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Introduction

On Pizza

When the fire laid in a clay oven is just burned down, the oven floor is still too hot for bread to begin baking.

It was traditional in several cis-Mediterranean cultures to bake a thin flat loaf, variously garnished, during the period directly following the cinders being swept out of the oven.

These would often disappear into hungry bakers, but could also be conveniently folded in half and wrapped in a kerchief for a next day’s lunch in the fields, from whence the hands wouldn't return until dusk.

Pizza pies were certainly being made before the advent of pomidori (tomatoes) from the New World. A tomato-free version persists today in Sicilia, and versions likewise without tomatoes, or even cheese, for that matter, are made across the breadth of the Middle of the World, from France to Arabia. (Pitta means bread and baza means onions in several Near East languages.)

A hot oven floor in necessary for the real thing, which can, after a fashion, be approximated at home. One way is to heat a terra cotta or limestone flat in your oven and use a slice or peel to carry the bread to it. Another method, which will not produce quite the same crust, is to use a steel baking sheet, not preheated, in which case the oven should be good and hot. If you have a baking stone, use a wooden peel to put the bread on it, again when it's well heated.

There really is no substitute for a thermometer until you know your oven by its controls. In an emergency, though, bakers can often roughly gauge the heat by inserting one hand, while keeping the fingers of the other crossed.

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