Pizza Day

I tend to be pretty particular about my pizza. When I lived in Virginia, I plotted out most of my region based on the tastiest pizza, the best priced pizza, and a few other key pizza considerations. While New York is a daunting pizza town, I've spent much of the past few years figuring out the best pizza places, calibrating the difference between amazing pizza and that which is simply acceptable, and generally trying to figure out how to best enjoy one of my favorite foods.

While I prefer mom and pop pizza joints, I have occasionally been know to frequent chain pizzerias. Of the major pizza franchises, my favorite was always Pizza Hut; their flavors always struck me as particularly clean, and their ingredients always seemed quite fresh. However, when I removed high fructose corn syrup from my diet, I started being able to taste it in fast foods. One day, while eating a pizza, I detected its foul flavor in the sauce. A little research confirmed my suspicion: Pizza Hut was using the dreaded HFCS. In a moment, Pizza Hut joined the foully-sweet Papa John's and the blandly repulsive Domino's on my no-eat list. My "pizza island" got a little smaller, a little narrower, and a little sadder.

Recently, however, the chain has developed The Natural, a pizza that allegedly uses vine-ripened tomatoes and all-natural mozzarella, while eschewing artificial ingredients like HFCS, nitrates, nitrites, artificial colors, and preservatives. According to some sources, they are planning to extend this all-natural trend to the rest of their line.

It looks like I may have to revisit one of my old favorites!

Do you have leftover pizza this morning? Don't reheat it in the microwave!

This pizza is so new that DiGiorno doesn't even have any info about it at their web site, except a picture of the box.

This is the latest pizza in DiGirono's "Ultimate" line. They just keep releasing pizzas that are the ultimate this and the ultimate that. They should just go ahead and name a product This Is The Only Pizza You Ever Have To Buy, All The Others Suck. But I guess that would mean they couldn't release any new pizza products.

This is pretty good actually. It's incredibly thick and has a crunchy focaccia crust, and it's probably the heaviest pizza box I've ever carried out of the store. At first I thought it came with its own pizza stone or something. Right now it's in two flavors: cheese with sun-dried tomatoes and pepperoni with spicy red pepper flakes. I tried the former, and while the taste of toasted sun-dried tomatoes got to me after a while (definitely a topping you can't overcook), it was tasty and filling. Tonight I'm going to buy the pepperoni version (and kudos for someone finally releasing a pizza that has those red pepper flakes on top!)

Pizza, that inexpensive, staple food of students and late night revelers, is about to get a little more expensive. Pizza shops and other businesses that use a lot of flour are feeling the pinch of rising prices and are starting to pass those costs along to the consumers. According to a report on Philadelphia's NBC10, in addition to being effected by rising fuel costs, flour prices are also going up as farmers plant corn in place of wheat in order to meet the demands of alternative fuel manufacturers.

Pizza will still remain relatively inexpensive, with slice prices going up in $.25 and $.50 increments. Whole pie might run you a buck or two more than they did in the past.

[via NBC10]

Source

I've been seeing these commercials for the new Freschetta PizzAmore. It comes pre-sliced and the ads promise that it tastes just like one that you'd get in a pizzeria.

Um, it doesn't.