England and America, George Bernard Shaw (and Winston Churchill and various others) once said, are two countries divided by a common language. You don't need to cross the ocean to observe this phenomenon, however. All you have to do is to order a pizza.

When I was growing up, everybody knew that pizza in actually an American food, that it was imported to Italy and Sicily from the New World, and that it originated in Chicago. I've seen claims on Food Network, though, which is headquartered in New York, that pizza originated in New York.

You Can Always Tell Someone From New York

I think they have a case of Trump Syndrome. To someone from New York, being piled upon each other like rats in a warren seems to be a sign of superiority in some way. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, they claim, although the rest of the country wonders why anyone would want to make it in New York. Wouldn't anyone with any sense live where it's a lot nicer to live?

New Yorkers, you see, view New York as a place with a surplus of people. People living in civilization, however, view New York as a place with inadequate elbow room. Manhattan has about the same population as Hawaii, but Hawaii has nice beaches, while Manhattan has subways that reek of urine.

But You Can't Tell Them Much

It's possible, of course, that pizza originated somewhere else. Shakey's Pizza was the first one to use the phrase "pizza parlor", with pizzeria being the preferred term before that; they started in California. It is one of the doctrines of this church, however, that pizza originated in Chicago; live with it.

If you recognize that pizza actually is three entirely different foods, however, it's possible to conclude that it has three different birthplaces. St. Louis style pizza has a thin crust made with a baking-powder dough, much like a cracker. Chicago style pizza is a casserole on a dense bread-dough crust that is of necessity thick in order to support the weight of all those toppings. New York style pizza is all about the dough, hot, chewy, and greasy, and if you want it to be hot, chewy and greasy, you can't have a lot of toppings.

I'm Fond Of Chewy

I have to say that since moving to Lancaster, I've become fond of the New York style pizza. For a long time, Metro Express had two large one-topping pizzas for $10, pick-up only, and it worked out well for Blondie and myself; I'd eat several pieces, she'd eat several pieces, and our dog Isaac would scarf down the rest.

I noticed tonight, though, that Papa John was talking about his favorite pizza being sausage, pepperoni, and six cheeses. That got me thinking about what my favorite pizza topping is.

Pepperoni is a good topping, in some regards, but on the other hand, it's not really my favorite meat. Do you know anyone who ever makes himself a pepperoni sandwich? The spices are all wrong.

Sausage Doesn't Cut It, Either

I really like the flavor of sausage, but the problem there is that when it cooks, you end up with a pool of oil on the pizza.

A plain cheese pizza is good, but it's kinda bland. Hamburger is too bland, too.

Corrugated Cardboard

Blondie likes to buy frozen pizza at Amelia's, and other "used grocery" outlets, and add her own toppings. You end up with a midwestern pizza that way, a casserole. The crust is crushed under the weight of the toppings and can't rise properly, so it ends up resembling a sheet of corrugated cardboard. What's more, many of the toppings she adds are vegetables, and by the time they're baked hot, they've steamed the crust, which really isn't what you want.

I guess what I usually order is a sausage pizza, made with sweet italian sausage, although if I was making it myself, I'd probably make it with Polksa Keilbasa.

My DEEP Dish Pizza

I used to make a pizza that was extremely popular at parties - I took a loaf of frozen bread dough and thawed it, then flattened it out to fill the bottom of a 9x13x2 cake pan. I'd add an entire jar of the 69c Kroger-brand spaghetti sauce, which wasn't great on spaghetti but had exactly the right seasonings for pizza. I'd fry up a pound of Tennessee Pride sausage, and add that scrabble to the pan, chop up a huge (about 4" diameter) onion, and three large green peppers, and add those as well. I stirred in about 2 ounces of caraway seeds - yeah, it seems odd, but it really added something - to the sauce, and added an entire can, the 14-ounce size, of sliced black olives. Then I'd add 2 pounds of shredded pizza cheese, and stick it in the oven for about 90 minutes.

Just the appearance of this deep-dish pizza would boggle party-goers, and they get themselves a small piece, then come back and get another piece, a bigger one. Within a few weeks, I was getting invited to parties by strangers, and they'd ask me to bring along my pizza and volunteer to pay for the ingredients.

Sudden Popularity

And all sorts of people would come up to me, and say that they had something caught in their teeth, that they weren't complaining, that they really liked it, but they were curious as to what it was. I had originally run across it because Tennessee Pride had included it in their sausage, and I added more of it to the sauce, and I've never run across anyone else who included it in their pizza.

One of my housemates, a jewish psychology student from the east coast, preferred the St. Louis style pizza, although none of us called it that. We called it Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, because that's what you ended up with when you made a pizza using their boxed pizza mix. They were interesting and good - but not good enough to make them on my own once we were past that "alternating cook nights" experiment. The experiment didn't last long, because the housemate from Uganda liked to make a dish of burned rice, plantain, peanut butter, and curry that was only borderline edible in a pinch, although he seemed to love scarfing it down.

Thinking Of Favorite Pizzerias

In scouring my brain for perfect pizza, I remember Village Inn (who had great silent movies), Noble Romans (who threw their dough into the air), East of Chicago Pizza Company (friendly buxom waitresses and fairly good pizza), Cassano's Pizza (who made a nice peanut and pineapple chunk pizza), and Marco's Pizza (who has a great white pizza, and a wonderful vegetarian pizza with feta cheese and tomato slices). None of them strike me as being the perfect pizza, and I'm sorry, Papa John, but I swore off buying pizza from you years ago; I'm a married man, and I don't need to deal with your company to be treated that rudely.

But I think I've figured out the perfect pizza toppings, something that will allow a chewy crust to be baked, yet providing a nice snappy tang to the taste. I guess my favorite would be a cinnamon and brown sugar pizza. That wouldn't go too well with beer, though, so it's never going to make it for Monday Night Football parties.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Amelia's - caraway seeds - Cassano - Chef Boy-Ar-Dee - Chicago Style - curry - Domino - Donald Trump - East of Chicago Pizza - George Bernard Shaw - Hawaii - Kroger - Marco Pizza - Metro Express - Monday Night Football - New York Style - Papa John - peanut butter - pizza - Pizza Hut - plantain - rice - St. Louis Style - Tennessee Pride - Village Inn