Pizza Debate to go along wih Bagel thread.

The Road to Pizza Nirvana Goes Through Phoenix
By ED LEVINE
''ALL we can do is put up smoke signals and hope somebody reads them,'' Chris Bianco was saying. ''That's all any of us can do. If the pizza guy is teaching you something, imagine what the smart people can do.''
Mr. Bianco, the chef and proprietor of Pizzeria Bianco here and the only pizzaiolo to win the best regional chef designation of the James Beard Foundation, was searching for words to describe what he does. He presented the pizza-making craft in terms a Zen master might appreciate.
''There's no mystery to my pizza,'' said Mr. Bianco, who won the Beard award last year. ''Sicilian oregano, organic flour, San Marzano tomatoes, purified water, mozzarella I learned to make at Mike's Deli in the Bronx, sea salt, fresh yeast cake and a little bit of yesterday's dough. In the end great pizza, like anything else, is all about balance. It's that simple.''
But how did a nice Italian boy from the Bronx, a soulful high school dropout with a penchant for self-reflection and a ferocious intellectual curiosity, end up making what just might be the best pizza in America in a city that by my count has more golf courses than pizzerias?
I posed that question, and a few others, as Mr. Bianco was in his usual place, making pizza in his restaurant in an old house in Heritage Square.
His menu is disarmingly simple: one starter (spiedini, which is cheese wrapped in prosciutto), an antipasto plate and two salads. One is a simple green salad, while the other consists of whatever goodies one of his local suppliers drops off at his back door. That night, it was composed of juicy tangerines with a perfect sweet and acid balance, paper-thin slices of fresh fennel, a splash of fruity olive oil and some Malden sea salt.
Then there are his pizzas. His crust is simultaneously thick and thin, puffy and crisp on the outside and softer and chewy on the inside, with hole structure like great bread. His mozzarella, which he and his staff make every morning, is creamy and slightly tart. The sauce tastes like the ripest tomatoes in concentrated form. His sausage tastes of fennel and pork, with just the right meat-to-fat ratio.
The Rosa, one of six pizzas, is made with red onion, Parmigiano-Reggiano, rosemary and Arizona pistachios, and is as multilayered and intense as Mr. Bianco himself. The Wiseguy pie has smoked mozzarella (he smokes it every morning in his wood-burning oven over pecan wood), roasted onions and fennel sausage.
My first bite of the Wiseguy melted in my mouth, as all great pizza does. The elements blended like a great jazz rhythm section.
''What I do is like a producer picking up the individual tracks of some unbelievable music,'' said Mr. Bianco, who often expresses himself in musical terms. ''It could be Miles or Mozart. All I do is take it back to the studio and remix it.''
Mr. Bianco lived in the Bronx until he was 6, when his family moved to Ossining, N.Y. His mother worked at Saks Fifth Avenue in bridal design, and his father was a portrait painter, who supported the family by designing wine and liquor labels. His father's paintings adorn the walls of the pizzeria and Bar Bianco, which are separated by a patch of grass and Mr. Bianco's herb garden. Pane Bianco, which serves four kinds of sandwiches a day on hot rolls baked in a wood-burning oven, is a couple of miles away.
Mr. Bianco had asthma as a child, forcing him to stay indoors and letting him spend hours watching his Aunt Margie cook. At 13, he was working at a local pizzeria and after the 11th grade, left school and went to work in restaurants. Cooking, he said, saved him.
''Most of my friends went one way, which turned out to be the wrong way,'' he said. ''I went another.''
In 1985, he won two plane tickets to anywhere in the United States, and he chose Phoenix. Why Phoenix? To this day, he does not know. Yet, he said, ''When I got here, somehow I felt connected to this place.''
He said he started making mozzarella in his apartment, selling it to Italian restaurants at their back doors. Eventually, a specialty grocer in Phoenix, Guy Coscos, offered him a corner of his store to put in a wood-burning oven and make and sell pizzas. Pizza became Mr. Bianco's obsession: ''I thought to myself that maybe I could make a living out of it.''
A move to Sante Fe, N.M., in 1989 put him in the world of Deborah Madison, the vegetarian cookbook writer, and her sous-chef, David Tanis. ''Their whole thing was about food and what made it special,'' he said.''
At the same time, he found himself in the forefront of the American food revolution, which placed a premium on tradition, localism and craftsmanship. Finally, he was able to draw on his childhood experiences.
''At last I had something to offer from my past, a reverence for what my family had,'' he said. ''I realized that what I had, what was in me, was something of value.''
Armed with newfound confidence and a renewed sense of purpose, he opened Pizza Bianco in 1994.
Ten years on, pizza is still fraught with meaning, cosmic and otherwise, for Mr. Bianco. ''I have invented nothing,'' he said. ''I'm just trying to do something, one small thing right. I'm on a mission, I have a responsibility, to do something with integrity and dignity.
''My menu might be small, but to me, it's the biggest thing in the world. Pizza inspires me, fascinates me and gives me hope.''

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Sir Humpsalot said:

New York Pizza? LOL. Yeah. Take a sheet of paper and add a little sauce an a hen's fart worth of ingredients. Don't forget to order 3 of them if you want leftovers because each large pizza serves one.

Pile mine up to the sky, that's what I say. You cut into that sucker and I wanna see a solid 4 inches of oozing cheese, tomatoes, sausage, pepperoni and garlic... hell yeah!!! And yeah, I want to taste bread on the pizza. Not lousy paper-thin wonderbread. I want a yeasty, sweet, thick and flavorful crust that you actually taste. And the ingredients? Did you listen? I said 4 inches high.

Paper thin new york pizza... pfft. Who are they kidding? They might as well put their toppings on a saltine. Like it's made for the Olsen twins. Pizza for anorexics. No thanks.

Baby, clear the fridge! I'm eating till I burst and I'm bringin home leftovers!!!

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Chairman Cheyco said:

I loves the big, deep-dishers, but I make thin-crust zah on my BGE and it's freakin' awesome.

I just need to figure out how to make deep-dish on the egg and order will be restored.

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EdWort said:

Just use a pan.

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c.n.budz said:

Thin Crust, Hands down. And, sorry to burst the NY bubble, but the true home of thin crust Napoletana pizza is Wooster St. here in New Haven. Pepe's and Sally's started it all.

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Neither, Detroit-style! Incidentally, no-one here actually calls it Detroit-style, but it's superior to both New York and Chicago styles.

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Brewtopia said:

New York thin crust all the way! And you fold the slice lengthwise when eating.

Best NY Style pizza on the west coast is Escape from New York Pizza on NW 23rd Ave in Portland IMHO. I started going to their original location on SW Alder downtown 30 years ago.

Chicago Style Pizza...yech!

And when in New York, do yourself a favor and head over to John's in Greenwich Village

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EvilTOJ said:

Thin crust? bah! It's a cracker! Gimmie the thick crust and lots of sauce and cheese mmmm.... I know I'll get crap for this, but my favoritest pizza in the world is a deep dish pepperoni lovers Pizza Hut pizza. Even better the next morning straight out of the fridge.

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k1v1116 said:

NY is the only place to get good pizza, even Italy doesn't have italian food as good as NYC.

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ilikestuff said:

How do a bunch of beer lovers not want the thick good crust. I mean bread is just solid beer, thin crust is like BMC.

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