Feed Us Your Pizza (Recipes)

If pressed to name a favorite pizza, I might say a deep-dish overloaded with sausage, black olives, and sometimes mushrooms, with cheese a half-inch thick over a light red sauce. But the truth is: I'm not really a discriminating pizza consumer. I like thin crust, too, and I can appreciate experiments with exotic toppings. I'm not loyal to any particular restaurant or type of oven. Actually, the only kind of pizza I won't eat is the cardboard variety they used to serve up in my elementary school cafeteria.

Well, we are looking for YOUR homemade pizza recipes. We don't want reproductions of store-bought or restaurant creations. This is DIY pizza. We want YOUR recipe. What makes the perfect slice — what kind of crust, what toppings, what cheese, what sauce? Is there a secret to the ideal homemade pizza? An ideal oven temperature?

Be as specific as possible. The Weekend Edition staff will pick the top three most creative/interesting/inspired/promising recipes. Then NPR's David Greene — our guest-host for a weekend in August — will try all three with a pizza chef in New York City. Together, they'll decide on a winner.

You can submit your recipes to recipes@npr.org.

Aaaaand... while we're on the subject of perfect pizzas, I took the opportunity to conduct an informal poll here among our staff. After the jump: leftover takeout pies, tuna pies, and pies on the pavement.

 

Turns out Chicago-natives Scott Simon (host) and Jenni Bergal (senior editor) both love the pizza from Lou Malnati's Pizzeria in the Windy City. Scott says the pies there are as "heavy as manhole covers" — piled with spinach, mushrooms, plum tomatoes, mozarella, and cheddar. Jenni prefers the plain cheese.

David Greene (reporter and guest-host) enjoys classic New York City street pizza: thin crust, only cheese to avoid "distractions" and not dripping with grease but "a little, please." And when it comes to location, it doesn't matter to him:

I'll happily stand up to dine — at an unkept counter, or on the curb, amid drunk revelers, bustling crowds, whatever. The divier the establishment, the better. Just give me a slice to savor.

Mel Goh (web producer) will sometimes spread leftover stir fry on pizza crust and "squirt liberally with hoisin sauce." She calls it takeout Chinese pizza. (The cheese is optional.)

Burke Hunn (technical director) keeps his demands pretty simple: pineapple and Canadian bacon — from anywhere. He could almost go splitsies on a pie with Patrick De Oliveira (intern) who also likes pineapple but pairs the fruit with good old-fashioned pepperoni.

Liane Hansen (host) is a versatile pizza-lover and named a few favorites. She likes chicken barbeque pizza as much as a slice with spinach, black olives, and extra cheese.

Veronica Miller (producer) has fond memories of the "gourmet" pizza she and her brother created during summer vacations growing up. They toasted pieces of white bread, slathered on some Ragu and topped each with a slice of Kraft American cheese. Then they microwaved them for 30 seconds — or until the cheese was properly melted. "We ate it pretty much every day," she says. "It's probably really nasty now that I think about it." Yes, Veronica, it is. And I'm not entirely sure it qualifies as pizza.

Brian Reed (producer) remembers his mom's pizza with its distinctive crust (not thick, but too chewy to be called thin). He says it always hit the spot after Friday-night soccer practices. Brian is from Connecticut, by the way, and draws our attention to the apizza in New Haven:

No, that isn't an errant "a" on the front of my pizza. It's just what we Connecticutians sometimes call the stuff — deal with it. (In fact when my grandmother — who is Italian but was born and raised in the Nutmeg State — says "apizza," she barely pronounces the final "a", and kind of turns the "p" into a "b," so that the word kind of sounds like "abeetz.") New Haven is home to perhaps the most infamous and storied pizza rivalry in the country: Sally's v. Pepe's. Pizza-lovers from near and far form lines down Wooster Street on Friday nights, waiting patiently for a crispy helping of clam pizza from their favorite purveyor. The two inspire intense loyalties, and dining parties with members of both camps can find it challenging to choose a place to eat without starting a brawl.

On which side of the feud does Brian fall? Neither, actually. He prefers a third restaurant called Modern Apizza.

Kimberly Adams (producer) is keen on a tuna pizza, which she tried for the first time at the home of her in-laws in Egypt. But she notes that she's lactose intolerant and can't really enjoy it very often. Sorry, Kimberly.

Elaine Heinzman (producer) loves the spicy "Fire and Smoke" pizza from Matchbox here in D.C. — with roasted red peppers and chipotle sauce. She also goes for smoked gouda pizzas since "you really can't go wrong slapping some smoked gouda on anything."

Peter Breslow (senior producer) used to deliver pizza in college and admits that he'd occasionally drop a pizza before delivering it to dorm rooms. He'd scoop up the cheese, throw it back on, and then run "before the unfortunate students could open the box and see the mess." For the record, this is not Peter. These days, he likes the garlic, spinach, and peperoncini pizza from Vace's here in Washington. Vace's doesn't deliver so these days Peter mostly picks up his own pies.