It's time for another round of The Food Lab. Got a suggestion for an upcoming topic? Email Kenji here, and he'll do his best to answer your queries in a future post. Become a fan of The Food Lab on Facebook or follow it on Twitter for play-by-plays on future kitchen tests and recipe experiments.

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

One of the benefits of having gone to a school well known for its concentration of nerds is that many of my close friends are, well, nerds. And there are few greater sources of excitement than when two separate spheres of nerd-dom collide in a synergistic orgy of geekitude. Those are truly the times when human knowledge seems to advance in leaps and bounds

Last week, I wrote a piece about a pet obsession of mine: What makes pepperoni slices curl? The final conclusion was that it largely has to do with temperature differentials between the top surface heating faster than the bottom, as well as meat flow patterns inside the sausage caused by the stuffing horn being slimmer than the casing.

A few hours after the post went live, I got an email from my friend Evros Loukaides, a research student at Cambridge University studying the behavior and applications of thin morphing structures. Apparently, curling pepperoni falls squarely in the line of his work:

Kenji! You are dangerously close to my research topic with your latest post. As in, I'm about to forward it to my supervisor. We study the morphing capabilities of thin structures and the resulting shapes. If you are considering doing similar work about the shapes of chinese crackers, we might wanna talk to you about a joint publication. :)

If you require any computational modelling of food structures, to make your articles geekier than they already are, I'm your man.

Require? No. Really really want? You bet! I jokingly tasked him with creating a computer model of a pepperoni slice being heated on top of a pizza. An hour later, this hit my inbox:

Challenge accepted! (sort of)

Let me start with my assumptions: I model a slice of pepperoni as a disk with a radius of 15mm and a thickness of 3mm. I start the entire model at 300°K (80°F) and apply heat as a boundary condition on the top side, until it reaches 480°K (404°F). I also apply heat on the sides and bottom but of lower magnitude.

Since the geometry is trivial, the key is knowing the properties of the material. If those are accurate, you can usually get really good approximations for reality. I'm not a material scientist—I mostly deal with the effects of geometry on structural properties. Even if I was, the mechanical properties of tissue are still only partially understood—especially if you're interested in processed meats, which contain a collection of tissues (fat, ligaments, muscle, etc.) in a casing of separate properties. So basically we'll need to make a ton of assumptions and simplifications which pretty much render the results irrelevant to reality. But hey, why not? It's all good fun.

What are the parameters we need? You already showed that conductivity of the material is significant—otherwise the directionality of the heat gradient wouldn't matter. The specific heat capacity is also relevant to this, and in turn this depends on the density of the material. The coefficient of expansion, which in this case is obviously negative is probably the controlling parameter. The Young Modulus—the stiffness of the material—will show how much it needs to move to accommodate this heat gradient. Most tissue is usually modelled as hyperelastic, but for higher temperature, this effect is reduced, and we observe almost linear behaviour. But do keep in mind that all of these parameters depend on temperature: For example intuitively you can see that dried/cooked meat is stiffer than raw meat. I'm using an elastic model here as a demonstration but of course the slice deforms plastically.

I tried to find some numbers from the literature, but they are scarce and only tangentially related to our quest. For example one reference quotes the thermal conductivity of various tissues, but for raw tissue in its natural state. Still, it gives us a rough figure.

[Simulation: Evros Loukaides]

He finished with this:

I'll spare you the details, but by pulling numbers out of thin air in a similar manner for the remaining parameters, I was able to construct something resembling an approximation for your entertainment. If you need an accurate model, I'll need a lot more experimental data and time. And pizza.

Evros, having been to Pizza Express in Cambridge, I can only say that you deserve better pizza. I'll do my best to get it to you.

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

Broccoli slice from Sam's Pizza Place in Wildwood, NJ [Photograph: Adam Kuban]

Last week, Kenji raised a very important question in Thursday's Top This: Why don't we see more broccoli on pizza? Like many a cruciferous vegetable, broccoli causes controversy. Mom's haven't been loading it up with obscene amounts of cheese sauce for nothing. But with pizza having the cheese part covered, and with nearly every slice having at least one broccoli topped pie in the case, I never suspected that it would such a polarizing topping. Let's see a show of hands, who gets down with broccoli on their pie? And is it just an aversion to the vegetable itself, or does it have to do with how it's prepared?

About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.

VIEW SLIDESHOW: Gift Guide: For the Pizza Lover

Adam had lots of great gift ideas for the home pizza maker last week. In or out of the kitchen, you'll have the pizza lover on your list covered with this list of pizza-themed trinkets ranging from art prints and pizza-scented ink to pizza accouterment and plates.

For more gift ideas, check out past guides from 2011, 2010, and 2009.

More gift guides, right this way »

About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.

VIEW SLIDESHOW: My Pie Monday: Jalapeno Cheddar Ponce, Five Taste Pizza, Kale and More!

We're TWENTY strong this My Pie Monday! First time submissions come from nzmick, Joyce Kong, and matt b. Forzapizza also returns this week, so a nice Slice welcome to them all! This round you can expect to see a sauceless Japanese pizza chain inspired pie from sucredibility, Detroit pizzas from Norma and Paralleli, and a pan pizza from Kaz. Imwalkin works on some dough experiments, Ev has a pizza jam session, and TXCraig1 sends a pepperoni salute. You can check in on what all the other My Pie Monday crew has been up to by clicking through the slideshow!

It's easy to get your pie included in next week's slideshow. Just take one picture of a pie you made recently, describe your cooking method (in 80 words or less), and follow these instructions to get it to us by 8pm (EST) Thursday. Be sure to let us know your Slice screen name.

Want to see more awesome homemade pizza photos from previous weeks? They're right here »

About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.

Daily Slice gives a quick snapshot each weekday of a different slice or pie that the folks at the Serious Eats empire have enjoyed lately.

[Photographs: Casey Barber]

When a plain-Jane place like Coffaro's has managed to stay in business for 60-plus years, you hope that there's something special hiding behind the nondescript facade. From the front, the small South River spot seems like the average slice joint, advertising its lunch specials on wobbly-lettered signs that have probably been there longer than I've been a New Jersey resident. But there's got to be something behind its doors that keeps the ovens running, right?

Coffaro's does a brisk delivery business (it was the regular Friday night meal for family friends who used to live in the area), but there were no other customers as I stepped into the shabby space for a lunch slice. The 20-something employee, who seemed like he'd rather be pre-gaming for a night at Jenkinson's than biding his time at the deck ovens on a Friday afternoon, unenthusiastically gestured to the lone pie waiting behind the counter as the only available slice option. OK, then. Two cheese slices and a Coke ($5) it was.

The slices were just that: a basic shredded cheese blend melted atop slightly sugary sauce—a filling lunch option with no bells, whistles, or fireworks. The crust offered some redemption: surprisingly well-charred for a pie baked in a deck oven, it was yeasty and crisp, miraculously avoiding the overly dry cracker-like tendencies of some thin-crust pizzas and giving the slice most of its character. Had the slice distinguished itself with a little pepperoni, sausage, or ham—a little bit of salty greasiness to add depth of flavor—I could see a freshly baked pie easily gobbled down as a late snack for night owls or an easy weekend dinner for parents and kids.

Unfortunately, eaten solo at a dingy table in a dim pizzeria, the Coffaro's slice didn't pass muster. Sophia Loren might love Coffaro's, as a piece of artwork on the green walls proclaims, but I just couldn't bring myself to like it that much.

Coffaro's

58 Obert St., South River NJ 08882 [map]
732-257-1133; no website

About the author:Casey Barber is the editor of Good. Food. Stories. and author of the forthcoming cookbook Classic Snacks Made from Scratch: 70 Homemade Versions of Your Favorite Brand-Name Treats. Find her on Twitter: @GoodFoodStories

Owner Antoinette Balzano with electrician Jimmy Kruger and contractor Rocco Ranaudo. In her hand, a photograph of Lawrence, Louise, and Joel Cimineri. [Photographs: Chris Crowley]

In his article for the New York Times, "Fighting to Save the Flavor of New York", Jeff Gordinier roused our memories to remind us why places like Totonno's matter in the wake of an event like Hurricane Sandy. This was certainly not the first misfortune suffered by the Coney Island pizzeria, founded by Antonio "Totonno" Pero and known around here as "our church of pizza". When Sandy struck, flooding the pizzeria, the business was still recovering from the debt created by the 2009 oven fire that put them out out of business for 11 months. Now we are asking, what will it take for Totonno's to rebuild?

To begin, plenty of waiting.

For so many of New York's food businesses that were the worst hit by the hurricane, the initial losses have been amplified by a prolonged struggle to move forward. The song remains the same at Totonno's.

"It's been 5 weeks because we had to wait and wait for people to show up," 3rd-generation owner Antoinette Balzano said on December 5th. She has been at Totonno's constantly, working without heat or electricity until recently. "These days, people would probably tell me, 'Antoinette, give up.' But I can't. All I do is go home to do my work and prepare for tomorrow." But Antoinette is taking the lead for her sister and the pizzeria's rock since 1991, Louise "Cookie" Cimineri, and Lawrence Cimineri, her nephew.

How they will pay for the rebuilding is still being sorted out. Until they can secure the$150,000 loan they are seeking, they will have to make do with money loaned from a local bank. Like many businesses, they have interruption of business insurance, but do not have flood insurance.The insurance company had sent a 20 year old kid from Texas to "determine their destiny", Antoinette told me, followed by a pair of engineers. They, in turn, produced an 85-page report to determine where the water came from. Last week, Antoinette found out that they would be getting nothing—an all too common story, as Eater reported last week.

Four feet of water swelled into the dining room the night of the hurricane, causing extensive damage. But before the repairs could even begin, the walls had to be opened and checked for mold. When Antoinette finally found a company to do the work, they proved unreliable. They took down the walls and took off, asking for $6,000. The mold was finally removed by a different company during the last week of November, but the lack of heating meant the walls would dry at a sluggish pace.

Reopening will require the completion of a litany of repairs, including replacing both the air conditioning and heating units ($8,000 each), each purchased after the 2009 fire; retiling the oven ($5,000); plumbing and electrical work; replacing the Hobart mixer ($20,000), range, walk-in, and all other kitchen equipment, and repairing damaged portions of the walls. Antoinette has estimated total repairs will cost upwards of $100,000.

The effort has been complicated by the fact that the pizzeria is stocked with so many irreplaceable possessions, family artifacts that date back to Mr. Pero: the original door to the furnace room, its window covered with baby photos; the radio, purchased by Antoinette's grandmother and used by her mother to listen to her uncle sing; beloved Christmas decorations, some of which were their grandfather's. In the kitchen, Antoinette showed me a cabinet and told me how she and Cookie would pretend the doors were stage curtains. It cannot be salvaged.

When I asked Antoinette if I could take photos, she established the bare walls as off limits. She did not want her sister to see the place like that. It means too much to her.

"Think about what it took to keep that place going through those rough years in Coney," Pete Wells said to me over the phone. "Those were some tough times that they have survived. Cookie and everyone else are incredibly protective of the place. She went through years of trying to keep the chaos outside. Imagine what's it like when it finally gets inside?"

A self-described history buff, Rocco Ranaudo, the current contractor, shares the Totonno's family's rigorous perfectionism. He tells me he is just happy to "be part of bringing something back". Walking around the restaurant, he showed me how only one side of the wall had been removed and even then not even up to the height required*. So they're pulling down the walls again, to let them dry out, and have been checking up on the moisture levels daily since Monday. A third set of tests for mold will be conducted at the end of the week and if all goes well the sheetrock will be put up shortly after.

Now, it seems, the rebuilding is finally moving forward. By the 14th, the heating, plumbing, and oven had all been repaired. Electric work had been largely finished. The next step? Cosmetics.

*1 foot above the waterline.

"We can't compromise the sentimental value. We want to make sure everything seen by the public remains the same," Rocco promised. "All of the exposed walls in the dining room will be put back up. But behind the fridge, we'll have to replace the tin with vinyl. Even if we have to replace the supports, we're not going to alter the waves in the floor."

Rocco has not been alone in extending a helping hand. When I arrived for our second interview last Friday, Jimmy Kruger, the electrician and a customer of over 20 years, was in the process of removing the main breaker. He showed me where it had been corroded by the water, pointing out the waterline on the adjacent meter. He was the 10th electrician Antoinette contacted. Another wanted to bill Totonno's $10,000 for the same job, Jimmy did it for less than $2,000. There is the carpenter who offered to fix their desk for $1,000 under his asking price, because he wants it be known that he helped fixed Totonno's. He told Antoinette he'd "make it like a museum piece."

The message has not been lost on the family. These are all people sacrificing their own thin margins to ensure Antonio Pero's legacy endures, a feat that has required a great deal of sacrifice.

"My sister, she's given up the life of a multimillionaire to preserve the dream of our grandfather," Antoinette said.

As for when Totonno's will reopen? The family had initially hoped to be slinging pies again by Christmas week, but are now promising a mid January return. Until then we'll be keeping you updated as the news comes in. The hurricane hit Totonno's hard. But Sandy has nothing on their stubborn resilience. These are people who, in Pete's words, carried the torch of New York pizza culture when no one was paying attention. They will endure, as they always have. A steady and singular phenomenon.

About the author:Chris Crowley is the author of the Bronx Eats column on Serious Eats New York. Follow him on Twitter, or contact him directly at chris.e.crowley [at] gmail.com. In person, your best bet is the window seat at Neerob, or waiting in line at the Lechonera La Piranha trailer.

Daily Slice gives a quick snapshot each weekday of a different slice or pie that the folks at the Serious Eats empire have enjoyed lately.

Wiseguy's Margheria slice [Photograph: Brian Oh]

You'd be forgiven for being wary of a pizzeria that claims to be the best New York style pizza outside of New York and also has the word, "Fuhgeddaboudit!!!," emblazoned all over it, but I'm here to allay your skepticism—Wiseguy NY Pizza in Chinatown is one of the best by the slice shops in DC. Opening just over a month ago, Wiseguy has already seen a huge amount of a traffic. Move past the superfluous amount of New York kitsch (charming to some, tacky to others) and you'll find a man that's been in the pizza business for 22 years, Tony Erol. A New England native, Erol proudly boasts of his extensive pizza tours, of which he cites Joe's and Di Fara as his favorites.

Wiseguy employs the traditional 2" deck ovens used in New York pizzerias and water filtered to mimic New Yorks taps to churn out his pies. The result is a crust that is crisp, lightly charred, and nicely chewy and doughy where it counts. Topped with a balanced combination of flavorful sauce that's slightly sweet and tangy, fresh mozzarella, and whole basil leaves, the Margherita slice ($3.50) is probably the closest thing to a New York slice you're likely to get in DC. That may be a controversial statement (due respect to Italian Store and Vace loyalists), but there's no denying that there's been a vacuum for solid, by the slice spots in the District and Wiseguy is a tremendously welcome addition. Throw in the fact that Wiseguy also serves a very respectable Sicilian slice, another rarity, and I daresay the pizzeria will be here to stay. (Be advised: Wiseguy is not currently taking phone orders due to high volume in the store)

Wiseguy NY Pizza

300 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20001 (map)
wiseguynypizza.com

About the author: Brian Oh is a Washington, DC based international development professional, food lover, and photographer. In his free time, you can usually find him chasing down a good burger or slice. Follow him on Twitter @brianoh11

While we think mom-and-pop shops make the best pizza in the nation, we'd be remiss if we didn't keep abreast of what the chains are up to. Suit up, it's time for another Chain Reaction, folks.

[Photographs: Todd Brock]

We've already covered a few of the players in the growing genre of "Chipotlesque" pizzerias here at Slice. Places like 800 Degrees in L.A. and Pie-ology in the Anaheim area are staking out a rep at the top end of the new category, and Punch Pizza has been doing it in the Twin Cities perhaps longer than anyone. But the others seem to be in a race to see who becomes the first true mega-chain of DIY pizza. One Atlanta-based company is sure giving it a go, with over 75 locations "in development," according to their website. But while Uncle Maddio's Pizza Joint hopes to bring Subway-style pies to the masses, my experience with them has leaned more toward train wreck.

There are just seven Uncle Maddio's stores now, six in metro Atlanta (where it was started by a Moe's Southwest Grill alum) and one in Louisville, KY. (Company propaganda calls out Charlotte, Jacksonville, Knoxville, Raleigh, Savannah, and Tallahassee as future sites.) The ones I'm familiar with are strip-mall tenants, often near popular retail districts or college campuses. On a recent Saturday night, the location near Cumberland Mall was doing fairly brisk business as a pit stop for harried Christmas shoppers.

As an alternative to the mall food court, Uncle Maddio's does offer a step up. Not as fussy or time-sucking as putting your name on a list, waiting for a table, and making small talk with a waiter, the visible assembly line method is certainly preferable to ordering a combo meal by number and waiting for it to unceremoniously appear from the back.

But there was something sad to me about seeing a rack of already-flattened and perfectly-shaped dough rounds wrapped in foil, waiting their turn. (Uncle Maddio's offers three varieties: white, wheat, and gluten-free.) Watching the staff at Atlanta rival Your Pie work a dough ball and give it a toss or two at the beginning of your transaction is a key moment, I believe, in making that pizza feel like a custom-made experience. The stack of ready-to-decorate crusts at Uncle Maddio's just drives home the point that you could have had a real pizza, but chose not to this time.

Even worse was watching my selected sauce and toppings get slid into a conveyor belt oven. The chain touts its "special fast-bake oven" and wants you to be wowed by the six-minute cook time. I suppose that may dazzle the uneducated, but if you're reading this column, you know that with the right equipment and under the right conditions, 90 seconds is not unusual for a serious pizza. So adjust your standards accordingly at Uncle Maddio's.

No char spots on your underside, just a precise array of raised nubbins. Both the white and wheat crusts are chewy and spongy, with a lightly-toasted outer surface but no real microbubble structure to speak of. This is commercially-produced pizza through and through and more akin to a flatbread appetizer base than true-blue pizza crust. You'd better hope you hit a home run picking from the 45+ toppings offered, 'cos that's the only thing that's going to shine.

The chain makes their own sausage and meatballs, as seen in the previous two photos. Both are good, if not quite spectacular. My six-year-old opted for mozzarella, while the nine-year-old picked cheddar. Ricotta, blue, and goat are also available, as is Daiya vegan cheese. These were basic one-topping pies and made my kids happy enough at seven bucks a pop.

I felt the need to stretch a bit. Of the six sauces offered, I went with herb pesto. Toppings: jerk chicken, red onions, and pineapple. It was tasty, but nothing that knocked my socks off. Preferable to both the food court nastiness and the Cheesecake Factory/Maggiano's wait times across the street, I suppose, but not something I'd seek out over a pie from a "real" pizzeria.

Everyone at my table went the personal pizza route, though Uncle Maddio's does offer larger pies to share. Inexplicably, the menu limits you to three toppings per 9-inch pie, with no posted option of paying more to get more. Their Signature Pizzas, of which there are about a dozen, are more loaded up, resulting in a bit more bang for your buck. That was my wife's strategy with the Chicken Club ($7.99).

With buttermilk ranch dressing sauce, mozzarella and cheddar, grilled chicken, bacon, Roma tomatoes, and lettuce, it tasted exactly like its namesake sandwich. In fact, as I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the sensation of the triangular-shaped piece in my hand, I could have sworn I was eating a chicken club sandwich and not a pizza at all. It suddenly occurred to me that Uncle Maddio's crust is nearly identical in every respect (shape, texture, taste, airiness, mouthfeel) to the round sourdough buns at Schlotzsky's. As my wife summarized, "Not bad... but not really pizza."

My guess is this will not be the official tagline as the chain attempts to take DIY pizza nationwide. You should feel free to use Uncle Maddio's as a Plan B to mall food (and there's something to be said for that alone this time of year; beer and wine and a Coca-Cola Freestyle machine help, too), but don't make the mistake of putting it in the same category as what you and I classify as genuine pizza.

About the Author: Todd Brock lives the glamorous life of a stay-at-home freelance writer in the suburbs of Atlanta. Besides being paid to eat cheeseburgers for AHT and pizzas for Slice, he's written and produced over 1,000 hours of television and penned Building Chicken Coops for Dummies. When he grows up, he wants to be either the starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys or the drummer for Hootie & the Blowfish. Or both.

This Nedroid comic (which often brings pizza into the picture) appeared on reddit last night. Oddly, it doesn't seem to be on the Nedroid site.

[How to Cut a Pizza from reddit]

VIEW SLIDESHOW: Top This: The Polish (à la L'Asso EV)

To create The Polish pizza at L'Asso, owner Robert Benenvenga drew inspiration from the surrounding Polish delicatessens in Manhattan's East Village. He sourced smoked kielbasa, or Polish sausage, from Polish G.I. Delicatessen, an Eastern European specialty foods shop located next door to the pizzeria.

The Polish is loaded with slices of the kielbasa, pickles, mozz, and mustard oil; it's something like a deli sandwich in pizza form. Bizarre topping choices, you say? Maybe. But kielbasa is reminiscent of pepperoni, except it's slightly smoky and flavored with garlic and marjoram. And pickles, mustard, cheese and meat are a delightfully familiar, tried and true combination. So we urge you, go visit your local Polish deli, ask for some kielbasa (and maybe a few pierogies to eat there), and get your pizza on. Click through the slideshow to find out how.

What You'll Need (for one pizza)

• 1 dough portion
• Smoked and precooked kielbasa, sliced (If you don't live close to a Polish deli, you can order your Kielbasa online from Piast Meats & Provisions)
• Mozzarella, sliced
• Dill pickle slices (See Marissa McClellan's recipe to learn how to make your own dill pickles)
• Dijon mustard
• Extra virgin olive oil

The owner of Polish G.I., Grace Iwuc, at her East Village deli

L'Asso EV

107 1st Avenue, New York NY 10003 (map)
212-837-2048 lassonyc.com

About the author: Originally from Los Angeles, Erin Mosbaugh writes Je Blague, where she captures her food adventures in NYC and beyond. Erin also writes for Robb Report New York City, First We Feast, and Food & Wine Magazine.

[Photographs: RIch Vana]

The recently expanded space at Dallas' Cane Rosso still doesn't seem overly large on a Friday night, where fans of Jay Jerrier's two-year-old Neopolitan pizza restaurant pack in shoulder to shoulder, waiting to get a seat to try one or two of his pies straight out of the screaming hot, 900-degree, wood-fired oven.

Cane Rosso, located in Deep Ellum, just outside of Downtown, isn't the only VPN certified pizza joint in Dallas, but it is certainly the most popular. Jerrier's business and social media acumen have certainly helped improve awareness to his restaurant, but it's the restaurant itself that has helped to spark a pizza culture in Dallas that expands well beyond what he's doing in his red wood-fired oven. We spoke with Jay to get his take on the evolving Dallas pizza culture, and where he likes to go outside of his own shop.

Thanks for chatting with us, Jay. Cane Rosso's coming up on its second birthday, and you're about to open a second location - how is the pizza culture different in Dallas now as opposed to when you decided to open shop?

I think that the state of pizza in Dallas has improved dramatically over the past couple—several, really—years. When Fireside Pies over on Henderson Avenue opened (2005), that was what started making me want to make good pizza. I think Fireside was the first recognized wood fired pizzeria in Dallas, and it was one that we went to all the time. Otherwise, we hardly ever ate pizza here because there wasn't anything that really stood out.

Since they opened, though, there have been places like Cavalli's—who makes really good pizza—up in McKinney and Irving. After them, we opened and then you have transplants like Dough that came in after that. Then there's a new one way up in Frisco near the soccer park called Pizzeria Testa - which is basically what Cane Rosso would have been if I had any money when I opened. And those are just the Neapolitan side!

Then there are the other places, places like Urban Crust, which I think makes good pizza, and you have a couple of the coal-fired styles, like Coal Vines—I especially like the original one down near the Crescent Hotel. I think that one does a really nice job. And, of course, the Grimaldi's chain is here in town now too. A lot of people seem to like that.

We even have good pockets of New York style pizza here now, too. Yes, there are the generic Joe's Pizza and pasta places that are more Albanian in style, but I'm not talking about those. For real New York style I think Brooklyn's does a pretty good job, and my favorite for New York style in all of Dallas is a place called Ferraris, which is a little spot kind of tucked away at Preston and Tennyson. I really think they make the best New York style slice in Dallas.

And even still, there's Campisis. I was in Love Field going somewhere, I think flying to Austin, and I noticed there was a Campisis at the airport and so I went and grabbed a little sausage pizza, and it was good. It's just a totally different style; I get why people get nostalgic about their sausage pizza—it's good.

All that to say, I think we've gone from kind of a wasteland of generic chain restaurants —you know, CiCi's, Pizza Hut, Domino's, and Papa John's—to a point where people are making their own mozzarella, they're bringing in double zero flour, they're taking the time and educating themselves about what good pizza really is, whatever style it is.

You've mentioned a lot of styles of pizza. Is Dallas to the point where it has its own style, in your opinion?

I think that if there is a Dallas style, then just by terms of sheer longevity it's probably like Campisis; when you look at the places that are kind of iconic in Dallas, from a pizza standpoint, Pizza by Marco, Campisis's and even Louie's are the ones that have been along the longest time, and I think they all share that same style. It's probably originated from what they call a bar style pizza; where it's dough that's run through a sheeter so it's more like a cracker. Even Eno's does a real cracker-style of dough with a lot of toppings on it. I think that's why a lot of people were slow to adopt the much softer, more lightly topped Neapolitan style, because they were used to the idea of the crust as a topping delivery device rather than as a component of a pizza.

Do you see yourself going into a different style?

Yeah, but I don't think we would ever be able to pull it off inside Cane Rosso. It would have to be a separate standalone thing. But you know, of the millions of things on our to-do lists, I would love to find a way to do a New York style pizzeria. We always joke what it would be like: "If you hate Cane Rosso you'll love this pizzeria!" Because it's going to be big slices, and it's going to be slices that you can load up with toppings. And it's going to be with more of that shredded aged mozzarella; good stuff, like from Grande. Stuff like that. But it would be totally different from Cane Rosso; you can pick up a slice and it won't fall over. And so I think that is for sure on our to-do list. But we've got to get our White Rock location up and running, and work on that - we've got enough on that to-do list to last a lifetime.

So you've got this woodfired oven here, obviously specifically designed for pizza—but have you ever gotten creative with what you can cook in it?

All of our kitchen guys, we're always messing around with tacos, and we use the front lip of the oven to heat up tortillas. We take our braised pork and we'll kind of make an Italian version of carnitas. They'll make, they'll take our tomatoes and Calabrian chiles and they'll whip together a red salsa or we'll get some tomatillos in and make some salsa verde. We get distracted by a lot of different foods here.

In fact, I have actually made barbecue in one of my mobile ovens. You know at the end of the day, I just kind of set up a brisket on top of a raised grill with a pan of apple juice underneath it. Every now and then I would just throw a little handful of woodchips in to give it a little smoke. Man, after 14 hours, the next morning, that was some really tender brisket. Although I probably shouldn't have brisket grease running all over the floor of the oven. That's probably not a good idea.

Just call it the secret ingredient?

(Laughs) Yeah, right.

For more stories on Cane Rosso and Jay's experience with pizza ovens both stationary and mobile, check out these past posts.

About the author: Rich Vana spends his days discussing, discovering, and writing about food in Dallas and the surrounding areas. Sometimes he even gets to partake. You can see the fruits of his labor at Entrée Dallas.

Elves not included. [Image: Pizza Hut Singapore]

Not one to be outdone by Pizza Middle East with their Crown Crust or Cone Crust, Pizza Hut Singapore is making the Double Sensation their December sweetheart. The Double Sensation isn't just some gimmicky design of an outer crust. Oh no, it's all that and much much more. I'm talking not one, but two crusts. If you're thinking stuffed pizza, you're thinking much too conventionally. This is a pizza inside a pizza (not to be confused with this). As in an inner pizza, crust and all, contained within an outer belt of pizza. Mind-bending, right? So that's the Double part. And now take that and Sensation-alize it! The outer ring is triple cheese stuffed with cheddar, Parmesan, and mozzarella, while the inner ring is filled with chicken sausage and cheese. Pepper alfredo sauce blankets the inner pie, which is then topped with smoked chicken and zucchini. Salsa (!) tops ring two, as does turkey ham, bell peppers, and mushrooms. Top it off with a cherry on top. For real. Look. There is a cherry on top.

Seriously hope to get some Singapore intel on this for Slice soon. Stay tuned...

[Via: Eater and Brand Eating]

About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.

Popular Brooklyn pizzeria Paulie Gee's will open a branch in Baltimore in 2013, Slice has learned. Paul Giannone, whose transformation from IT manager to renowned pizza-maker is well-documented on this site (among many other places), is partnering with Baltimore local "Pizzablogger" (who asked to remain anonymous), at what will be called Paulie Gee's Hampden. (You may know Pizzablogger from his posts and comments on Slice, from his presence on Pizzamaking.com, or from his summertime pop-up, Pizza Ruby, at the Baltimore Farmers Market.)

"I want to grow Paulie Gee's, but I don't want it to affect what I'm doing here in Greenpoint," Giannone said. "The best way I can expand and still do that is to help someone else."

Pizzablogger has signed a lease on the former Hampden Republican Club in Batltimore's hip Hampden neighborhood.

The exterior, as it appears now in Google Maps.

The pair had originally talked about opening in Philadelphia, but Pizzablogger, a loyal Baltimorean, didn't want to uproot his family from the city he loves. The partnership initially seemed over at that point, but, said Pizzablogger, "Paulie charged me with finding a neighborhood worth taking a look at in Baltimore. I already knew what neighborhood I envisioned opening my own pizzeria in—Hampden—so I just needed to have Paulie come down and show it to him."

"Paulie came down mid-January with [his wife] Mary Ann and we spent all day looking at various neighborhoods, starting with Hampden. After a grand tour, we came back to Hampden again, and Paulie could see it was the right neighborhood. From there it was just a matter of looking at various spaces, finding the right one, and eventually being able to sign a lease on the building, which I did just prior to Thanksgiving."

"The large round tables have got to go," Paulie Gee says. [Photo courtesy of Paul Giannone]

The large space is packed with old-school Baltimore charm, and Giannone and Pizzablogger plan to retain much of the social club's original character and decor, including a painting of dogs playing poker and possibly the organization's trophies and banners—if Giannone is able to acquire them from their respective owners. Local contractors will be brought in to do whatever modifications the owners wish to make.

The space is large enough, Giannone said, that they're thinking of using two wood-fired ovens (the same Stefano Ferrara model as used in Greenpoint). Those ovens will figure prominently in the restaurant's design. "We're going to drop them right in the middle of the place," Giannone said. "The large, round tables are gonna have to go."

[Photo: Adam Kuban]

This is in keeping with Giannone's appreciation of pizza-making as theater, as is the case at Paulie Gee's Greenpoint. "If Ferrara can do it, I want to get the oven 'tattooed' the same as at Greenpoint," he said, referring to the "Napoli" and sunburst tile design, which harks back to his original DIY backyard oven.

If the partners do decide on a dual-oven set-up—a strong likelihood given the capacity of the place—Pizzablogger said he hopes to eventually serve his square pies from one of them. But, he said, "My only focus at the moment is being able to actually run two wood-fired ovens on busy nights. That alone is a big task out of the gate, and I don't want to introduce another variable too soon. But it has always been a vision of mine to bake my square in a wood-fired oven. I've always pushed the baking time with my squares to be as short as possible while still being adequately cooked. So I will definitely be experimenting with the square pies and hopefully dial it in enough to be comfortable serving it. That's kind of a signature pie of mine and I will only make it via natural leavening or not at all. Can't wait to dome a square!"

[Photo courtesy of Pizzablogger]

And that's not the only way the menu may differ.

"I want to create half the menu that's been successful here, our greatest hits: The Greepointer, the Cherry Jones, etc," Giannone said. "The other part of the menu will be [Pizzablogger's] to create, to spread his wings. He also envisions doing "pie swaps," in which successful pies from the Hampden location will appear on the Greenpoint menu.

And what kind of pies might we see from Pizzablogger's part of the menu?

Pizzablogger's Hampdenite as cooked at his Baltimore Farmers' Market pop-up, Pizza Ruby. Pizza Ruby will not reappear at the market in 2013, as Pizzablogger will be focusing all his energy on getting Paulie Gee's Hampden up and running. [Photo: Pizza Ruby Facebook page]

"I am not nearly as creative as someone like Paulie, the crew at Roberta's, TXCraig, etc. when it comes to topping combinations or with pie names," Pizzablogger said. "But I will have a few of my own offerings, with the Hampdenite being a definite one in the summer months. It's simple, but people at the Baltimore Farmer's Market loved it: basically a Margherita with aleppo chiles, calabrian chile oil, and heirloom cherry tomatoes. Definitely a pie with lemons on it, which I always make and love. I often finish my lemon pies with Mike's Hot Honey and sometimes pull the pie with about a minute to go and add crushed pine nuts before putting back into the oven to finish. Wintergreen, Baltimore Flats and a few more may pop-up from time to time, including the Crab Chip. No crabs, but it does use an ingredient Paulie dislikes. All of the regular offerings will use baker's yeast like the Greenpoint location. I may ocassionally offer one round pizza that uses natural leavening as a limited quantity offering on certain nights."

The large space has a separate bar area in the back, isolated from the dining room. "It's like something out of Goodfellas," Giannone says. Expect a well-considered selection of beers there, as Pizzablogger is a beer aficionado and will be in charge of the beverage menu as well.

"It's hard when you first start out to be in a position to demand difficult-to-obtain or limited-quantity beers from various distributors and importers," Pizzablogger says. "But it's my desire to stock hard-to-obtain beers and have the bar be attractive to beer enthusiasts—and I am willing to go out of my way to do that."

Giannone and Pizzablogger hope to open between April and June of 2013. Stay tuned, folks. We'll have more Paulie Gee's Hampden news as it develops.

Pauile Gee's Hampden

3535 Chestnut Avenue, Baltimore MD 21211 (near West 36th Street; map)

About the author: Adam Kuban is the founder of Slice, where he has been blogging about pizza for more than eight years. You should follow him on Twitter: @akuban.

VIEW SLIDESHOW: My Pie Monday: Beef Wellington, Pan de Santa, Turtle Pizza and More!

Merry My Pie Monday, Slice'rs! Things are taking new shapes around here. Take Dhorst's awesome cheese stuffed turtle pizza and Norma's doughy Santa and Christmas tree pizzas! Amusebouche1 also stretches the conventional shape of things with his deconstructed beef wellington. Tscarborough is back with a breakfast of champions pizza and kenposurf brings a full monte pie. Spicy and meaty are the order of the day for Imwalkin and JEL, and bunster10 tops her NY-style pie with mushrooms and micro greens.

If you're making pizza this week, send us a shot for the next My Pie Monday on January 7th! NOTE: My Pie Monday will not run next Monday but all pies submitted will run the following week.

Just take one snapshot of your homemade pizza, describe your cooking method (briefly!), and follow these instructions to get it to Slice HQ by 8pm EST on Thursday night. Be sure to let us know your Slice/Serious Eats screen name!

About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.

From Serious Eats

[Image: IKO / Shutterstock]

We wanted to take this opportunity to wish all serious eaters happy holidays and a merry Christmas. It's the sixth holiday season we've shared together, and each year we have loads of fun at SE World HQ bringing you holiday recipes, entertaining tips, and more merrymaking on all of our blogs. This year we perfected the prime rib recipe, built a train from Bûche de Noël cakes, drank too much, and of course, what's December without cookies.

May all of you eat lots of seriously delicious food this holiday season and be surrounded by people who love and care about you. Now, let's eat!

VIEW SLIDESHOW: 8 Pizzas That Haunt My Dreams, 2012

The short version: This is a roster of 8 pizzas and/or slices that I have eaten in 2012 that I still crave weeks, sometimes months after the fact. Take a spin through the slides above for the rundown. I've done this every yearsince2009.

The Long Version, aka The How's of the Hauntings

I'm probably an idiot for even hoping that the following methodology will stave off inevitable comments along the lines of "WTF, Johnny Jumbo's* isn't on here; your list is crap," but I'm going to try. I'll use some past comments as jumping-off points.

"You have eight pizzas and not one is from Brooklyn. Shame on you! Brooklyn has THE BEST pizza and there are so many places you had to pick from."

The list should probably be titled "Best New-to-Me Pizzas I Have Eaten in 2012," but that's not very punchy. I try to limit the list to new pizza experiences I've had in the previous year that really made an impression. Therefore, a lot of old or longtime favorites often don't make the list. Chances are, those places are written up on Slice ad nauseam as it is.

"You're missing a transcendently great pizza—DiLorenzo's in Trenton, NJ. Best in the US and an extremely close second to Il Pizzaiolo del Presidente on Via Tribunali in Naples Italy."

I actually love these types of comments, because I can add these suggestions to my To Try List if they're not already on there. The fact of the matter, though, is that I live in NYC and haven't traveled much this year (as Pick No. 7 explains), so the 2012 roster has a fairly narrow geographic range.

"Impressive that one of your demons is a pie you haven't even tried yet...."

At some point I started putting one wildcard in there—one pizza I haven't eaten but whose picture looked do dang good it haunted my dreams nonetheless. I like to think it gives me something to shoot for. That tradition holds this year.

"Only 8? A top 8? This man requests two more photos of pizza pron."

For a long time, 8 was the magic number on Slice, since there are 8 slices in a pie. Well, in a New York–style pie, anyway. I still do my lists in 8s as a result.

Now, here's a question I have for YOU. What were YOUR top pizza experiences of 2012?

About the author: Adam Kuban is the founder of Slice, where he has been blogging about pizza for more than eight years. You should follow him on Twitter: @akuban.

From Serious Eats

VIEW SLIDESHOW: Our Favorite Photos of 2012

We browsed through the archives of all of the Serious Eats sites and picked some of our favorite photos including sandwiches, cakes, ice cream, salads, bacon, fried chicken, pizza, and more! (Also check out our favorite drinks photos and burger photos.)

VIEW SLIDESHOW: Top Ten Daily Slices of 2012

If you spend some time on Slice, then you know we run a lot of Daily Slice posts in a year. Each post highlights a particular slice or pie from a pizzeria and we keep 'em short and sweet. As we look back on 2012, here's a recap of the 10 most popular Daily Slices from the year.

Check out the original posts here:

Little Star, San Francisco, CA »
Una Pizza Napoletana, San Francisco, CA »
Little Vincent's Pizza, Huntington, NY »
Grey Block Pizza, Culver City, CA »
Pie-ology, Los Angeles, CA »
Shorty's Pizza, Tucker, GA »
Don Antonio, NYC »
Sal's, NYC »
Motorino, NYC »
Toby's Public House, NYC »

From Serious Eats

Happy New Year, serious eaters. May your 2013 be filled with lots of seriously delicious food with people whose company you enjoy. That's in fact what we strive to do every day on Serious Eats, and to the extent that we succeed, it's largely because of the warm embrace we receive from the ever-growing community of serious eaters all over the world.

We look forward to sharing even more of our food and drink enthusiasm with you in 2013 (and for many years to come), and we can't wait to hear about yours as well! Here's to a happy, healthy new year!

And if you're throwing a party tonight, here are 60+ easy, tasty nibbles to prepare in a jiffy and tips for affordable bubbly to pop.

Plain pie from Totonno's—a must for any NYC pizza eating itinerary. [Photograph: Lance Roberts]

Before leaping into a year of new pizza trends, recipes, openings, and chain restaurant shenanigans, let's take a look back at the most popular posts (according to our web analytics) of 2012. Here are the top ten most visited posts from the past year. What trends do you think 2013 will bring?

1. Where to Eat Pizza in NYC: The Ultimate 15 Pizzeria Itinerary
2. A Taste of the Cheeseburger Crown Crust Pizza from Pizza Hut in the Middle East
3. How Is Domino's New Gluten-Free Pizza Crust?
4. The Pizza Lab: Awesome Pizza Without An Oven (aka Skillet Pizza)
5. The Pizza Lab: Three Doughs to Know
6. Chain Reaction: Buffalo Chicken Pizza from Papa John's
7. The Domino's Makeover
8. Video: Jim Lahey Makes No-Knead Pizza At Home
9. Pizza Madness: Pizza In a Jar
10. The Pizza Lab: How To Make Fried Pizza At Home (à la Forcella)