nutmeg is the secret ingredient. Others feel paprika is the key. I've heard truly outrageous ones such as added vanilla to the sauce. It is almost a game in the pizzeria's as customers try to figure out what is in the sauces and the employees sit and laugh at the guesses.

My favorite part of the pizza however is the bread itself. There is no other pizza in the world that has a bottom like New York pizza. The bottom of the pizza is usually blackened by the brick ovens and it gives the whole pizza a smoky enhancement. To me it is the best part of the pizza.

While now I don't get to New York as often as I would like, I do manage to grab a slice of pizza every time I go into the city. New Jersey does have some very good pizzerias but they can't hold a torch to New York.