Sliding a $40 pie into a pizza box is the packaging equivalent of parking a Lamborghini in a wooden shed before a hurricane. The fancier the pizza, the worse the results: A slab of overbaked Domino’s will probably be at least semi-close to whatever its version of perfect is by the time it reaches your door, but a pizza with fresh mozzarella cooked at upwards of 900 degrees? Forget it. The pizza degrades as soon as it goes inside,” turning into a swampy mess.Ī pizza box has one job-keeping a pie warm and crispy during its trip from the shop to your house-and it can’t really do it. “I don’t like putting any pizza in a box,” Andrew Bellucci, a legendary New York City pizza maker of Andrew Bellucci’s Pizzeria, told me. The most iconic delivery food of all time is bad at surviving delivery, and the pizza box is to blame. Pizza delivery, it turns out, is based on a fundamental lie. The cardinal rule of restaurants is that to-go food is never as good as the real deal, but even when my homemade pizzas sit around for too long, they don’t taste anywhere near that off. They’re still fine in that takeout-pizza way, but a certain je ne sais quoi is gone: For the first time, after opening up a pizza box and bringing a slice to my mouth, I am hyperaware of a limp sogginess to each bite, a rubbery grossness to the cheese. The pies from my usual takeout spot just don’t seem to taste the same anymore. I am now, in a word, pizza-pilled.īut enlightenment is not without its consequences. By merely looking at a pie, I can tell you whether the cornicione is too puffy or just right, if the crust could use a bit more leoparding, and whether the dough should have spent another day in the fridge. Like Da Vinci in front of a blank canvas, I now churn out perfectly burnished pies entirely from scratch-dough, sauce, caramelized onions, and all. Since I purchased mine a year ago, my at-home pizza game has hit levels that are inching toward pizzaiolo perfection. But here’s what everyone has failed to consider: the Ooni Koda 12-inch gas-powered outdoor pizza oven. Happiness, people will have you think, does not come from possessing things. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday.
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