Do you have some kind of extension like an ad blocker? It’s fine in Firefox and Safari on a clean install so I’m wondering whether there might be some issues related to how large the page is or possibly a video driver problem.
It crashes for me on macOS. I have a couple of password manager extensions and React Developer Tools installed. I would not be surprised if it's LastPass.
Edit: Interestingly, Chrome flashes a couple of times too when I scroll down to the section of the page with the Carto map plugin. I can see when I inspect the DOM that there's supposed to be an iframe there, but it looks Chrome is just killing the iframe rather than crashing to desktop.
Safari hangs but does not crash when it gets to Carto. So something is screwy with that map plugin.
> but the overall quality of your average slice in the city has definitely suffered
This is true of the big national chains, too. They've kept prices relatively stable for damn near 25 years, at this point, but quality has gotten far worse over that same time span. That mouth-watering Pizza Hut pie you remember from 1992 isn't all nostalgia—every now and then I find single-location or small-chain joints that make pizza very similar to how I remember those tasting. Thing is, those are like $15+ a pie now, with a coupon or special. But you can still get larges for $8 or less (coupon or special, which are available 100% of the time) at the major chains—they're just not the same pizza you were getting in the 80s up to about the late 90s.
[EDIT] In fact, the 2020-on inflation is the first time I've seen the big chains seriously give in on keeping price increases in check. They've gone up like 20% in the last couple years.
At the risk of sounding like an ad I’m kind of startled at how not-terrible Little Caesars is for the price. A lot of food and a completely reasonable tasting and baked pie for stupid cheap when compared to almost everything else.
Seconded, cannot relate. They're worth the $6 or whatever but not a penny more. Better than most $6 frozen pizzas, I suppose. They have that going for them.
They're also a good example of this, actually. They'd held their $5 price point for a long time but had gradually been cutting toppings until they were comically bare. Then they introduced a $6 "extra toppings" (or something, I don't recall the way they phrased it) pie that just had the same amount the normal ones used to.
Post-Covid I'm pretty sure the sad-pie price is up to $6, and the actually-has-toppings edition is $7.
I'd never defend Little Caesar's as amazing pizza but it does exactly what it's supposed to, i.e. hits the spot when you're looking for primal satisfaction of a craving for a greasy pile of dough and cheese. When I want "real" pizza I walk down the street for something Neapolitan or NY-style but if I'm hanging with a large group of friends and feel like pigging out then I see nothing wrong with going all-in for some Deep Deep Dish from LC.
In my metro area they increased prices to $7. However, quality has drastically improved. If you haven't tried em recently they are very different than the old thin, taste like nothing, Little Caesars pizzas.
Are they using real cheese nowadays (even bulk processed cheese)? If so, perhaps they have improved. The last time I had one (which was admittedly a long time ago) they were using some kind of "imitation cheese-flavored product" or something along those lines.
I'm bistellar: I love both Star Wars and Star Trek.
But I fully realize that Bladerunner is astronomically better than either of them.
And none of those masterpiees keep me from fully enjoying smutty trash like Space Truckers, or even any of Philip K Dick's horrible random short stories.
This is how I explain my refusal to learn anything about the varieties and nuances of "good coffee". If I learned to appreciate good coffee, would I still be able to enjoy common dinner coffee? I fear not.
I'm fairly sure I have a well-above-average ability to appreciate actually-good coffee and actually-good pizza—but am also genuinely happy with the bad stuff, even though I'm entirely aware it's bad (within reason—I've had a couple gas station cups of coffee that weren't just bad, but wrong, and I wasn't able to finish them, and instant coffee usually gets a polite "no thanks" from me, but if Folger's or Kirkland Ground or whatever is what you've got, I'll be truly grateful to have it)
I'm not that way with wine and beer. I don't like bad wine or beer at all. I will turn it down or just drink it to be polite, not enjoying it a bit.
I think the difference is I never liked bad wine or beer, while I started out liking bad pizza and bad coffee before I learned what the good stuff tasted like. So, you might be safe.
[EDIT] Reflecting more on this, part of it may be that I regard bad coffee and bad pizza as pretty much totally different things from good varieties of the same—I just happen to like both. I don't really consider one a substitute for the other, I guess. Bad coffee is just coffee-flavored... but I like coffee flavor! Good coffee has all kinds of flavors going on. If you're interested in getting into that, I recommend finding a highly-regarded local roaster doing a tasting event—I personally find it much easier to get into a new flavor-related thing, such that I can start to understand it and pick out various notes, if I can do side-by-side tastings of various examples of the thing, all in a short span.
It's similar with beer and wine, I just happen not to like "beer-flavored" or "wine-flavored", the way I do like coffee-flavored coffee or find greasy bread smeared with salty cheese and tomato sauce satisfying even if it's pretty awful—get me the nice stuff that has more going on and I'm in heaven, though.
The trick is to learn to enjoy all coffees for what they are. I'll take gas station murk in a pinch, and I'll drink it black when no options are available. But I also love coffees that are $10-15 per pound. But I usually buy in the $7 range. It's about being content, not being snobby, no matter how much you spend.
Edit: Agreeing with another commenter in this thread that some coffees at gas stations are truly awful and are immediately thrown away. Those aren't legit coffee though, and don't count toward what I said above.
This might be wise advice. I have spent a lot on gear, and I buy bags that are typically around $30/lb, although there are some great blends that can be picked up for around $15/lb.
It has ruined the cheap (Robusta) coffee for me. There are diners that make a great medium roast cup and use Arabica beans.
But the good coffee sure is good, and it’s fun to get familiar with the varieties.
You can enjoy anything if you try hard enough. I go to great lengths to get the best coffee and prepare it in the best way possible, but I'm still very happy to drink an imperfect cup of coffee. Some of the worst coffee I can imagine is whatever they serve on American Airlines flights. It has such a weird flavor, I'm not even sure it's actually coffee. With all of that in mind, I am looking forward to drinking the next cup of airline coffee that is offered to me ;) It's something different, even if it's different in all the wrong ways.
It's a one-way street. You can love cheap poorly brewed coffee but once you have tried better the cheap stuff becomes undrinkable. Like going from a touch tone back to a rotary dial phone. Impossible.
Until my early mid 20s I never like coffee at all. Then I tried double cream and sugar coffee, then milky cappuccinos, then massive syrupy sweet Starbucks.
After years of "acclimatizing" I thought I'd branch out. I bought a grinder, fresh coffee beans, a scale, French Press, 16:1 ratio. I went black and never went back.
Coffee made well from fresh beans freshly ground has a sweetness a caramel like after-taste. Very little bitterness (comes from brewing too long) and can surprise even those who pile on milk and sugar or even salt to mask its bitterness.
All that fancy coffee prep still doesn't give you what a good diner coffee delivers though: a warm hug after a long night, or hanging with friends, or a big family breakfast, or talking with a potential soul mate after a first date... or countless other things I associate with drinking coffee in a diner
I don’t know. I make my own espresso drink every morning with locally roasted beans, but about twice a month I got to a cheap diner for breakfast and slurp down 3 cups of their black coffee with a smile on my face.
One of my favorite coffee experiences was on an Amtrak. The cup of coffee was $2. It was served on a Pepsi branded paper tray thing. Carrying it up the narrow staircase was fun. I enjoyed every sip. It tasted like cream and sugar and the coffee my grandma used to make out of a metal tin.
Even the late Anythony Bourdain could espouse on the greatness of an "objectively terrible" Wafflehouse meal.
There's a time and place for everything, and even the snobbiest of us food snobs can appreciate the time and place for the likes of Little Ceasars, Costco Pizza, Wafflehouse, et al.
I also love Waffle House's food despite, maybe even because, it's 'bad'. Their waffles are legit good; the rest is coffee shop slop of the highest order. Recommended. (Glad Bourdain had the guts to say this)
Little Ceasars is worse a in that it’s a bad pizza that gets worse over time. It sort of tastes like nothing until it cools, at which point it tastes like cardboard.
That doesn't mean he would have liked little ceasers. If anything, it really seems like you don't understand his point about the charm of waffle house.
I contend Anthony Bourdain didn't actually know good food from bad. I have nothing against him, I enjoyed his show, it was quite engaging, and I wanted him to dispense good information--so I could use it--but his recommendations, for instance in the NY City area, were awful. (he prided himself on not describing the food he was trying, all he ever would say it is, "that's good".)
His career as a chef was at a brasserie serving brasserie fare which is basically like working at a French diner, not necessarily anything that's going to educate your palate.
Again, not criticizing him, I'm actually envious, I wish I could be happy eating mediocre food, my life would be much simpler.
The elevation of haute cuisine as “good” and common folk food as “mediocre” is strange to me.
Sometimes a cheap-ass $5 meal really does satisfy people far more than a Michelin star restaurant. Humble bragging about only being able to enjoy non-normie food sounds silly and unrefined, really.
I'm not referring to that. I'm referring to things like "what's the best pho" or pizza or pupusa or ramen
I do think as a chef learning haute cuisine is learning useful things about cooking and what makes some bread better than other bread, and what consistency a sauce should have and how to achieve it.
Costco's pizza works out pretty damn well on a just-get-some-calories-in-me-but-don't-make-me-cook basis, too, if you want something you can carry out. Two days of calories for $10.
I don't know what it is now, but Cici used to have $1.99 all you can eat pizza buffets on certain days of the week. This would have been in the mid 90s. Unbelievably (suspiciously?) cheap even for then.
Little Caesars used to be so much better. This was the time period when they were selling you two pizzas on a paper-wrapped flat for the price of one major chain pizza.
Not sure when they switched to extreme value focus.
Costco pizzas fill that niche for me. Ton of food for $10, somewhat better than Little Caesers, and until cost cutting measures during the pandemic, a very passable combo pizza.
Pizza Hut pan pizza is the easiest pizza to make yourself at home. You don't need a stand mixer, it's a no knead recipe (long overnight rise builds all the gluten). You don't need a fancy super hot oven, it just cooks at 400 degrees F in a cast iron skillet. Give this recipe a shot, it's unbelievably good and very accessible: https://www.seriouseats.com/foolproof-pan-pizza-recipe or https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-srfPL5CWZs
The Ligurian focaccia recipe brines it with salt water, which you don't strictly have to do but helps considerably, and bakes at 450F, which arguably so should any cast-iron pizza because the crust won't crisp up as much at 400F.
Focaccia is basically pizza without the sauce so I'm not sure if the clarification is helpful? Wikipedia claims that some places even call focaccia pizza bianca
There is no way that New York style pizza can be compared to Focaccia. They have almost nothing in common. Now that Chicago thing, maybe. But as far as I'm concerned, that's not pizza.
No one said this was NY style. The original comment was lamenting that Pizza Hut pan pizza doesn't taste as good as it did in the 80s and 90s. I pointed out recipes that directly mimic that classic pan pizza style. Pizza Hut is not and has never claimed to be New York style pizza. It's an entirely different style that's neither New York nor Chicago style. It's closest to Detroit style pizza.
Pizza by ingredients is just flour, water, salt, yeast. All the details and differences are in hydration and how it is mixed/kneaded/baked. It really is the definition of "the devil is in the details".
Yes and if you've had a Pizza Hut pan pizza it tastes just like a buttery focaccia bread smothered in cheese and sauce.
The ATK recipe at 400 degrees works because you cook it on the very bottom rack right next to the heating element. Then when it's done you cook it longer on your range at medium heat to really crisp the crust--it's in a cast iron pan after all. You can get the crust as toasty as you want.
I make pizza at home. If you let the dough ferment cold for at least overnight, the results are pretty darned good. I usually do a 3 day ferment in the fridge.
I've done fancy dough plenty of times, but mostly just use lazy bread-machine dough these days. It's serviceable same-day—not as good as fancier preparations, but not as far off as one might think—and does also benefit from a night in the fridge, if one thinks to make it the day before. Just have to let it get back up to room temp before cooking, or it won't rise properly. Takes like five minutes of hands-on time, which is all just gathering and measuring the ingredients.
I've pretty much come to this conclusion as well, but I do still often cook the pizzas on my 12" Ooni Karu woodfired mini-oven though.. you don't get the same level of "leopard skin" / micro-bubbles, but it's mostly there.
If I have a bit more time, but still relatively lazy, I'll use the stand mixer, but proof in my oven for an hour or two, which has a proofing mode which is basically a low temperature steam oven for a nice warm humid environment.
My bread-machine dough takes 5 minutes of hand-on time and is ready in two hours. It's not as good as if you let it rest or do a fancier hand- or mixer-prep, but it absolutely will not keep your pizza from being better than any of the major chains (not that that's a high bar, but still).
You can get a nearly the same results in a couple hours if you keep a sour dough starter in your fridge and use the discard from that in your pizza dough. Add the discard to your warm water along with the yeast to warm it up.
For amazing flavor, yes. But the biggest upside to pizza at home is that it is almost literally impossible to make a bad pizza. You can definitely do same-day dough, or even just buy dough balls from the grocery. Its hard to shortcut letting yeast work their magic.
I've got about as good a home pizza game as one can have without a modded or specialty oven, and can confirm, cast iron pan pizza is the perfect place for a newbie to start. The transfer from peel to cook surface is the most likely thing to go catastrophically wrong for someone starting out—pan pizza eliminates that step. No special equipment needed whatsoever—no peel, no stone, don't even need farina or coarse cornmeal on-hand. You can just cut it with a chef's knife or a cleaver (those are better than those stupid round-blade spinning cutters, anyway, and they're not that much worse than the long rocking-blade variety). About the only way to ruin it beyond fixing is to forget about it in the oven. It's an almost fool-proof dish, and great for building confidence that you can make good pizza at home.
Important note: when home-cooking pizza, you can easily fake the peel with a large cutting board (wooden! Plastic may melt!) only for the taking-out portion. It may require a little more manual assistance, but it does the job. It's a much worse idea for putting the pie in, though (you can probably make it work, but... I wouldn't risk it)
This is handy if you don't want to own more than one peel, but do want to be able to prep a second pizza on a peel while the first one is cooking.
I just make the pizza on parchment paper on the counter, and then pick up the whole thing and transfer it, with the paper, to the pizza stone in the oven
This is an OK alternative to my peel-method posted below, but it can be tough not to let the toppings pile toward the center, since it tends to bow downward in the middle. I've done it before, it works alright.
I eventually settled on this too. My oven is a standard oven, not super hot, so we get enough heat through the paper from the stone before the top is done. But I do think a semi-deep cast iron pan pizza is ideal and foolproof for the home cook.
More transfer medium than you think you should need. Experiment with the amount.
If you don't know what I mean, I'm talking about coarse-ground cornmeal or farina, the latter of which is a very coarse-ground wheat flour sometimes used to make a kind of cereal-mush kinda like oatmeal or cream-of-wheat—but it's also outstanding for this job; coarse durham-wheat can do in a pinch, but it's too fine to really be good at it, plus it tends to be expensive while farina's usually cheap (and so's cornmeal, but avoid the fine stuff, you want the coarsest you can get).
You put this on the peel before placing the stretched dough on it and adding toppings. Just spread it in a layer over the top of it. It helps keep it from sticking, which makes the transfer easier.
I've found different peels require different amounts. I had a shitty looking peel that was somewhat-rough, unfinished wood and it didn't require much. It got ruined (I'll spare you the details, but, kids) and I replaced it with a cheap but fancier-looking one I found on amazon, that's dark-stained, smooth acacia or some shit. It's awful. I need so much more medium on it to keep the pizza from sticking. I've thought about roughing it up with sandpaper, see if that helps, but haven't tried it yet—if yours is smooth-finished and you want to be a pioneer, maybe try that. First pie I tried to cook with that thing was the first I'd ruined in years. Still mad about it :-)
You probably don't need so much that you can't see any of the peel under it, though, even on one that bad. My better peel only required a light dusting, once I got my technique down.
Point is, definitely use that stuff, and experiment with the amount of that you put on. The more you have to use, the more waste and the more mess, so there's good reason to dial in what you actually need and not just pile a ton on every time, but you need some amount.
As far as technique: shake it loose over the sink (so any cornmeal or flour that falls off goes there instead of the floor or whatever) right before transferring to the oven. Just hold it level and shake horizontally, forward and back or side to side, until the whole pie's loose and moves freely. If you have spots that stick really badly, uh, try to lift it up and put more medium under it? This has never worked well for me, I've just gotten good at making sure that doesn't happen, but sometimes you can save it that way.
Then, when transferring into the oven, you need to hold it at an angle shallow enough that gravity alone will not do the work—too steep an angle, and it'll pile up when it comes off. You'll need the same sort of shaking action here, but because it's tilted a little it'll also slide off as it goes. Start with the edge of the peel way at the back of your stone, maybe just an inch or so from the back edge of it, and move it forward as the pie comes off, else your placement will suck and, in the worst case, some of it won't be on the stone.
For your specific question: For one pizza for one, I start with the dough prepared as in the posts. The dough is in a covered plastic container, about 12 ounces to leave room in cases of the dough expanding. I dump the dough on a round sheet of Teflon. The sheet just nicely fits in the bottom of a common cast iron frying pan. I got the sheet from a long roll of such Teflon from Amazon, sold for drying fruit or some such. But it's Teflon so will withstand the heat of cooking -- it should and in my experience of some years, does.
So, now the round sheet of Teflon is on my cutting board and the pizza dough has been dumped onto the Teflon. Then with fingers, I press the dough to be round and nearly covering the Teflon. As in my posts, then I add tomato sauce, Mozzarella cheese, and slices of pepperoni sausage. Right, I have found no need for electric mixers, rolling pins, cooking spray, etc. Fingers work fine.
Now for your question, how to move to the frying pan!!! I slide a spatula under the right part of the Teflon, and that serves to support about half of the sheet and the raw pizza. So, with a right hand finger on part of the Teflon to keep it on the spatula and two left hand fingers to support the left side of the Teflon, I carry the stack to the stove and the frying pan. So far, I've never dropped anything! But it would be a little safer to have the frying pan, so far just at room temperature, also on the cutting board so that the trip of the Teflon circle to the pan would be really short.
WOW! Right! Just thought of something MUCH better! Have the room temperature frying pan on the cutting board or even just the countertop, put the Teflon sheet in the frying pan, and THEN add the toppings, dough, sauce, cheese, sausage, etc. Sooo, no moving to the frying pan at all!!!! 100% no worries, no risk!!!
When the pizza is done, I slide the spatula under the Teflon and carry it and the pizza to the cutting board. At this point, the pizza crust is a little stiff and easier to carry without flopping. And, again, so far I've never had any trouble from this trip from the pan back to the cutting board and the action with a chef's knife. Since I'm no candidate for a champion of high coordination, I'm sure you can do this move just fine!
Else, put some heat resistant pad on the cutting board and move the whole frying pan to that pad and, thus, have a very short distance to move the cooked pizza to the cutting board and knife action!!!
A "heat resistant pad"? How about just a pot, about 2 quarts, cool?
Eventually develop a whole methodology around launching pizza. Use a smooth floured wooden paddle. Know how much sauce a certain dough can hold before sticking. Avoid ingredients in sizes that tend to fall off. Test motion before putting in the oven, and if its sticking know that you can reflour under it piece by piece but attempting to launch a even slightly sticking pizza will always end in disaster.
If cooking on entirely flat surface, the parchment paper method described in other comments works well, though it's precarious with larger or heavier pies, need two people to avoid having the parchment paper spill out. If cooking in a cast iron pan, I just preheat the pan in the oven, and have all the ingredients set aside and dough prepared, and when the oven is ready, pull out the pan, put pan on stove top, lightly oil, and put dough in pan, and then put toppings on it fast and insert in oven. This works for the dough recipe I use, YMMV.
I ended up getting 2 peels. Wooden to launch, steel to remove. Also use semolina or cornmeal on the peel and as soon as the dough hits the peel the clock starts so move fast. Always have the toppings ready to go before that point.
My problem with homemade pizza was how much it costs. As someone who likes lots of toppings (pepperoni, sausage, olives, you name it), a pizza was costing me over $20 to make at home. At which point I guess I'd fail to see the point since it's now costing more and taking a lot of time.
Yeah although pickled or canned stuff like mushrooms, olives, etc. work great and you can just stockpile them in your pantry when you see them on sale. I usually make my pizzas with sausage instead of pepperoni because I find ground sausage cheaper than pepperoni. If you find stuff on sale all the core ingredients like cheese, sauce, etc. can last in your freezer for a long time.
I buy the ingredients in bulk at a warehouse store and freeze the stuff that normally goes in refrigerator to prevent spoilage. Both meat toppings and cheese would mold if I left it in the refrigerator too long.
Counterpoint: A $10 large "brooklyn" pizza from Dominos today is vastly better than any Pizza Hut or Dominos pizza ever was in the 90s. Not as good as a pizza from a halfway decent independent pizzeria, but half the price.
That's only because Dominos infamously, sometime during the 2010s(?), ran a campaign that amounted to "Our current pizza sucked, but we've got a new recipe that's better."
What's weird is I was around for that, was in college and ate Domino's pretty regularly at the time, and everyone seems to believe it was indeed a lot better, but I thought it was a ton worse than what they had before. Just tasted like a lot more MSG and oregano.
I felt the same way. When I was in my early 20's, little caesers had $5 pizzas, so of course Dominos did $4 pizzas. One topping, large. Believe it or not, both were decent. No, nothing compared to NY slices or what have you, but good enough.
I tried Dominos after the 'realignment' and found it much worse than I remembered. But, it could be I hadn't eaten there in a few years prior...maybe it went from good, to bad, to ok in that timespan?
Yeah I occasionally get caught in the trap of trying their Brooklyn crust and every time I come to the conclusion that it's a lackluster disappointing product that isn't in any way different from any of their other pizzas in terms of quality. I've maybe had dominoes 2 times in the last 5 years which is why I keep forgetting XD
They tricked me once. I was hoping for something akin to Pizza Hut's short-lived early-'00s "Big New Yorker", which wasn't really like NY pizza but was a lot better than everything else PH was serving at the time. Nope, just as bad as their regular pizza.
Agreed. A good pizza is $20 retail, $8-12 at home.
I think the pizza problem is two-fold. Like Jewish Delis, ethnic Italians are exiting the business and selling the local shops. Instead of working 60 hours a week in the shop, the kids are mortgage brokers and IT guys.
The other issue is that manufactured pizza components are better and cheaper. You can be a lower skill operator and still churn out a mediocre product. So a shitty local shop is using a similar premade dough and mediocre cheese that a chain is using.
> Like Jewish Delis, ethnic Italians are exiting the business and selling the local shops.
that was the problem a generation ago. The new problem is that very few customers now know what good pizza should/could taste like, they're not very "Italian" any more either.
The big national brands did a big stealth price hike a few years ago when they took away free delivery. So that $15 pie is now about $25 or $26 by the time you add fees, taxes, and tip.
Checking through old emails from Papa Johns (Garbage pizza, but sometimes you WANT garbage pizza.)
I know it was free delivery at somepoint, but it's hard to pinpoint as prior to 2010 their emails didn't include a broken out receipt, just a total.
But, in 2010 it was $1.99 then soon after went up to $2.50.
In 2019 that was bumped to $2.75.
No orders between late 2019 and early 2022.
Early 2022 it was $4.49, then shortly after $4.79, then bumped to $4.99 in July, where it is as of my last order a few days ago.
> The biggest thing I have noticed is the decline in the amount of sauce put on slices. I’m sure this is a cost-saving measure, but the overall quality of your average slice in the city has definitely suffered.
Isn't cheese more expensive than tomato sauce? Why would the restaurants skimp on a cheaper ingredient (tomatoes) instead of more expensive (cheese)?
this is not a direct answer to your question, but cheese quality varies more than tomato quality, and NYC pizza in the inexpensive tier already switched to it's-not-really-cheese a few decades ago, so there is little room for saving except by withholding. Possibly customers want the very visible cheese-like product more than they want the sauce so scrimping on the cheese would turn more customers away?
The shrinkflation thing is getting out of hand. Not pizza, but I like those Kaukauna brand almond covered cheese balls. They replaced the 10 ounce product with a 6 ounce one, and then charge 10% more for the smaller ball.
Too bad Liam didn't track the average weight of the slices. I have a hunch that might have tracked down as well.
> That mouth-watering Pizza Hut pie you remember from 1992 isn't all nostalgia—every now and then I find single-location or small-chain joints that make pizza very similar to how I remember those tasting.
100% their pizza has changed from the 90's. There is a single location in Gettysburg that I ate at twice and LOVE it - Tommys Pizza on Steinwehr Ave. They even have the textured red plastic soda "glasses" that Pizza Hut used. Solid old school Pizza Hut.
Yeah, while not my favorite, Sal & Carmines is great. Only other truly great slice joint on the UWS is Freddie's (which is phenomenal). A new-ish place, Mama's Too on 106th, isn't too bad either.
Spent my adolescence going to S&C's nearly day of summer vacations. My closest childhood friend and I always grabbed two slices and sat at the table directly behind the column. Even though the original proprietors have passed on, the cheese slices are still world-class. The flavor of nostalgia probably enriches the sauce and cheese, but Sal and Camrine's remains the slept-on great slice in Manhattan.
Yeah unfortunately sal passed on maybe 7 years ago? But his grandson now operates it and was working under sal for quite a while before sal passed, and I didn't really notice a difference in the quality of a slice after the grandson took over. Unfortunately I moved to Colorado a few years ago and it's impossible to get even a mediocre slice here, let alone my favorite of all time
What's great about pizza in New York is the spontaneity. After a night out there will always be somewhere nearby with a pretty good slice of pizza. The best pizza I had while living in New York isn't any better than the best pizza I've had in Seattle but the average slice was much better.
There's so so many places honestly. I could rhyme off a half dozen more on this list that some new yorker would say is "the best".
But coming from out of town your expectations are probably sky high. If pizza is high on your list, go for gold. It's a fun thing to do in the city. Also you need to treat both categories separately - slice, and whole pie. different game.
One is an objective thing (boomers are those born between 1945 and 1962) and the other is subjective (Williamsburg, Billyburg, Hipster Doofus Land) labeling.
The first isn't the case (I was born after 1962) and the second is a matter of opinion.[0]
But please. Do continue to pile on. I don't want to take away one of your few pleasures in life.
Toodles!
[0] Here's another one for you: If you can't put New York, NY after your address, you don't live in New York.[1] Have at that one too, friend.
[1] As a NYC native, I note that I've lived in every borough except Stagnant Island (for obvious reasons) over the past 50+ years. As such (no Dunning-Kruger[2] effect necessary, can you make such a statement?), I am entitled to make such pronouncements.
Dollar slices aren't just a slice of pizza for a dollar, they're a different business model focusing on just sheer volume. Joe's has at least 3 employees (cashier, guy taking your order and reheating the slice, and guy making the pizzas), plus prep people in the back, and 4+ different pies, and 20+ seats. The dollar place I go to has 2 guys, they don't reheat it, any toppings are just added onto your slice not actually cooked into the pie, no seats. I'm ignoring differences in quality/quantity of ingredients because I've had some great dollar slices, but also some abysmal ones.
Many who grow up in the NY area grow up on pizza. In childhood, it's often eaten as a quick meal that doesn't require cooking. In adolescence, pizza is one of the only foods you can afford to eat out with your friends after school. In college, there's nothing like a drunken slice of pizza at 1 am. It's hard to overstate what a satisfying comfort food pizza is. There's truly nothing like it.
I, personally, occasionally miss choking on the super stringy cheese of bowling alley pizza of elementary school era birthday parties. Do not miss drunken pizza of college as much.. Now it's just mostly costco frozen 5-pack
The Ninja Turtles got this picky-eater-as-a-child fella to give it a fair shake. Was my undisputed favorite type of food for like 15 years straight (when I started trying more things and discovered Middle Eastern and Indian food).
And that's out in a part of the country with mostly-bad pizza options. Nothing half as good as a so-so NY slice, certainly.
It's different in NY due to the ubiquity, downward pressure on price, and all-hour coverage. You can be nearly anywhere, at any time, and be fed in minutes. You often eat while standing and remaining social. The experience anchors itself in your mind as an instant, omnipresent solution to hunger. There's also probably something to the infinitely nuanced territorial aspect of which slice is better (the answer is Prince Street).
Less mentioned about NYC is the 24-hour egg and sausage breakfast sandwich, fresh off a griddle. This, more than pizza, was my staple when I went to college in New York.
Kaiser rolls are really the shit. It should be noted to the class warrior above... you used to be able to sit down in a lot of sit-down restaurants on the Lower East Side, and get a basket of free kaiser rolls and butter before you even ordered food. A foreign concept, I know! You could eat em and scram if you were of the mind to. That was when people had more class than to get a little nudge of self congratulations from judging each other's pocketbook based on which cheap fast food they ate, hoping for a popular online mob to agree with their stupidly ill informed opinion. But this will all fall on deaf ears, so, hallelujah there's still cheap breakfast sandwiches, and let the culture warriors who never experienced human civilization stick it up their ass.
Wtf are you talking about my guy. Subs are larger and carry more meat, so the sandwiches cost more. There’s no quality judgement in that statement (also weird to think of a sub roll as like some kind of luxury). It’s like saying a small coffee at Starbucks costs less than a large.
Starting to think maybe you’ve never been in a deli!
Egg and bacon / egg and sausage were like $2 when I was there in the 90s. And they were about twice the diameter of the ones you get at McDonalds. I don't know what it costs now, maybe this is something like avocado toast that's become anomalously expensive, but calorie for calorie it was as cheap or cheaper than pizza back then. They could be bought from most bodegas that had a stove, as the peer points out. (The LA equivalent of this type of bodega was the "roach coach" - distinguished from modern food trucks by (a) an apparent lack of formal licensing, (b) presence of construction workers eating there, and (c) charging about 30% the price for the same items. The breakfast burrito, however, had not yet migrated to the East Coast).
At most non-fancy corner stores they're still under $4. Usually under $3 if you just want egg & cheese. And they're always made to order - ketchup, mayo, salt/pepper, hot sauce, on a roll or bagel, 50 cents extra for a tomato. I know New Yorkers can be a little insufferable about their bodegas, but I've lived in a few other major cities and none of them have provided me with this much access to a cheap breakfast.
It's true though, good breakfast burritos are still hard to come by here.
Thanks for the delicious reminder of how good those are! Nice to hear they're still competitive with pizza prices! I only eat once a day, since before college, so breakfast foods were like a sort of yearned-for delicacy in my world, especially at 3am in Brooklyn. That or cheap dumplings if I was anywhere near Chinatown. Hot corn muffin from the street vendor out my door if I was absolutely hung over and needed something in the morning...
Back on the west coast, the price of a breakfast burrito at my local cart has almost doubled since covid, and the burrito got smaller. My conclusion is that burritos are a scam. The contents of the classic round breakfast sandwich are much harder to fake.
I really miss the McDonald's egg and sausage muffins, mediocre as they are. They stopped doing the special breakfast menu during the pandemic here in Spain and it never came back. They only have it at the airport locations now.
The McCafe locations have a Spanish omelette roll again but it's not the same thing :'(
Absolutely not. I've lived in a lot of places in the US, and almost none of them outside of a couple of major cities in New England had the equivalent of a NY slice. This has only changed somewhat recently (maybe past decade or so). Even still, it's not nearly as ubiquitous.
It's kind of similar with bodegas, a lot of people will say "we have corner stores too" but that's not a bodega. It sounds snobbish sometimes but there are a lot of actual differences.
I’ve spent time in New Haven and NYC and… not even close. Sure there’s good slices in New Haven, but there are also pizza deserts, and a lot of them. New Haven does compete with NYC on restaurant-style pizza though.
Yeah this is how this conversation typically goes "but we've got good pizza from X, Y, Z restaurant" — is not the same as just walking to the corner and paying $2 for a big cheese slice — the NY slice is essentially a street food, like street tacos are in some states along the mexican border
> I've lived in a lot of places in the US, and almost none of them outside of a couple of major cities in New England had the equivalent of a NY slice.
I agree and would compare it to chips (French Fries) from a chipper in western europe. Grew up on the stuff and a bag of chips was affordable after school, was cheap when in college, and food from a chipper is a relatively cheap and delicious dinner option. I live in the US now and it's funny that I've not come across chips as a standalone meal, except in Irish/UK expat communities.
That you can blame on sugar in everything. Even what was blamed on saturated fat turns out to be caused by sugar and trans fat ("hydrogenated vegetable oil", now more-or-less banned, with certain disgraceful exceptions).
The dough is all carbs, which causes the same problem as sugar, and I am sure many places use sugar in their sauce. Unless you are doing a lot of cardio, a slice of cheese pizza is pretty void of nutrition.
The starch in dough is broken up into glucose, which is absolutely fine: nobody gets sick from eating starch. It would be better with some fiber, so your intestinal bacteria could have some of it.
The problem with sugar is that it is half fructose, and fructose is processed on the same pathway as alcohol, in the liver, and causes the same illnesses as alcohol. It is much better, if you must eat it, to eat enough fiber with it that your intestinal bacteria get much of it instead.
If you don't keep your intestinal bacteria well-fed, they are obliged to eat you instead.
Grow up on can mean a lot of things here, I and many other New Yorkers would take it to mean the food that has the most significance in our memories. Its not about eating this stuff every day, it’s about the food we cherish.
100g of salted mozzarella has 300 calories, saturated fat, and sodium. Ultimately, pizza is basically 3 ingredients: bread, tomato sauce, and mozzarella. Most people don’t consider those individual ingredients particularly unhealthy.
A good point but it's less about daily diet (sure, some people might), more about it being a go-to treat, for "cheat days" (days set aside to "cheat" during your diet), parties, sports games, work or school special occasions, etc.
As a person who also grew up in NY, the slice was part of my childhood. I'd walk home from middle school and then high school and pass the local pizzeria where I could pick up a slice, Italian ice, and play coin operated video games. Galaga, Donkey Kong, and Pacman. I miss those carefree days where the world was simpler and the pizza tasted better.
I generally like pizza, but more interested in rich and sophisticated toppings, not just dough and cheese. Normally I have pizza about once in a month (except when I am vacationing in Italy, of course). If what you are saying is close to reality, I think I have an answer to US obesity problem.
Anecdotally, I've felt the same way. Didn't properly record it.. but, slices these days in NYC (and outside) are definitely lacking in sauce lately. Some places even feel like they're cutting on salt and oil too.
I will add that the quality also highly depends on when you go. Generally, the busier it is, the worse the quality.
The author states that Joe's is one of the better ones, but I think the quality has gone down too. I was there in 2014, 2017, and 2022. Digging up my photos to review the sauce amounts, but I felt 2022 was very lackluster to previous memories.
I can't turn up my spreadsheet just this second but I did something similar when I worked in Manhattan. I did 54 slices. My big takeway was that I really don't like Joes and that I will die on the hill that Pizzeria Suprema, despite being touristy , is the best slice that I've had in Manhattan.
Yup, that's pretty par for the course at most places that sell by the slice. Dollar slice places now mostly charge $1.25-$1.50 for a plain cheese slice.
Seems ridiculously cheap to me. here in Phoenix, there are 2 restaurants near me that do by the slice, both around $5. Most restaurants don’t offer it.
I have only spent a month or so in NYC working a decade back, and at the time every thing was more expensive than home except pizza. I think every region probably has its cheap food for the working class. Here it’s tacos, there it was cheap slices.
How big are the slices near you? Im assuming large-ish like a NYC slice, where 6 slices will make the pie. If you are paying $5.00 for a slice of cheese pizza in Phoenix, that means a whole cheese pizza would cost $30 USD? That is insanity. Granted I think it would be cheaper if you bought a whole pie, but for dough, cheese and sauce that is still a very healthy profit.
I agree every region has its own good cheap food. Interesting stuff.
I found my favorite pizza places through him, I really liked his taste. Unfortunately a lot of the places on that list have either closed down or changed.
I find the perceived sensitivity to food pricing, especially in high income areas like NYC, interesting.
The author points out that in 8 years, the average cost of a slice of pizza has hardly moved, but the amount of sauce on them has been reduced as a cost cutting measure.
Would a pizza place really see reduced traffic if they kept the same recipe and raised their price another $0.55 to compensate for inflation?
I stopped eating out almost entirely because throughout the 2010s, I feel like the probability of receiving an acceptable quality meal kept declining.
I would much rather pay $25 (or more) per meal that is good 99% of the time than pay $15 for a meal that is good 80% or 60% or 40% of the time.
Obviously, I am sure restaurant operators know their business, and maybe it just is not economical for prepared food to be good 99% of the time at a price that sufficient sales can be made.
I lived in Manhattan for the last year, and lived within train distance as a child, and it's pretty striking how much changing economics affect what you can get.
Notice that all the slices are plain CHEESE or some variant of it (you can get it with no sauce, or no cheese too!)
I can't get a mushroom or veggie slice anymore at so many places? Feels like a recipe for malnutrition and weight gain.
If you ever get a chance, try to grab a pie from Chrissy’s Pizza (no store, made in a home oven in BK, have to follow on insta for when pies can be ordered). For slices, NY Suprema good as well
And some of the best slices can be found across the river in NJ - just travel up Bloomfield Avenue into the Caldwells and there are great slice shops all over.
Curious how the dollar slices added up to a non-whole dollar amount. The name would imply that a dollar slice is $1. Is $.99 also considered a dollar slice?
This is a fascinating list. No Mama's Too, no Prince St, no L'Industrie, no F&F. All of which are probably my top 4 for slices. Scarr's is there though, which rounds out my top 5.
I don't eat a lot of pizza personally but I do love a good slice. What I love about New York isn't necessarily that we have the best pizza (although we do have places that are in the running for the best), but that the average quality is so damn high. You don't get a lot of overly doughy, bad cheese, bad sauce BS unless you frequent dollar slice shops.
> You don't get a lot of overly doughy, bad cheese, bad sauce BS unless you frequent dollar slice shops.
I've eaten at plenty of dollar slice places and honestly find them adequate for the price. I think I've only ever had one terrible slice, ever - and it wasn't a dollar slice place. I was unsurprised when the place closed shortly after.
As someone who lives in the outer edge of an Outer Borough, my experience is somewhat different - most slice places close fairly early (10 pm on average in my area, slightly later on weekends) and long before bars do. As a consequence, my go-to when out and about is a chopped cheese from the local deli/bodega.
I lived above L'Industrie for a year in 2018-2019, and I would say that it's very, very good. However, it's possible that Emmy Squared is just as good (can highly recommend Mama's Too as GP mentioned).
I'm almost reluctant to share these recommendations online because then those places will become even more crowded, but maybe they will instead expand their businesses and bring their business even closer to me now. One can hope.
emmy squared is a franchise now, they have them all over dc, ny etc.
i have never been to their WB location, but the original one on clinton was very good. their burger is also amazing. mama's too is very similar to prince street right? it looks good but is a bit out of the way.
I live close to l’industrie and am both happy for massimo and bummed for myself that it’s gotten so popular. I miss being able to get a slice without waiting in line for a super long time, but I agree, maybe the top slice in the city.
i live near it also, i remember going in when it was the little shop and you could just get a slice without the loudspeakers. the pizza has gotten a bit better since then too, and they didnt serve sandwitches back then
I really love the plain round slice. The square can be a little greasy (but I see it as more a once in a while treat) but the round is a perfect modern neopolitan/new york hybrid.
They're perfectly legitimate spots. F&F is superior to nearly any place in the city, L'Industrie is fine. The others are also fine. Yes they're touristy, but so what?
Outer-borough superiority is a myth. Most local outer-borough places are simply bad. This includes all the usual suspect neighborhoods: Belmont, Pelham Bay, Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, most of Staten Island, etc. The good places are the exception in the outer boroughs, just as they are in Manhattan.
The link's list looks decent to me but it's not because of the geography.
I didn't say they were illegitimate. They are certainly pizza spots. Acting like it's not a good list because the poster didn't go to the top 5 most famous tourist traps for pizza is just indicating more on your part.
>"Outer-borough superiority is a myth. Most local outer-borough places are simply bad. This includes all the usual suspect neighborhoods: Belmont, Pelham Bay, Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, most of Staten Island, etc. The good places are the exception in the outer boroughs, just as they are in Manhattan."
I didn't say all the places in the outer-boroughs were inherently better. I said a list where the individual actually went to the outer-boroughs is more qualified in my opinion. I don't really care what someone thinks about pizza if they just went to the top 5 places that they saw on instagram. I also don't really care about your opinion on pizza too. Oh you went to pelham bay and didn't get a good slice at the joint you chose? Seems more like a you problem. Maybe make some friends, talk to the locals. I grew up in an outer-borough and I know the good spots in my neighborhood and the bad. Seems like you have difficulty navigating these things. Sorry about that.
You’re dismissing a very legitimate quality difference in inner vs outer boroughs. There’s like 3 or 4 notable places in outer Brooklyn (s/o krispy pizza) that can compete with the dozens of incredible slices in inner Brooklyn.
I’ve spent less time in Queens, but it seems Queens really does have a lot of great food outside of the hotspots.
Here's my take... if the pizza place isn't covered in little league baseball team portraits and autographed photos from the 90s and earlier, I don't want to hear about it. And who suddenly made it a contest about where there's more better pizza? And since when did Brooklyn become an inner borough? oh since you moved here and decided you needed to find the 'best slice'? Here's a suggestion, go find a new yorker and ask them to take you to their favorite pizza place where they grew up. Go do that, and then tell me how fucking amazing inner brooklyn is. The point isn't that L'Industrie isn't good. The point is that if all you do is go to popular pizza places, because that's what's popular, you don't really get what's awesome about NYC pizza. I'm glad you enjoy the food. But what makes NYC Pizza what it is, is the fact that everyone knows a good spot where they are from. It's all over the city, but folks like you gotta make lists.
Oh, and you heard that Queens has good food too? Wow, we've got Pete Wells over here! Share more secrets.
> And who suddenly made it a contest about where there's more better pizza?
But this is a thread about pizza. It’s a guy who tried 400 slices of pizza. You think he only tried 400 slices because his kids played on a little league team? So that’s my take. In no way am I saying Williamsburg is objectively better than Bay Ridge in all aspects of life (if anything I’d say the opposite I’d probably never live in Williamsburg), which for some reason you took from my post. I’m saying the pizza tastes better to a person who doesn’t have an emotional attachment to some other place.
> It's all over the city, but folks like you gotta make lists.
You seem very confused about the post you’re commenting on. It’s a list. I mean, it’s a map, but for all intents and purposes it’s a list. It doesn’t capture anything that you seem to care about when it comes to slice shops. It actually only seems to note price which is perhaps the shallowest metric out there.
Also yeah, Ill go ahead and say elmhurst has better food than Bensonhurst just to see what your reaction is lol.
It is a thread about pizza, I'm not sure how that implicitly becomes a pizza-ranking contest, but I think you are making my point for me. Do you think I only went to those places because I had kids that played little league sponsored by the pizza place? So confused by your assertion. You are trying to turn everything into an ordinated list because you lack meaning in your life, and I'm sorry for you about that.
>"Also yeah, Ill go ahead and say elmhurst has better food than Bensonhurst just to see what your reaction is lol."
A fun project could be to quantify how much less pepperoni toppings, NY pizzerias have been putting on pizza. Train a CV model to detect what a slice is, what a pepperoni topping is. Then feed it public pictures of NY pizza over the past 10 years. An interesting result would be something like "NY pizzerias have been putting 16% less pepperoni on pizza". This would totally get news traffic and generate some buzz, and be a practical example of non-price inflation.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 288 ms ] threadI have a bunch of addons and some of them block scripts. No crash.
Edit: Interestingly, Chrome flashes a couple of times too when I scroll down to the section of the page with the Carto map plugin. I can see when I inspect the DOM that there's supposed to be an iframe there, but it looks Chrome is just killing the iframe rather than crashing to desktop.
Safari hangs but does not crash when it gets to Carto. So something is screwy with that map plugin.
This is true of the big national chains, too. They've kept prices relatively stable for damn near 25 years, at this point, but quality has gotten far worse over that same time span. That mouth-watering Pizza Hut pie you remember from 1992 isn't all nostalgia—every now and then I find single-location or small-chain joints that make pizza very similar to how I remember those tasting. Thing is, those are like $15+ a pie now, with a coupon or special. But you can still get larges for $8 or less (coupon or special, which are available 100% of the time) at the major chains—they're just not the same pizza you were getting in the 80s up to about the late 90s.
[EDIT] In fact, the 2020-on inflation is the first time I've seen the big chains seriously give in on keeping price increases in check. They've gone up like 20% in the last couple years.
They're also a good example of this, actually. They'd held their $5 price point for a long time but had gradually been cutting toppings until they were comically bare. Then they introduced a $6 "extra toppings" (or something, I don't recall the way they phrased it) pie that just had the same amount the normal ones used to.
Post-Covid I'm pretty sure the sad-pie price is up to $6, and the actually-has-toppings edition is $7.
That kinda goes for most things, really.
I'm bistellar: I love both Star Wars and Star Trek.
But I fully realize that Bladerunner is astronomically better than either of them.
And none of those masterpiees keep me from fully enjoying smutty trash like Space Truckers, or even any of Philip K Dick's horrible random short stories.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQOqLOErhZA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8Ifaeff0mA
Unedited tosh most of it but it does a job !
Someone who gets enjoyment out of a $5 pizza is in an objectively better position than someone who can only get enjoyment out of a $10 pizza. Sorry!
I'm not that way with wine and beer. I don't like bad wine or beer at all. I will turn it down or just drink it to be polite, not enjoying it a bit.
I think the difference is I never liked bad wine or beer, while I started out liking bad pizza and bad coffee before I learned what the good stuff tasted like. So, you might be safe.
[EDIT] Reflecting more on this, part of it may be that I regard bad coffee and bad pizza as pretty much totally different things from good varieties of the same—I just happen to like both. I don't really consider one a substitute for the other, I guess. Bad coffee is just coffee-flavored... but I like coffee flavor! Good coffee has all kinds of flavors going on. If you're interested in getting into that, I recommend finding a highly-regarded local roaster doing a tasting event—I personally find it much easier to get into a new flavor-related thing, such that I can start to understand it and pick out various notes, if I can do side-by-side tastings of various examples of the thing, all in a short span.
It's similar with beer and wine, I just happen not to like "beer-flavored" or "wine-flavored", the way I do like coffee-flavored coffee or find greasy bread smeared with salty cheese and tomato sauce satisfying even if it's pretty awful—get me the nice stuff that has more going on and I'm in heaven, though.
Edit: Agreeing with another commenter in this thread that some coffees at gas stations are truly awful and are immediately thrown away. Those aren't legit coffee though, and don't count toward what I said above.
It has ruined the cheap (Robusta) coffee for me. There are diners that make a great medium roast cup and use Arabica beans.
But the good coffee sure is good, and it’s fun to get familiar with the varieties.
Until my early mid 20s I never like coffee at all. Then I tried double cream and sugar coffee, then milky cappuccinos, then massive syrupy sweet Starbucks.
After years of "acclimatizing" I thought I'd branch out. I bought a grinder, fresh coffee beans, a scale, French Press, 16:1 ratio. I went black and never went back.
Coffee made well from fresh beans freshly ground has a sweetness a caramel like after-taste. Very little bitterness (comes from brewing too long) and can surprise even those who pile on milk and sugar or even salt to mask its bitterness.
There's a time and place for everything, and even the snobbiest of us food snobs can appreciate the time and place for the likes of Little Ceasars, Costco Pizza, Wafflehouse, et al.
Which means it's good drunk food available when the drunks want to eat.
I live 1,000 miles away from the nearest one, but I sure did love a late Saturday night at Waffle House when I lived in the south.
Where I am now, a "109 spicy special,"[0] hot off the grill, a single serving bag of nacho cheese Doritos and Pepsi does the job too.
[0] https://bwog.com/2007/01/how-spicy-is-your-special/
Gone is the 90s yellow a la carte one. Gone even is the replacement that at least kept the classics on the back.
Now it's $8+ meals, with token hashbrown options at the bottom.
Used to be, you could get a perfectly serviceable meal there for under-$6. E.g. double hashbrowns ($3) + single hamburger ($1) + drink ($1.5).
Now the closest thing to the same meal is double the price. Double hashbrown $5. Single hamburger doesn't exist, and hamburgers start at $6.
His career as a chef was at a brasserie serving brasserie fare which is basically like working at a French diner, not necessarily anything that's going to educate your palate.
Again, not criticizing him, I'm actually envious, I wish I could be happy eating mediocre food, my life would be much simpler.
Sometimes a cheap-ass $5 meal really does satisfy people far more than a Michelin star restaurant. Humble bragging about only being able to enjoy non-normie food sounds silly and unrefined, really.
I do think as a chef learning haute cuisine is learning useful things about cooking and what makes some bread better than other bread, and what consistency a sauce should have and how to achieve it.
"$5, hot and ready."
"Is it good?"
"It's HOT and it's READY."
Literally all you can eat + pasta. Dirt cheap. If you're the 'one-meal-a-day' type, is there a cheaper option?
Not sure when they switched to extreme value focus.
That recipe is just focaccia with about half the olive oil, probably replaced by whatever runs off the toppings: https://www.saltfatacidheat.com/fat/ligurian-focaccia
- no stand mixer
- no kneading
- overnight room-temperature rise
- 4:3 flour-water ratio
- dough is dimpled in the pan before baking
The Ligurian focaccia recipe brines it with salt water, which you don't strictly have to do but helps considerably, and bakes at 450F, which arguably so should any cast-iron pizza because the crust won't crisp up as much at 400F.
Been meaning to try Kenji’s pan pizza recipe. Thanks for jogging my memory.
Ah, come ON: You no doubt know more about pizza than she does!
Moreover it seems that it is common here at Hacker News for people to know a LOT about pizza making!
But, for that poor woman, she is trying! Soooo, try to be kind!!!
The ATK recipe at 400 degrees works because you cook it on the very bottom rack right next to the heating element. Then when it's done you cook it longer on your range at medium heat to really crisp the crust--it's in a cast iron pan after all. You can get the crust as toasty as you want.
If I have a bit more time, but still relatively lazy, I'll use the stand mixer, but proof in my oven for an hour or two, which has a proofing mode which is basically a low temperature steam oven for a nice warm humid environment.
Always nice having some frozen dough and sauce handy in the freezer.
This is handy if you don't want to own more than one peel, but do want to be able to prep a second pizza on a peel while the first one is cooking.
Indeed, describes my attempts. Any tips how to succeed in this?
If you don't know what I mean, I'm talking about coarse-ground cornmeal or farina, the latter of which is a very coarse-ground wheat flour sometimes used to make a kind of cereal-mush kinda like oatmeal or cream-of-wheat—but it's also outstanding for this job; coarse durham-wheat can do in a pinch, but it's too fine to really be good at it, plus it tends to be expensive while farina's usually cheap (and so's cornmeal, but avoid the fine stuff, you want the coarsest you can get).
You put this on the peel before placing the stretched dough on it and adding toppings. Just spread it in a layer over the top of it. It helps keep it from sticking, which makes the transfer easier.
I've found different peels require different amounts. I had a shitty looking peel that was somewhat-rough, unfinished wood and it didn't require much. It got ruined (I'll spare you the details, but, kids) and I replaced it with a cheap but fancier-looking one I found on amazon, that's dark-stained, smooth acacia or some shit. It's awful. I need so much more medium on it to keep the pizza from sticking. I've thought about roughing it up with sandpaper, see if that helps, but haven't tried it yet—if yours is smooth-finished and you want to be a pioneer, maybe try that. First pie I tried to cook with that thing was the first I'd ruined in years. Still mad about it :-)
You probably don't need so much that you can't see any of the peel under it, though, even on one that bad. My better peel only required a light dusting, once I got my technique down.
Point is, definitely use that stuff, and experiment with the amount of that you put on. The more you have to use, the more waste and the more mess, so there's good reason to dial in what you actually need and not just pile a ton on every time, but you need some amount.
As far as technique: shake it loose over the sink (so any cornmeal or flour that falls off goes there instead of the floor or whatever) right before transferring to the oven. Just hold it level and shake horizontally, forward and back or side to side, until the whole pie's loose and moves freely. If you have spots that stick really badly, uh, try to lift it up and put more medium under it? This has never worked well for me, I've just gotten good at making sure that doesn't happen, but sometimes you can save it that way.
Then, when transferring into the oven, you need to hold it at an angle shallow enough that gravity alone will not do the work—too steep an angle, and it'll pile up when it comes off. You'll need the same sort of shaking action here, but because it's tilted a little it'll also slide off as it goes. Start with the edge of the peel way at the back of your stone, maybe just an inch or so from the back edge of it, and move it forward as the pie comes off, else your placement will suck and, in the worst case, some of it won't be on the stone.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34081087
with some more details in
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34085805
For your specific question: For one pizza for one, I start with the dough prepared as in the posts. The dough is in a covered plastic container, about 12 ounces to leave room in cases of the dough expanding. I dump the dough on a round sheet of Teflon. The sheet just nicely fits in the bottom of a common cast iron frying pan. I got the sheet from a long roll of such Teflon from Amazon, sold for drying fruit or some such. But it's Teflon so will withstand the heat of cooking -- it should and in my experience of some years, does.
So, now the round sheet of Teflon is on my cutting board and the pizza dough has been dumped onto the Teflon. Then with fingers, I press the dough to be round and nearly covering the Teflon. As in my posts, then I add tomato sauce, Mozzarella cheese, and slices of pepperoni sausage. Right, I have found no need for electric mixers, rolling pins, cooking spray, etc. Fingers work fine.
Now for your question, how to move to the frying pan!!! I slide a spatula under the right part of the Teflon, and that serves to support about half of the sheet and the raw pizza. So, with a right hand finger on part of the Teflon to keep it on the spatula and two left hand fingers to support the left side of the Teflon, I carry the stack to the stove and the frying pan. So far, I've never dropped anything! But it would be a little safer to have the frying pan, so far just at room temperature, also on the cutting board so that the trip of the Teflon circle to the pan would be really short.
WOW! Right! Just thought of something MUCH better! Have the room temperature frying pan on the cutting board or even just the countertop, put the Teflon sheet in the frying pan, and THEN add the toppings, dough, sauce, cheese, sausage, etc. Sooo, no moving to the frying pan at all!!!! 100% no worries, no risk!!!
When the pizza is done, I slide the spatula under the Teflon and carry it and the pizza to the cutting board. At this point, the pizza crust is a little stiff and easier to carry without flopping. And, again, so far I've never had any trouble from this trip from the pan back to the cutting board and the action with a chef's knife. Since I'm no candidate for a champion of high coordination, I'm sure you can do this move just fine!
Else, put some heat resistant pad on the cutting board and move the whole frying pan to that pad and, thus, have a very short distance to move the cooked pizza to the cutting board and knife action!!!
A "heat resistant pad"? How about just a pot, about 2 quarts, cool?
I tried Dominos after the 'realignment' and found it much worse than I remembered. But, it could be I hadn't eaten there in a few years prior...maybe it went from good, to bad, to ok in that timespan?
Sauce >> crust >> cheese >> toppings
I think the pizza problem is two-fold. Like Jewish Delis, ethnic Italians are exiting the business and selling the local shops. Instead of working 60 hours a week in the shop, the kids are mortgage brokers and IT guys.
The other issue is that manufactured pizza components are better and cheaper. You can be a lower skill operator and still churn out a mediocre product. So a shitty local shop is using a similar premade dough and mediocre cheese that a chain is using.
It’s really obvious to see in NYC.
The same thing happened to bread.
that was the problem a generation ago. The new problem is that very few customers now know what good pizza should/could taste like, they're not very "Italian" any more either.
Checking through old emails from Papa Johns (Garbage pizza, but sometimes you WANT garbage pizza.)
I know it was free delivery at somepoint, but it's hard to pinpoint as prior to 2010 their emails didn't include a broken out receipt, just a total.
But, in 2010 it was $1.99 then soon after went up to $2.50.
In 2019 that was bumped to $2.75.
No orders between late 2019 and early 2022.
Early 2022 it was $4.49, then shortly after $4.79, then bumped to $4.99 in July, where it is as of my last order a few days ago.
Isn't cheese more expensive than tomato sauce? Why would the restaurants skimp on a cheaper ingredient (tomatoes) instead of more expensive (cheese)?
Too bad Liam didn't track the average weight of the slices. I have a hunch that might have tracked down as well.
100% their pizza has changed from the 90's. There is a single location in Gettysburg that I ate at twice and LOVE it - Tommys Pizza on Steinwehr Ave. They even have the textured red plastic soda "glasses" that Pizza Hut used. Solid old school Pizza Hut.
Jumbo slices FTW!
But coming from out of town your expectations are probably sky high. If pizza is high on your list, go for gold. It's a fun thing to do in the city. Also you need to treat both categories separately - slice, and whole pie. different game.
As an old guy, I try to avoid Hipster doofus land^W^W^W Williamsburg as much as possible.
YMMV
I say that not to be mean, but "boomer" has become a slur and I prefer not to be insulted unless it's actually accurate.
I have been in Hipster doofus land[0] in the past few years and most of what I experienced reinforced my stance.
I will continue to try to avoid it.
[0] I'd love to say I made that nickname up, but I didn't. Works for me though.
Edit: Touched on the source of a wonderful moniker.
The first isn't the case (I was born after 1962) and the second is a matter of opinion.[0]
But please. Do continue to pile on. I don't want to take away one of your few pleasures in life.
Toodles!
[0] Here's another one for you: If you can't put New York, NY after your address, you don't live in New York.[1] Have at that one too, friend.
[1] As a NYC native, I note that I've lived in every borough except Stagnant Island (for obvious reasons) over the past 50+ years. As such (no Dunning-Kruger[2] effect necessary, can you make such a statement?), I am entitled to make such pronouncements.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
So, they only counted data from places where the price has gone up and concluded that...the price has gone up.
That said, a lot of dollar slices are now $1.50.
And that's out in a part of the country with mostly-bad pizza options. Nothing half as good as a so-so NY slice, certainly.
Starting to think maybe you’ve never been in a deli!
It's true though, good breakfast burritos are still hard to come by here.
Back on the west coast, the price of a breakfast burrito at my local cart has almost doubled since covid, and the burrito got smaller. My conclusion is that burritos are a scam. The contents of the classic round breakfast sandwich are much harder to fake.
I really miss the McDonald's egg and sausage muffins, mediocre as they are. They stopped doing the special breakfast menu during the pandemic here in Spain and it never came back. They only have it at the airport locations now.
The McCafe locations have a Spanish omelette roll again but it's not the same thing :'(
It's kind of similar with bodegas, a lot of people will say "we have corner stores too" but that's not a bodega. It sounds snobbish sometimes but there are a lot of actual differences.
Also, my fave place after living in New Haven for a year was technically in West Haven (Zuppardi's) but that's splitting hairs.
https://www.gawker.com/the-pizza-belt-the-most-important-piz...
This has a (in)formal name, The Pizza Belt.
Also I totally agree, North East or bust pizza-wise.
Average pizza slice that we're discussing is according to https://www.nutritionix.com/i/nutritionix/new-york-style-piz... 500+ calories, lots of saturated fat, lots of sodium.
How healthy is it to grow up on pizza?
See USA statistics for obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease.
Pizza is relatively benign.
The problem with sugar is that it is half fructose, and fructose is processed on the same pathway as alcohol, in the liver, and causes the same illnesses as alcohol. It is much better, if you must eat it, to eat enough fiber with it that your intestinal bacteria get much of it instead.
If you don't keep your intestinal bacteria well-fed, they are obliged to eat you instead.
Unless you’re excluding the cheese, this is way off
Glycemic index is vastly different when it’s combined with protein and fat.
It’s not going to have a lot vitamins, but it’s pretty balanced in terms of the carb/protein/fat
You’d do worse eating a plate of white rice with soy sauce.
What does it matter which ingredients people do and do not consider healthy?
It is objectively known that the quantities of bread and mozzarella consumed by most people relative to their lifestyle is unhealthy.
I will add that the quality also highly depends on when you go. Generally, the busier it is, the worse the quality.
The author states that Joe's is one of the better ones, but I think the quality has gone down too. I was there in 2014, 2017, and 2022. Digging up my photos to review the sauce amounts, but I felt 2022 was very lackluster to previous memories.
I have only spent a month or so in NYC working a decade back, and at the time every thing was more expensive than home except pizza. I think every region probably has its cheap food for the working class. Here it’s tacos, there it was cheap slices.
I agree every region has its own good cheap food. Interesting stuff.
The author points out that in 8 years, the average cost of a slice of pizza has hardly moved, but the amount of sauce on them has been reduced as a cost cutting measure.
Would a pizza place really see reduced traffic if they kept the same recipe and raised their price another $0.55 to compensate for inflation?
I would much rather pay $25 (or more) per meal that is good 99% of the time than pay $15 for a meal that is good 80% or 60% or 40% of the time.
Obviously, I am sure restaurant operators know their business, and maybe it just is not economical for prepared food to be good 99% of the time at a price that sufficient sales can be made.
Notice that all the slices are plain CHEESE or some variant of it (you can get it with no sauce, or no cheese too!)
I can't get a mushroom or veggie slice anymore at so many places? Feels like a recipe for malnutrition and weight gain.
And some of the best slices can be found across the river in NJ - just travel up Bloomfield Avenue into the Caldwells and there are great slice shops all over.
Rony's Fresh Pizza, Sep 15th 2022, 6:23:16 pm
Papa John's Pizza, Jun 14th 2021, 1:22:59 pm
Pizza Market, May 21st 2021, 6:00:57 pm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Principle
I don't eat a lot of pizza personally but I do love a good slice. What I love about New York isn't necessarily that we have the best pizza (although we do have places that are in the running for the best), but that the average quality is so damn high. You don't get a lot of overly doughy, bad cheese, bad sauce BS unless you frequent dollar slice shops.
L'Industrie is damn good. Highly recommend Action Bronson's Fuck That's Delicious episode there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOQUUyCRtiE
I've eaten at plenty of dollar slice places and honestly find them adequate for the price. I think I've only ever had one terrible slice, ever - and it wasn't a dollar slice place. I was unsurprised when the place closed shortly after.
L'Industrie is the best ny slice in NYC (possibly the world?) as of 2023 IMO
I'm almost reluctant to share these recommendations online because then those places will become even more crowded, but maybe they will instead expand their businesses and bring their business even closer to me now. One can hope.
i have never been to their WB location, but the original one on clinton was very good. their burger is also amazing. mama's too is very similar to prince street right? it looks good but is a bit out of the way.
Mama's Pizza two blocks away on Amsterdam & 107th is run by the parents of the guy that runs Mama's Too and is a traditional NYC slice, and delicious.
Outer-borough superiority is a myth. Most local outer-borough places are simply bad. This includes all the usual suspect neighborhoods: Belmont, Pelham Bay, Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, most of Staten Island, etc. The good places are the exception in the outer boroughs, just as they are in Manhattan.
The link's list looks decent to me but it's not because of the geography.
>"Outer-borough superiority is a myth. Most local outer-borough places are simply bad. This includes all the usual suspect neighborhoods: Belmont, Pelham Bay, Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, most of Staten Island, etc. The good places are the exception in the outer boroughs, just as they are in Manhattan."
I didn't say all the places in the outer-boroughs were inherently better. I said a list where the individual actually went to the outer-boroughs is more qualified in my opinion. I don't really care what someone thinks about pizza if they just went to the top 5 places that they saw on instagram. I also don't really care about your opinion on pizza too. Oh you went to pelham bay and didn't get a good slice at the joint you chose? Seems more like a you problem. Maybe make some friends, talk to the locals. I grew up in an outer-borough and I know the good spots in my neighborhood and the bad. Seems like you have difficulty navigating these things. Sorry about that.
I’ve spent less time in Queens, but it seems Queens really does have a lot of great food outside of the hotspots.
Oh, and you heard that Queens has good food too? Wow, we've got Pete Wells over here! Share more secrets.
But this is a thread about pizza. It’s a guy who tried 400 slices of pizza. You think he only tried 400 slices because his kids played on a little league team? So that’s my take. In no way am I saying Williamsburg is objectively better than Bay Ridge in all aspects of life (if anything I’d say the opposite I’d probably never live in Williamsburg), which for some reason you took from my post. I’m saying the pizza tastes better to a person who doesn’t have an emotional attachment to some other place.
> It's all over the city, but folks like you gotta make lists.
You seem very confused about the post you’re commenting on. It’s a list. I mean, it’s a map, but for all intents and purposes it’s a list. It doesn’t capture anything that you seem to care about when it comes to slice shops. It actually only seems to note price which is perhaps the shallowest metric out there.
Also yeah, Ill go ahead and say elmhurst has better food than Bensonhurst just to see what your reaction is lol.
>"Also yeah, Ill go ahead and say elmhurst has better food than Bensonhurst just to see what your reaction is lol."
I really don't care!
https://imgur.com/a/9wRM859
Delicious.
That could be overall inflation, which would cover rent, wages, utilities, taxes, etc.
The prices of tomatoes, flour, mozzarella, etc. would be even more relevant.