"It's OK," François Payard told the assembled schoolchildren, many of whom looked suspicious. "The first time my girlfriend made me this pizza I tried to run out the door."
A world-renowned chef consoling kids about the charms of pizza? There's a role reversal. But many of them had folded their arms and were eyeing the pastry czar as he basted a whole wheat pita with sauce, lentils and -- gasp -- tofu. New Yorkers, even young ones up, know their pizza pies. Tofu is not usually part of the bargain.
The reaction to those pizzas and soy chocolate mousse, after the jump.
Few things, aside from tax cuts and the eyesight of ballpark umpires, incite more passionate debate among Americans than pizza.
Deep-dish versus thin-crust, canned tomato sauce versus fresh -- no detail is too small to merit an opinion or, in some cases, a heated diatribe. So GQ's list of the 25 best pizzas in America is bound to flame the (wood-burning) fires of controversy.
The list's creator, Alan Richman, is well aware that plenty of people won't be happy with his picks, but stands firm by his favorites, which were culled from pizzerias across the nation, from the grilled pie at Providence (R.I.)'s Il Forno Pizzeria Bianco's prosciutto-topped, coal-fired number in Phoenix, Ariz.
•Volcanic vino – a critic samples wines sprung from the ashes of Italy's still-bubbling Mt. Etna.
•Charcuterie: Have we gone totally hog wild for cured, salty meats or is it merely a passing fancy?
• Japanese pizza hits Canada; critic pans it as the "Hello Kitty" of slice-ville.
• It's maple syrup season for our neighbors to the north, which they celebrate by visits to "sugar shacks" and concocting syrupy treats like "maple sponge toffee."
• British PM Gordon Brown, in a nod to the unsavory financial climate, picks Jamie Oliver -- aka "The Naked Chef" – to whip up a frugal (or at least foie gras-free) feast for G-20 finance bigwigs. Read more about that here.
Sudokus are all the rage these days, and a Web site that morphed the numbers into colors, Colordoku, has taken it one step further. They merged their mathematical and foodie sides to create a replica of a successful Sudoku puzzle in delicious pizza form.
It's not the hardest project to take on if you use an already completed puzzle, but it sure takes some time. They laid out the puzzle boxes, and then filled them with olives, fresh basil, potato, onion, garlic, salami, zucchini, sausage and spinach.
The only unfortunate bit of this tasty puzzle piece is trying to spot the sudoku handiwork amid the sea of melted cheese. Then again, the effort might be worth it either way because you're sure to have something delicious to sink your teeth into on every square inch of that puppy.
Have you ever created something that fastidious in your kitchen?
For a long time now, I've been dreaming of guacamole on pizza. I've done the meats, seafood, and vegetables, the spicy and mild, the thick, crust-crumbling toppings and the less-is-more toppings, and I've even subbed pestos for tomato sauce, but I never got around to the other creamy green. A lot of this had to do with price -- I didn't want to spend a lot, or potentially waste the delicious avocado, on a pizza that might not turn out well. But then I saw a guac-centric pizza at a restaurant last week, and I rue my hemming and hawing.
If you love pizza, and you love Central American dishes, you must try fusing the two. The guacamole offers a great twist on the classic tomato sauce, and it teams well with sauteed veggies, pork (Cuban-style!), and a nice sprinkling of cilantro. It's like a larger and more diverse taco, and the tomato doesn't even have to be forgotten. Rather than the sauce, try adding some tomatoes broiled with spicy seasoning, or even a little bit of salsa.
Just like a towering pile of nachos, the South of the Border pizza is up for almost anything.
What to do with the leftovers? It's one of the great questions of cooking, if not of life. Lately, I've been making pizza with them. Truly, if you keep some pre-made crusts on hand (or mix up your own dough in advance), you can quickly turn last night's dinner into today's lunch.
For example, faced with leftover pork cutlets and some bacon that needed to get used up, I added some red onions, red peppers, mozzarella cheese and canned pineapple to make perhaps the greatest Hawaiian pizza I have ever had.
Some leftover chicken and an abundance of cilantro was turned into Thai pizza with the addition of some shredded carrots, green onions and peanut sauce. Made tacos last night? Taco pizza. Leftover steak and mushrooms? Philly cheesesteak pizza. Got a lot of bits left over from last night's hostessing cheese plate? Super-extra cheese pizza. There are as many possibilities as your imagine and your refrigerator can hold.
I'm generally very open to new technologies. I blog. I Twitter. While I don't have an iPhone (yet), I am perfectly sympathetic to people who feel the need to read CNN.com headlines during movie previews.
This, however, has me scratching me head: A "Pizza Cam" from Santa Clara, California-based Party Pizza pizzeria. You order your pizza, then log in to the "Dough Cam," "Kitchen Cam" and "Oven Cam" to watch your pizza in various stages of gestation. You can even get a Pizza Cam app for your iPhone.
I like the idea of knowing where my food comes from, but that doesn't generally get as specific as knowing what it looks like while the mozzarella melts. The phrase "like watching grass grow" springs to mind.
The titans -- national hawkers of furniture, shoes, clothing, computers, auto parts, electronics, jewelry and embarrassingly themed steakhouses -- are toppling, fatally bloated by mergers, acquisitions, leveraged buyouts and roll-ups. But amid the colossal corpses strewn on the corporate battlefield, a ragtag army of small businesses soldiers on: the pizza industry, 76,355 restaurants strong across America.
But pizza still belongs to the mom n' pop joints, as corporate chains just can't get ahead in the pie biz. Major chains account for just one third of the pizza business in the U.S., and that number has been falling for years. Why? For one, their crust stinks. Either make it from scratch, or don't bother. Secondly, pizza is in thrall to regional preferences, which chains can't meet. Thin crust in the East, deep dish in the Midwest, wood oven with creative toppings out West.
If we double our annual pizza consumption, pizza industry spending would rise to $172 billion a year, more than 150 times the $1 billion allotted for small businesses in the Obama stimulus plan, says Marx de Salcedo, someone tongue-in-cheekly. But eating moregood local pizza is never a bad idea.
Ever played a board game and started thinking about how well it would work in the world of food? I mean, beyond those interest-centric birthday cakes that are all the rage these days? Or the shot glass chess made to get you annihilated?
It seems that Settlers of Catan has done just that. Food was just about the last thing I was thinking of the few times I played it. (I was more in the "When will it be over?" camp.) Nevertheless, here we are -- Settlers of Catan pizza, gingerbread cookies (above), and cupcakes. We're not just talking food inspired by the game -- but food that actually mimics it.
Now if only we could get a completely edible Scrabble game...
I've mentioned before that my idea of hell on earth is a meal at Chuck E. Cheese, but if a Michigan franchise gets its way, they'll be easing the pain for parents with beer and wine offerings--adults only, of course. Other Chuck E. Cheese franchises offer alcoholic beverages, but one township trustee thought it was a bad idea, saying, "It's a fun kid place. Just leave it like that."
Eating rubbery pizza with fake-tasting sauce while listening to the whir and jangle of ten thousand games going at once and trying to make small talk with other parents while our kids race around on a birthday-cake induced sugar high is not my favorite way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and yet I seem to end up there several times a year. If I can take the medicine with a spoonful of sugar--er, a glassful of wine--it might not taste so bad.
No self-respecting American pizza lover would ever dare to use a knife and fork to dispatch a slice, unless it was Chicago style. Apparently folks across the pond have no shame when it comes to eating their 'za with the aid of cutlery. And one Neapolitan chain operating in London is none too happy about the situation. Rossopomodoro has banned knives and forks from its shops in Covent Garden, Chelsea and Notting Hill.
Rossopomodoro uses only ingredients sourced from Naples and is staunchly true to its Italian roots, hence their attitude toward people eating pizza with their hands. "Pizza is something you touch and share. You've got to treat a pizza like someone you want to make love to," said Rossopomodoro's managing director Simone Falco.
While I applaud any effort to encourage people to enjoy pizza as a sensual experience by eating with their hands the campaign's tag line, "Fork Off!" is clearly in poor taste. No word yet on whether Rossopomodoro's London restaurants will install metal detectors to enforce the ban.
The short answer is that durum flour is flour which is ground from Durum wheat. Durum wheat is a type of wheat that has an especially high protein content, and in fact its name derives from the Latin word for "hard".
Durum flour, with its high protein content, makes dough with unusually strong gluten. It's generally used in pizza dough and pasta, and its more coarsely ground cousin semolina is used to make cous cous. Though you can make bread with durum flour, recipes usually mix durum and regular wheat flour.
Durum wheat can be ground into semolina (sometimes called semolina flour if it's ground more finely) and durum flour, which can be referred to as extra fancy durum flour or extra fancy pasta flour. However, you can't really substitute one for the other. Semolina is a coarse grind and it looks a lot like corn meal. In fact a lot of bakers and pizza makers use semolina to dust baking sheets and peels so the dough doesn't stick (check the bottom of your pizza next time). Durum flour is ground as fine as regular flour and that's why it can be used in bread and pasta doughs.
I haven't ever been able to find real durum flour in a brick and mortar store, so I have to order it online. Semolina, on the other hand, is generally available in grocery stores, at least upscale ones. For more on the subject, here's a good page to check out.
(Click the photo to see the 10 Best Food Commercials of All Time)
We've probably all seen crop circles and we've all been exposed to pizza flyers, but recently Papa John's innovated a unique combination of the two.
According to the Fire Wire blog, this advertisement for Papa John's new whole wheat crust is cut into a wheat field near the Denver airport. It'll be seen by everyone flying in to the Denver area, just in time for the Democratic National Convention. The pizza chain apparently wanted to get in on the convention sales, but wanted to have fun with it.
I actually really like this ad. It's a lot more fun and less obnoxious than other Papa John's ad campaigns. What's your take on the pizza ad crop circle?
I whip up a homemade pizza pretty much all the time. With so much practice, I've gotten pretty decent at rolling my pizza slicer through thick piles of toppings and coming out with a nicely cut piece every time. However, if making pizzas and then trying to cut them is a big thorn in your side, you might want to check out the new pizza scissors, also called The Pizza Pro, over at Skymall. Just open the scissors up, slide it under the pizza pie, and cut. Pretty simple, eh? I just wonder how it deals with thicker toppings.
We got this tip from OhGizmo! and, if you happen to have a similar problem with ruining pans when you try to cut through a pizza without shnazzy scissors, just slip the pizza onto a surface you can cut on and roll or slice away!.
The only challenge in making super-fresh pizza is refraining from piling it so high with goodies that there is no way you could possibly pick it up and eat it because even the best doughs will crumble to the weight. I started my own pizza obsession with those thick, cheesy, and tasty flatbread starters that's just waiting for the ten tons of toppings. From there, I moved into bread machine dough, then no-knead dough, and now my personal favorite -- Robbie's Thin Crust Pizza Dough.
The recipe is easy, incredibly quick, and creates the perfect crispy, thin crust. But, if you happen to like it thicker, it's also pretty darned tasty rolled out thicker and smaller. For the pizza above, I started the dough, and got the other ingredients going while the yeast and water rested for 8 minutes. To make it extra crispy, I even threw the dough in the oven for a few minutes as I finished gathering the toppings. What came out was pizza heaven.
Another quick tip: If I don't have sauce, I mix together whatever I can find into a pseudo sauce. the tasty concoction above came to be from a small amount of frozen meat sauce, leftover vegan pesto, some jarred salsa, and olive oil.
We can change the way we make eggs -- scrambled, poached, fried -- but what about changing the eggs themselves? Mix up your scrambling routine with quail eggs.
What to do with the leftovers? It's one of the great questions of cooking, if not of life. Lately, I've been making pizza with them. Truly, if you keep some pre-made crusts on hand (or mix up your own dough in advance), you can quickly turn last night's dinner into today's lunch. 
Could mom n' pop pizza parlors end up being the last survivors of the economic meltdown? Anastacia Marx de Salcedo, writing in Salon, says so. She writes:
Second Helping of Slashfood - June 19
Competitive-Eating Contest to Pit Humans Against Elephants
The Backyard Boom - The Hungry Bride
