What's A Pizza?
Author: Krasen Tomov

Peruse search engines and you'll find all types of pizza wars
raging. From which city has the best pizza to which toppings are
best, pizza lovers are quick to get into some heated online
debates.
Pizza purists would turn their noses up at pizzas with some
unorthodox ingredients such as the macaroni cheese topping that
is currently offered by one national chain. This leads to the
question: What is a Pizza?

A pizza consists of a crust, sauce, cheese (and it doesn't HAVE
to be mozzarella) and toppings. Some pizzas are nothing more
than a vehicle for piling as much gooey cheese as possible.
Other pizzas go easy on the cheese and concentrate more on
perfecting the flavor of the sauce and the consistency of the
crust.

Whichever pizza is more your style (and some would say that ANY
pizza is their style), you're sure to be able to find someone
who would be willing to argue about your choice with you.

Some of the most popular toppings are the old favorites:
pepperoni, sausage, veggies and, of course, extra cheese.
Although some would argue that extra cheese qualifies as a
topping. Just because these are the most popular, does that
necessarily make them the best pizza toppings?

Many of your who are over 40 can remember a world where putting
ham and pineapple on a pizza was considered bizarre. Today,
adding such toppings is often called a Hawaiian pizza, and it's
a very popular choice nationwide.

At some state fairs in the late 1980's, vendors offered two
pizzas that were pretty innovative at the time. One was a pizza
void of tomato sauce and covered instead in a white sauce,
cheese and spinach. The other was a pizza crust topped with only
cheese and big hunks of broccoli.

The first pizza caught on pretty well, and spinach on pizza
isn't considered very unusual. White pizza - with or without the
spinach – is hugely popular. The broccoli pizza, however, never
really found it's place and I think you'd be hard pressed to
find a pizza that resembles that fair ground fare from the 80's.


The reason is probably two fold: One is that pizza was totally
void of sauce. Therefore, it can't even technically be
considered pizza. Secondly, the ingredients of a pizza are
supposed to blend together to provide a perfect pizza
experience. When you bit into the broccoli pizza it was sort of
like "Oh, this is very dry pizza..hey, wait a minute! I'm
gnawing on raw broccoli…..!!" Really, that's what it was like.
People that want to eat crunchy raw broccoli order salad, not
pizza. That broccoli pizza never had a chance.

There is never going to be a time when everyone agrees on what
makes a perfect pizza, and that's okay. At the heart of every
passionate pizza lover is one common thought:
"Pizza is the best food in the world!"

Pretty simple, isn't it? Crust. Sauce. Cheese. Toppings. The
rest is open to private interpretation. Instead of arguing
about it, wouldn't that time be better spent just enjoying a
slice?


About The Author: Jessica Ackerman is a popular writer for
http://www.padrinospizzaandpasta.com