VIEW SLIDESHOW: Forcella's Make-Your-Own Neapolitan Pizza Sessions

[Photographs: Eugena Ossi]

I'd argue that a lesson with Giulio is essential, whether you're an experienced pizza maker interested in honing your craft or a first-timer looking to get your hands dirty. I learned how to properly stretch and shape dough, in addition to little tips and tricks that will undoubtedly enhance my at-home pizza making adventures. Oh, and did I mention that it's free?*

There are two dozen toppings to choose from, including Prosciutto San Daniele, bufala mozzarella, Pecorino, burrata, shrimp, anchovies, and even truffle oil. Click through the slideshow to see me get flour all over my shirt, and to witness the creation of my own delectable pizza. Interested parties should sign up soon, since session slots are limited and the promotion will be over at the end of March!

*Yes, you will need to pay for a Margarita or bianca pie ($12-13) and any additional toppings ($1-6), but the session itself is at no extra cost.

Forcella
Park Ave South: 377 Park Avenue South (map), (212) 448-1116
Bowery: 334 Bowery (map), (212) 466-3300
Williamsburg: 485 Lorimer Street (map), (718) 388-8820
forcellaeatery.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.

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: Kelly Bone]

I got my first whiff of the The Urban Oven last year at Chris Bianco's booth at LA Loves Alex's Lemonade. There, Scott Tremonti worked side by side with Chris, for what I later learned was the first time ever. Chris began offering guidance to Scott, and his pizzas have been consistently improving ever since.

Since hitting the street late last year, The Urban Oven has been serving a rotating menu of approximately 9 -10" pizzas with inspired toppings (such as the Bianco which has yet to reappear on the menu, hint hint) for $10 each. The truck holds an almond wood-fueled Belforno oven, maintained at 800-850 degrees for a 2 to 2.5 minute bake. At first taste, I was disappointed. The wan crust reflected very little of its fermentation, let alone its trip through a wood-fired oven—take a look at his Brussels sprouts pie, for instance. But with each subsequent visit, I found notable improvements.

Recently, the crust hit its highest marks yet. A bulbous lip, with a high and chewy hole structure, covered in spots of char. Scott used a California flour with a 18-36 hour proofing and a sourdough starter, yielding tart notes laced through each bite.

These days, one of my favorites is the Tre Truffle. The pie is topped with mozzarella, parmigiano, goat cheese, arugula, and truffle oil; despite its questionable origins, I'll admit that I still enjoy a light drizzle of the stuff from time to time. The cheeses form a gooey base at the center of the pie, while the peppery arugula floats across the top, balancing the heavy bottom.

The challenges of operating a mobile pizza oven has been evident over The Urban Oven's starter months. Scott says the Belforno is performing well, but still isn't producing his ideal pie. That's why he plans to install a Forno Bravo in his next truck. Considering that his crust has just hit its stride, the timing couldn't be more perfect.

The Urban Oven

310-956-9679; theurbanoven.com

About the author: After nearly a decade in Brooklyn, Kelly Bone landed back in Los Angeles where she writes The Vegetarian Foodie. She spends the rest of her time designing office cubicles... you might be sitting in one right now! Follow her on Twitter at @TheVegFoodie

[Photograph: Benjamin Ricetto, Thebarrieexaminer.com]

Takeru Kobayashi's legendary stomach earned him a whopping $3,250 last Sunday. Deadspin reports that Dominos booked the champion eater to attend a Super Bowl party, where he was filmed virtually inhaling one of their 12-inch pizzas in exactly one minute.

According to TMZ, his epic meal unofficially breaks his standing world record of 1 minute, 9.36 seconds for consuming a pizza of the same diameter. Ahh, progress.

Kobayashi followed his pizza with another of America's most beloved of traditions: A good old-fashioned, properly belligerent chugging competition! Needless to say, Kobayashi looks less-than-thrilled with the "USA" chanting session that follows.

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

Last weekend, with Serious Eats fresh on the heels of a pepperoni taste test and a pepper jack cheese taste test, myself fresh on the heels of a just-starting-to-fade hangover, and a kitchen stocked with pickled jalapeños and a freshly cracked jar of red chili flakes, I did some quick mental math and came up with an equation that would take care of all these loose variables.

It went something like this.

Take a large pinch of red pepper flakes, cook them in oil, and add them to some basic New York pizza sauce. Smear the mixture onto a round disk of stretched pizza dough.

Divide the grated cheese evenly across the surface, then add some thick-sliced hot Spanish chorizo. Multiply your heat factor by distributing chopped pickled jalapeños all over the surface.

Bake until hot and bubbly, then sit back and wait as your hangover slowly subtracts itself.

Seriously, it's a tasty combo. I'd never tried jack-style cheese on a pizza before, much less pepper jack, but it makes total sense. As a high-moisture cheese, jack melts extremely well—at least as well as the dry mozzarella you'd typically put on a New York-style slice. On top of that, it's got a nice tang that's buttressed by the spicy peppers embedded in the cheese.

All that pepper jack fat mingles with rendered chorizo fat and the pickled jalapeño juices. It's hot and tangy and oh so delicious.

What's that? You're saying it's a little too similar to my pepperoni and pickled banana pepper pie? Have some pity. I was hungover, ferchrissake.

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.

Recipes!

• Basic New York-style Pizza Dough
• New York Style Pizza Sauce

[Photographs: Casey Barber]

Traveling west on I-78 or south on 287, where the hunched-together towns of New Jersey spread out and give way to rural lakes and woods, it's easy to miss much of the local flavor—especially if you're zooming by on your way to Pennsylvania or the shore. But there's almost always a good pizzeria stashed away on the quaint Main Streets and thoroughfares of these small Jersey towns. La Casa Bianca, just down the road from the train station in Whitehouse Station, is one such hidden gem. A Friday night favorite in the area, the restaurant is flush with hand-painted murals and oversized landscape paintings. The brick oven, stoked with wood, brings warmth to the rear bar counter on these cold winter days.

La Casa Bianca's menu boasts a slew of beguiling topping options—broccoli rabe and hot sausage; Gorgonzola and Fontina; shiitake and porcini mushrooms with rosemary—but my dining companion and I had a rare opportunity on our hands. We were eating sans husbands on this frigid Friday afternoon. Taking full advantage of the brief respite from our picky-eating other halves, we decided to go for the big guns: seafood all around.

Since clams are the number one bivalve on my list, I had high hopes for the clams casino pizza ($12.95), topped, as the menu stated, "with whole baby clams, bacon, onions, sweet red and yellow peppers, and blended cheeses." Alas, the clams weren't whole as promised, but instead came chopped like the contents of white clam sauce, with the smoky, salty bacon overwhelming the delicately briny bits. Once in a while, I'd hit a big piece of clam and savor the full flavor, but those moments were few and far between.

This isn't to say that the combination wasn't satisfying (I know it's a cliché, but bacon's always satisfying)—just that I never would have ordered a bacon-and-peppers pizza with a splash of clam sauce. More clams, less casino next time, please!

The surprise hit of the day was instead the calamari fritto pizza ($15.95). Instead of evenly distributing calamari rings across the pie as I'd expected, the kitchen pulled a cheese pizza from the oven and immediately formed a mound of homemade tomato sauce, rings of pepperoncini, and handfuls of fresh-fried calamari directly in its center. Each slice proved a little unwieldy, destroying the Jenga-like balance of the pile as we pulled the pieces onto our plates, but sometimes a knife and fork are necessary in an unusual toppings situation.

I must give credit for the ultimate success of both of these pies to the crust, which was so tender inside and crispy at the edges that it probably could have sustained the saddest of toppings. Even after soaking up the clam juice and extra tomato sauce on each respective pizza, it maintained its taste and texture—heck, I could have happily gnawed all the bones off of my pie, leaving the interior unmolested. If La Casa Bianca ever wants to branch out and start baking up its own brick oven breadsticks, I would gladly convince my friend to start a Friday lunch ritual. We might even let our husbands tag along.

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

From Serious Eats

[Photographs: Will Gordon]

Remember when President Reagan was shot and Alexander Haig announced he was taking over the White House? And everyone was sort of confused, because wasn't Reagan still alive, and didn't we keep a perfectly good vice president under glass for just such occasions, and who the hell was Alexander Haig?

But on the other hand, who among us had memorized the specifics of executive branch chain of command? All any of us really recalled was that the Postmaster General ranked surprisingly high on the list, which meant anything was possible. Maybe Haig was president?

I bring this up because last week I perpetrated a similar temporary coup at Serious Eats World Headquarters. No, no, I didn't make a play for the Overlordship. Despite his advancing age, Ed's blog hand remains strong. I set my sights on a far cheesier prize. As I'm sure you know, there was a changing of the Slice guard last week: Out with cool-ass Meredith, in with cool-ass Niki. It's a testament to the rest of the royal court that the transition appeared seamless when, in fact, Kenji's recklessness threatened to set the whole operation aflame.

Here's how it went down. After Meredith's final review of the troops, Niki was supposed to helicopter in for the formal transition of power, a gala ceremony at which she would take possession of the jewel-encornicioned pizza peel and the titanium takeout box containing Adam's home phone number. But it turns out the entire SE aerial fleet was being serviced that day, so Ed dispatched Kenji in the emergency Food Lab pedicab. As anyone who endures regular photos of his naked foot flesh in the "This Week at Serious Eats" feature knows, the man wears flip-flops year-round.

Well wouldn't you know that on the most important errand of his career one of the rubber toe-thongs snapped, causing him to lose control of the pedicab and go careening into a row of dumpling trucks. He quickly repaired the damages to both flop and cab with a poultice of fish sauce and raisins, but the delay left a brief window during which there was no official editor of Slice.

I took advantage of this power vacuum to declare myself the temporary head of all Totino's Pizza Roll-related matters, which is how I, the erstwhile Secretary of Fast Food, am able to present unto you this review of Totino's new Chicken Parmesan Rolls.

I love the original Totino's Pizza Rolls, because everyone does. Adam professed his adoration back in 2010, and ever since it's been burning me up that I have nothing to add ... until now! Because Totino's has begun running television ads for three new flavors: Meatball Marinara, Cheesy Garlic, and Chicken Parmesan. I've only been able to track down the Chicken Parm, which is a scathing indictment of this culinary backwater's grocery stores, but which is also plenty more than good enough to get the ball rolling.

And now, after way too much ado, I must admit the dirty truth. The Chicken Parm rolls aren't very tasty. They have the good sense to employ the legacy crust, which is still spectacular—neither too thick nor too thin, crisp on the outside and just the right touch of gummy underneath. As indicated in the photo, I managed to go a perfect 12 for 12 in blowouts, but that's part of the charm. The pizza roll crust is a delicate, high-pressure situation and leakage is, if not part of the magic, at least evidence of the magic. Stuff's going on in there, man!

Alas, the stuff doesn't amount to much in the Chicken Parmesan rendition. There's a decided lack of spunk to the guts, from the 1/8th-inch cubes of chicken to the slightly larger cheese chunks to the pasty and flavorless sauce. You know you've got a limp frozen pizza treat when you catch yourself thinking, "You know what would really help here? Some dried oregano, or maybe American cheese." And I'd have given my temporary kingdom for a bit of sausage or pepperoni. It turns out that without the spicy meats from the Combination flavor, or at least the extra goo from the Cheese model, there's just not enough going on inside that delightful shell.

About the author: Will Gordon loves life, particularly the parts of life that involve bourbon and Totino's Pizza Rolls. You can eat and drink with him in Boston or follow him @WillGordonAgain.

[Photograph: Chris Crowley]

Back in early December, chef Daniel Patterson organized a fundraising dinner at Coi, one of his San Francisco restaurants, to benefit victims of Hurricane Sandy. A portion of the proceeds were to be reserved for the acclaimed Brooklyn restaurant Governor. Last week, Governor's owners announced that it will not be reopening. Now Patterson will be rerouting the $5,000 raised for Governor to another New York food business in need: Brooklyn institution Totonno's.

The reallocation of funds was made possible by Totonno's lifer and post-Sandy hero Allison Robicelli, who also owns a gourmet bakery with her husband Matt and appears to be everywhere at once.

After reading about Governor's demise in the New York Times, Robicelli reached out to the owners of various restaurants that hosted fundraisers for Governor to see if they would be willing to reroute the results of those Herculean efforts to her beloved Totonno's. Anchoring her argument with an offer for "bowling and egg creams at Maple Lanes," Robicelli keyed them in on the pizzeria's history and explained the owner's post-Sandy situation, detailed in a Slice post from December. Although she has been going to Totonno's for her entire life, Robicelli has no personal relationship with the family.

"My grandmother would take me on the bus down to Coney for pizza when I was a kid, like her dad took her back in the 20s (he used to eat there regularly as an employee of the original Luna Park)," Robicelli wrote. "To be blunt, Coney SUCKED when I was a kid in the '80s. Did any of us have an issue with getting mugged or worse for pizza? No. That's how important Totonno's is."

The Totonno's family was alerted to the offer by Ed Levine, who spoke with owner Antoinette Balzano—the primary force behind the pizzeria's rebuilding effort—yesterday afternoon. The money, she told him, could be used to pay for replacing the floors. As Ed related to me in an email, "while it looks like the necessary loans will come through so that Totonno's will be able to reopen, any money that can alleviate their debt obligations [which include those left over from the 2009 fire that caused extensive damage] would be desperately needed."

[Photographs: Christine Tsai]

As a restaurateur from another corner of the country helping to save an irreplaceable New York institution, chef Patterson's will be following in the footsteps of Chicago's Geja Cafe. The restaurant, a long-standing and family-run operation, donated $6,726 out of their November and December sales to Totonno's after reading about its plight in The New York Times. A plaque will commemorate Geja Cafe's contribution. Patterson is thus far resisting getting the same treatment from the Totonno's family.

Chef Patterson was humble, in the way that all of those from the food industry who have gone to extra lengths to help victims of Sandy have been.

"Knowing that the money will be of use is thanks enough. It's true I organized the dinner, but it was also Corey Lee, Christopher Kostow, Evan Rich, Chris L'Hommedieu, Bill Corbett, and Matt Tinder who lent their time and talents," he wrote in a recent email.

"My staff came and worked on their day off—I should not be getting credit! Seriously, no big deal. We're all happy to help. That's what people do for each other, right? Totonno's is amazing. I just wish I could do more. Relying on fine dining restaurants to fill in the gaps left by the government in times of crisis is kind of a joke, but we did our best."

The process of rebuilding has been long and tenuous, but moments of kindness have helped the family endure. Yesterday, after showing up at Totonno's to see her contractor, Balzano opened up the mail to find an envelope marked with a California address. Inside, she found a card with a $20 bill.

"This morning I listened to your story on the radio and was stunned," Antoinette said over the phone, quoting the card's author, Carol Lee. "We wish you the best, and here is a little something to help you along the way."

One can hope that these examples inspire others.

About the author:Chris Crowley is the author of the Bronx Eats column. Follow him on Twitter, if you'd like. In person, your best bet is the window seat at Neerob, or waiting in line at the Lechonera La Piranha trailer.

[Photograph: John Lehman]

Pizza Hut has been blowing up the internet this week. First, their fan-generated Super Bowl HUT HUT HUT commercial turned more than a few heads; then, on Sunday, they announced the release of their latest product: the perplexingly oxymoronic Big Pizza Sliders, which were immediately picked up by everyone from HuffPo and Gothamist, to Eater and the Washington Post.

Yes, we will actually get around to trying these. [Photograph: Pizza Hut]

Now, Boing Boing has posted an utterly fascinating shot of Pizza Hut China's "hotdog encrusted shrimp tempura pizza with mayonnaise," courtesy of Globe and Mail photojournalist John Lehmann. Because someone, somewhere-most-likely-in-China, actually came up with this. And now, people can eat it. Woah.

How many of you, dear Slice'rs, would sink your teeth into this fantastical creation?

About the author:Niki Achitoff-Gray is the editor of Slice and a part-time student at The Institute of Culinary Education. She likes offal. A lot.

[Photographs: Todd Brock]

Just in case the name on the sign didn't clue you in, the larger-than-life Jets, Giants, and Yankees logos greet you just inside the front door. Sure, Georgia Tech is represented, too, but that's way back behind the counter. No, what hits you like a cold wind whipping straight off the Hudson is that Baby Tommy's Taste of New York really does feel like a bit of the Big Apple, right in the heart of the Big Peach.

And if the inexpensively-framed posters of the city's best-loved landmarks scattered about the tiny interior don't exactly put you in a New York state of mind, the sprawling spread of pies, calzones, and strombolis in the glass case just might.

It's all here and ready for its reheat, from plain cheese, to Granny's (their take on the Margherita), to slightly-unorthodox-if-not-somewhat-sacrilegious choices like Buffalo Chicken and Lasagna pizzas, and everything in between. There are twenty pies on the menu, not to mention five stuffed pies (more on them in a moment) and the obligatory add-a-topping methodology. And every damn one of them is available as a single slice.

There are two locations—the original up in the 'burbs, and this newer one, just a stone's throw from the Georgia Tech campus. But Baby Tommy's knows its college clientele can't live on single slices alone—sometimes you and your entire dorm floor need to chow down, too. That's when you order a Jumbo.

At twenty inches across, it looks almost absurdly big when they bring it around; almost as big as the table you're sitting at (they do a healthy carryout and delivery biz, too). It's not the biggest pizza I've seen in Atlanta, but this one feels less like a made-for-TV stunt and more like a made-for-Friday-at-the-frat-house party-in-a-box.

Mine was the Four Cheese ($23.95), a sauceless pie that puts sharp cheddar, mozzarella, provolone, and Parmesan on "a white base." But maybe it should be called the Five Cheese, because that white base was super-heavy on the ricotta.

These slices drape off their paper plates at both ends, with a crust that's both foldable and slightly crackly at the same time. A quick peek underneath showed not the blistered leopard-spotting of a fancypants pie, but a uniform deep golden brown bestowed by a New York minute spent in their Baker's Pride commercial ovens. This is undoubtedly street pizza: big, cheap, and fast.

But also damn tasty. While my rim didn't exactly have a textbook microbubble structure, it was chewy and springy, with an unmistakable hit of sweetness in there somewhere. It was also satisfying: one gooey slice from the Jumbo could have easily filled me up—and sent me to my couch for the rest of the day.

But that's so not my style. I had to push on and sample one of Baby Tommy's calling card pies, the stuffed pizzas. Not quite the "stuffed pizzas" famously churned out in Chicago; these monsters have a top and bottom crust...but with no blanket of sauce on top.

The interior is jam-packed with fillings, and they skew toward the oddball. But let's face it, if you're ordering a stuffed pizza, restraint and proper pizza decorum got chucked out the window long ago. There's Chicken Cordon Bleu, Nacho Chicken, Cheeseburger, Vegetable, and the Stuffed Meat ($19.95 for the medium), seen above.

Inside, it's heavy layers of spicy pepperoni, thick ham, and thin shavings of sausage and meatballs. Texturally, it was tough to discern where sausage stopped and meatballs started, but at this point in the meal, I was simply gutting it out. There's plenty of mozz in there and supposedly some very sparingly-applied tomato sauce that I, personally, couldn't find. All in all, this is essentially a deli case in a double-decker crust. And I totally dug it.

If you have a death wish, or the job of feeding the Yellow Jackets' entire offensive line, then you'll be happy to know that the stuffed pizzas are available as Jumbos as well. At $33.95, they're not for the light of wallet (nor, at a whopping SIXTEEN pounds, the weak of bicep).

But like everything about Baby Tommy's Taste of New York, it was a wonderful surprise. I'm already looking forward to working my way down that pizza menu, maybe spreading out into some of their classic sandwiches, even trying a cannoli or some "Push Cart Specials" like a gyro, knish, or Sabrett hot dog. Baby Tommy's may not be the best-known of the many ATL pizzerias trying to mimic the Big Apple, but they may be doing it better than anybody else.

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.

VIEW SLIDESHOW: First Look: The Forge, Oakland, CA

[Photographs: Wes Rowe]

Walking into The Forge, the newly opened pizza-joint-cum-fire-pit-destination in Oakland's Jack London Square, my first thought is, "I could really hang out in this place." The bright, reclaimed warehouse space is filled with early evening light; friends are gathered around tables with beers in hand. The setting sun even glints off the cluster of sailboats tethered just a stone's throw from the restaurant's outdoor patio.

And, of course, there's the pizza. The Forge, the brainchild of partners Michael Karp (of Barbacoa and Table 24) and Bob Burke (of the Pat Kuleto restaurant group), is meant to be a pie-centric place, as evidenced by the 800-degree wood burning Valoriani oven, imported straight out of Italy.

The Forge has got some serious pizza fanatics on board, too, ensuring that these pies are something to write home about. Jeff Amber, previously of XYZ and Chow, is the acting executive chef; Jeff Hayden, of Boot & Shoe Service and Dopo, is the sous chef; and Jeff Krupman, better known as the PizzaHacker, for his infamously tricked-out FrankenWeber oven, is consulting and is in charge of pizza "Research & Discovery" and dough consultation (his is a riff on Tartine's incomparable country bread).

The pizzas, Neapolitan in style and topped with a roster of fresh, seasonal ingredients, are certainly the menu's primary focus (there are eight varieties available). However, starters such as crispy cheese curds and and chicory salad speak of the restaurant's "American comfort food" bent, further driven home by mains including a chicken pot pie and an eight ounce cheeseburger.

"A big goal is to market from the waterside—water taxis, ferries, and sailboats," Karp tells us, gesturing to the nearby slips of the marina. "Charlie, the guy who manages the marina, couldn't be happier that we're here."

The waterfront feel of the restaurant is certainly accentuated by its ample outdoor space and its dedication to the Bay Area scene is prominent in the details of both the food and drink menus.

"The goal was to draw a circle around this space, and try to get the breweries that fell within it," Karp says of the almost all-California selection of beers on tap (there's one from Colorado).

In addition to the 11 draft beers, bar manager Ryan Sillers has put together a selection of classic, crowd-friendly cocktails. There has been a big effort to create as many elements as possible in-house, including the ginger beer featured in their Dark and Stormy.

Still to come? Brunch service is about a month out, which will include breakfast classics and, of course, pizzas.

Amber, already in the swing of a very busy kitchen, is excited about the possibilities the restaurant has for the Jack London Square area.

"I want it to be a neighborhood joint," he says. "Bring your kids, bring your dog!"

Check out some dishes and drinks from The Forge in the slideshow.

The Forge

66 Franklin Street, Oakland CA 94607 (map)
510-268-3200; theforgepizza.com

About the author:Lauren Sloss is a bicoastal food-lover who is based in San Francisco. Some of her favorite things include The Black Keys, goat gouda, and guacamole. You can follow her on Twitter @laurensloss.

[Photograph: Meredith Smith]

Right now, Domino's is the only joint on their list, but creators Matt Burkinshaw and Riley Alexander promise to have more chains joining their ranks soon. The Daily Dot gives the full scoop on how (and why you might ever want to) use some badass decentralized currency to pick up your pies. Onwards and upwards, my friends!

About the author:Niki Achitoff-Gray is the editor of Slice and a part-time student at The Institute of Culinary Education. She likes offal. A lot.

VIEW SLIDESHOW: My Pie Monday: BBQ Brisket, Pizza Pringles, Kobe Beef Bacon, and More!

Kick off your week right with some glorious My Pie Monday inspiration. We've got quite the hunger-inducing line-up today, with a whopping 18 pizzas fresh from the oven.

This week, we welcome newcomer Manda, who kicks things off with some serious Super Bowl love, giving Kenji's Foolproof Pan Pizza a whirl along with BGEPizza. Let's also give it up for Burger365, who makes a Brussels sprouts- and pancetta-topped comeback after 4 painful months sans oven, and TXCraig1, who brings his bake time down to 45 seconds!

Adam Kuban and Norma427 pop in with Detroit-style pies, while Adam's pizza monkey bread gets a nod (and some stuffing!) from Imwalkin. Okaru, Florida9, and millions get things cookin' on steel, with mouthwatering results. Also on the roster are SHole, who puts his leftovers to good use in an empty-the-fridge pie, and jamesws, who keeps things simple with Kenji's Crispy Bar Pizza. Meanwhile, B7gourmand goes for a colorful array of broccoli, crushed tomatoes, and caramelized onions, while kenposurf's toppings of pineapple and vegetables accidentally wind up hidden beneath his cheese. More exciting topping combinations emerge all around: Champagne cream and clams from JEL; pizza-flavored Pringles grace kakugori's latest pie; Amusbouche1 goes all out with BBQ brisket; and last, but not least, some Kentucky rye-dosed dough, topped with Kobe beef bacon, cremini mushrooms, and mozz from Jimmyg.

So yeah. I think it's pretty reasonable to say that these folks mean business. And that business is zomygodpizza!

Click through the slideshow to view the full array in all its pizzalicious glory. And if you're crafting your own pizza this week, please do send us a shot for next week's My Pie Monday! Just take one horizontal snapshot of your homemade pizza (at least 610px by 458px, please!), briefly describe your cooking method, 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!

Want to peruse more pizza beauty shots? Right this way! No, please, after you »

About the author:Niki Achitoff-Gray is the editor of Slice and a part-time student at the Institute of Culinary Education. She's pretty big into pizza. Also, she likes offal. A lot.

Note: For the 32 days between February 1st and March 4th, I'm adopting a completely vegan lifestyle. Every weekday I'll be updating my progress with a brand new recipe. For past posts, check here!

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

The Vegan Experience this time 'round has been far easier than it was the first time. I don't get hungry, I haven't been at a loss for what to eat, my fridge is bursting with more fresh vegetables and beans than I know what to do with,* and I've had pretty much zero cravings for non-vegan food.

*my dogs have a pretty good idea of what they want me to be doing with it, and Hambone has enjoyed a ball of falafel or two recently.

Strike that. I have had one major craving. It strikes several times a day as I walk down the streets of New York, its unmistakable aroma wafting out the windows of nearly every corner shop. That elusive combination of crisp, golden-brown bread and Italian herbs. If one food is going to do me in, it's pizza. I grew up eating it; I'll probably die eating it. Heck, I even write an entire monthly column about how to make it at home.

Last year, I came up with a little diagram that I used to chart my cravings. It looked something like this:

My graph this year would look a little different. I don't have intense bacon or Spotted Pig Hamburger cravings anymore (those mostly died out by the end of last year's Vegan Experience and have largely not come back); I have now replaced my regular mapo tofu with a 100% vegan mapo tofu recipe that's better than the real thing; and I can totally do without milk. Indefinitely.

But pizza. My first true love. Light of my life and fire of my loins. It will forever rest in that OMG WANT corner.

Fortunately, as I discussed last year, great pizza is not off-limits to vegans by any means. You just have to realize that great pizza does not require cheese.

To some folks, I know that sounds downright sacrilegious. Pizza without cheese?!? Isn't pizza defined by cheese? Well, I'm afraid I'm not going to be of much help to you, so you can turn around right now and walk out the door. And make sure you take that icky Daiya stuff with you.

But the truth is, good pizza is really about good crust and well-balanced toppings, which needn't include cheese. Indeed, many classic pies—the Marinara of Naples, which combines tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, and oregano, is one of the most ancient pizzas in existence. Head over to Rome and you'll find pizza bianca, formed into 6-foot long rectangles, dimpled with crevices to catch olive oil and rosemary, and sprinkled with coarse sea salt. No sauce, no cheese, niente, but one of the most delicious things I've ever put in my mouth.

Every pizzeria in New Haven, famed for its coal-fired apizza (the local vernacular for pizza), and perhaps the highest ranking great-pizza-per-capita city in the country, offers 100% vegan tomato pies as their base. In fact, you have to ask to add cheese to it. In New York, Paulie Gee's out in Greenpoint is one of the finest pizzerias in the city, and features a full six pies on their vegan pizza menu.None of them resort to faux cheese to get there.

What do all of these vastly differing, but all 100% vegan, pizzas have in common? Great crust, high-quality ingredients, and balanced flavors.

And if they can do it, we can certainly do it at home, right?

Topping Shopping

I have a number of good pizza dough recipes, but I've recently been loving the incredible ease and foolproofness of my Foolproof Pan Pizza dough, as well as my Basic Square Pan Pizza Dough. Both of them are vegan, require very little effort, and basically spread themselves into the pan; no rolling, tossing, or stretching required.

This leaves plenty of time to focus on toppings. Last year, I wrote a brief manifesto on the subject and called it A Pizza Snob's Approach To Toppings. While veganism may have lowered my cholesterol and increased my moral fiber, it has had just about zero effect on my pizza-topping-snobbishness, so the basic tenet at the core of my approach still applies. Which is:

"Whatever is added to my pizza must be more flavorful than the last thing I put on it, and no single topping shall be so strongly flavored that it masks the flavor of those that come before it."

Now, with a tomato- and cheese-topped pizza, this statement severely limits your choice of toppings. The most common cheese pizza toppings are highly flavorful things like cured meats (think: pepperoni, sausage, anchovies, or bacon) or highly flavorful vegetables (think: olives, pickled peppers, onions). They have to be, in order to compete with creamy, fatty cheese and brightly acidic tomatoes.

Take that cheese and sauce out of the picture, and you've opened yourself up to a whole new world of more delicate, subtle, but still delicious, topping alternatives. Here are a few of my favorites.

Potatoes, Onions, Rosemary

Ok, so this isn't exactly the healthiest pizza one could make, but since when is pizza meant to be healthy, vegan or not?

The base of the pie starts out a lot like the fantastic potato-topped pizza bianca at Sullivan Street Bakery (there's also a great version on the bar menu at Maialino): thin slices of potato shingled on top of a moist pizza bianca dough, strewn with onions, and drizzled with olive oil. As it bakes, the potatoes crisp up and the onions brown, lending some sweetness and a bit of bite to the affair.

A sprinkle of rosemary always works with potatoes, in my opinion.

The raw slices of potato cook nicely and are moderately creamy inside, but I longed for even more smooth richness, so I decided to take a page out of Bar's playbook. The New Haven pizzeria is famous for its thin crusted pies, particular their mashed potato pizza. It sounds strange on paper, but what you actually get there is a thin crust topped with creamy, chunkily-mashed potatoes that crisp up around the edges.

To take this effect to the extreme, I dolloped on olive oil-enhanced mashed potatoes in irregular clumps. As the pizza cooked, the clumps harden and brown on the exterior, almost like a perfect roast potato, but with a creamy, olive oil-scented interior.

Delicious!

Zucchini, Squash, Red Onions, and Pistachios

Considering that a poor summer squash-topped pizza was what prompted my original toppings manifesto, it's ironic that one of my favorite vegan pies is made with that same vegetable. The difference? Mine doesn't include cheese or pesto—two ingredients that completely drown out any chance that the squash has of asserting itself.

In this pie, the layered zucchini and squash are cooked long enough that they lose most of their moisture, either to the dough underneath or to the air of the oven. The dough ends up delightfully chewy, while the slices brown a bit around the edges, adding both flavor and texture to the mix.

To the top, I add sliced red onions and a pinch of thyme leaves. As with the potato pie, the red onion slices caramelize intensely, to the point that they're almost crisp, but don't taste burnt. Finally, after the pie comes out of the oven, I sprinkle on some pistachios. The red onion-pistachio combo is one I ganked from Chris Bianco at Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix. It's a really great combo.

Sun Dried Tomatoes, Olives, Caramelized Onions, and Breadcrumbs

Having recently gotten back from a trip to Sicily with my wife, I've been playing around with a lot of those regional flavors—intense olives and olive oil-drenched vegetables; sweet, salty, and briny. I already have a recipe for Sfincione, the original Sicilian pizza eaten around New Years, which is made with tomatoes, caramelized onions, anchovies, caciocavallo cheese, and breadcrumbs. That recipe inspired this one, which is a variation on the theme.

It starts out pretty similar, with a layer of crushed tomatoes and richly caramelized onions for sweetness. Rather than anchovies and caciocavallo, I used a mix of chopped olives and sun-dried tomatoes, adding that briny, rich element to the pie.

The whole thing gets topped with breadcrumbs tossed with olive oil (use panko for some extra crunch, though make sure they're a vegan brand—some are made with honey).

What emerges from the oven less than half an hour later is this beaut:

Ain't she purty? That basil is entirely optional, but I happen to have an over-abundant basil plant in my living room. I generally find high productivity to be a good trait in the flora and fauna I choose to enter relations with, but this thing is just ridiculous.

Get The Recipes!

• Easy Pan Pizza With Potato, Onion, and Rosemary »
• Easy Pan Pizza With Zucchini, Red Onion, and Pistachios »
• Easy Pan Pizza With Sun-dried Tomatoes, Olives, Caramelized Onions, Olives, and Breadcrumbs »

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.

Recipes!

• Easy Pan Pizza With Sun-dried Tomatoes, Caramelized Onions, Olives, and Breadcrumbs (Vegan)
• Easy Pan Pizza With Potato, Onion, and Rosemary (Vegan)
• Easy Pan Pizza With Zucchini, Red Onion, and Pistachios (Vegan)

If pizza isn't the first thing that comes to mind when you envision the perfect Valentine's Day date, let me lend you a hand.

Close your eyes (not yet, stupid!) and envision the following scenario: Your dining room table/milk crate basks elegantly in the glow of candlelight. Your man/lady/partner sits uneasily, looking about quizzically (Where's the food? I don't see any food. WHERE'S MY GODDAMN FILET MIGNON?). The oven dings. You stand, haughtily, and bring forth your handcrafted heart-shaped pizza, covered in a colorful shower of heart-shaped toppings. Sure, it's a little silly. But it's also the only way they will ever know you love them. Ever.

So let's get started, folks:

Video: How to Make a Heart-Shaped Pizza »

Make Heart-Shaped Pepperoni and/or Heart-Shaped Toppings of All Kinds »

Straight pizza not quite cutting it? How's about this baby? Top This: Nutella, Berry, and Ricotta Stuffed Pizza »

Happy almost-Valentine's Day, Slice'rs!

[Photograph: Lance Roberts]

"Cheffy" is a word that can go a couple different ways. To some, it means high-quality, ingredient-driven food that's sometimes complex, but always skillfully prepared. Others use it dismissively, and even pejoratively, to write off fare that they view as pretentious, esoteric, or overly complicated. No matter where you come out on the usage, I can assure you of one thing: Gjelina serves cheffy pizza.

To be clear, Gjelina is not a pizzeria; it's actually the standard-bearer of locavore cuisine in oh-so-trendy Venice, CA. Still, chef/owner Travis Lett serves up a ton of pizzas—18 different ones on his late-night menu—and though most are fairly minimalist, there are a lot of unique combinations on display. As in plenty of tallegio, fontina and goat cheese, and very little mozzarella. Going "off book" isn't necessarily a new thing in a Paulie Gee world, but I believe cheffy places like Gjelina helped prime us for the explosion of creative pies that we've seen in the last five years.

Lett serves "artisan pizza"—a frustratingly vague class of pie that usually consists of non-Neapolitan thin crust pies cooked in a wood-fired oven, made by people who (purportedly) give a sh*t. The staff at Gjelina obviously cares because there's always a robust, bready tang in the crust to mitigate the swaths—not spots—of char. There's flavor to burn here, literally. Where it can get dicey is the texture. The fermentation sometimes gets a little wonky, so some ends have slightly spongy crumbs with perfectly crisp exteriors, while others fall victim to gaseous bubbles, all crusty and hollowed out. They're a little sloppy on the stretch, but as it is with most cheffy pizza, the focus here is more on the ingredients than the dough. And that's okay.

I'm not sure a pizza with this much bacon on it can be called "cheffy." [Photograph: Lance Roberts]

The first pizza that ever went into Gjelina's wood-fired oven four years ago was the "Grilled Raddichio, Bacon, Fontina & Tomato Confit" (that's right, no nicknames here), and it's still my favorite. The singed, bitter leaves meld with a generous helping of smoky bacon strips and pockets of ridiculously bright, sweet tomato over a smooth fontina base. It's a perfectly balanced pizza, which isn't so easy with all those intense flavors.

The Nettles pie could use a little more sting. [Photograph: Kelly Bone]

"Nettles with Garlic Confit, Chili, Fontina & Parmesan" is more delicate, but it's another winner. If you haven't had nettles yet, they're like spinach with a little more herb and a little more flavor. They're fantastic with the garlic and the creamy mix of cheeses. The chilis, which show up all over the menu, deliver a necessary jolt, but I could have used even more of them.

Lamb sausage. [Photograph: Kelly Bone]

Where it starts to go south for me is the "Lamb sausage, Tomato Confit, Rapini, Pecorino and Asiago." It's a fairly popular pie, so I'm surprised I don't like it more. Independently, all the ingredients are fine; together they're muddled and overly earthy. The sweetness of that wonderful tomato confit gets trampled by the funky aged cheeses and the harmony breaks down for me. Of course, there's every chance I just don't like lamb on my pizza, so it might be worth fact-checking me.

The Pomodoro had an off-day. [Photograph: Kelly Bone]

The most disappointing pie is, unsurprisingly, the most basic one. No, not a Margherita. Gjelina may be the first new school place to take old faithful off the menu. The "Pomodoro" has a cooked tomato sauce, oregano, chili, green olive oil, and optional burrata (an option I exercised). It's not a bad pie, but unless you've got your dough going at top speed, sauce and cheese alone are likely to disappoint. However, the biggest snag was a strange aftertaste emanating from the cheese (Kelly Bone's palette said "playdough"). I'm not sure if it was just a questionable batch of burrata, but there's something seriously wrong when you're eating around cheese on a pizza.

Were these two crusts separated at birth? [Photograph: Kelly Bone]

If you're in the mood, there's other quibbles, starting with $14-15 for a 10-inch pie. And the crust just isn't as good as the equally dainty (but slightly pricier) Pizzeria Mozza or Milo + Olive. On the other hand, you can't knock the quality of the ingredients. You get what you pay for at Gjelina (burrata incident aside).

A peek inside the crumb of one of the better pies. [Photograph: Kelly Bone]

Now, back to that word, "cheffy." There may be a little too much goat cheese floating around the menu for my taste, but I've never understood why people get so annoyed by ambitious pizzas. It's the same for movies. I'm unapologetically excited for Fast & Furious 6 (please watch goofball supreme Vin Diesel drive a car out of an exploding airplane if you are not), the movie equivalent of pepperoni with extra extra cheese, but I'll take an ambitious but flawed film, like Life of Pi, over it any day. And so it is with pizza.

Was there any doubt there'd be edison bulbs? [Photograph: Lance Roberts]

If you just want a simple pie that you know is going to satisfy, you're probably safer shooting up Main and hitting up Stella Rossa, or even Joe's. Of course, even Travis Lett would tell you that. After all, Gjelina started the whole "no substitutions/additions/subtractions/so suck it" thing in LA before it was cool/backlashed against/grudgingly accepted. But if you want to stretch a little and try something more unique—and you don't mind booking three weeks in advance or waiting outside for an hour—Gjelina might just be your jam.*

*Sorry. Too much time in Venice.

About the author:Lance Roberts is a writer in Los Angeles.

I stuck my hand into the grab-bag of pizza headlines. Here's what's up:

• Derek Sivers brings a jealous-rage-induced tear to my eye with his story on Lifehacker: "How Buying Pizza For a Stranger Changed My Life."
• The Eau de Pizza Hut makes it to the states and the HuffPo team douses themselves in it. Shockingly, it does not appear to smell like pizza.
• Grub Street comes out with ANOTHER pizza round-up; this one covers their top 50 in San Fran. (See what Ed had to say about Grub Street's national round-up right here).
• More on the Hut: The Shanghaiist actually runs a review of Pizza Hut China's shrimp tempura, mayo, and hotdog pizza that I wrote about last week and determines that it "tastes as heinous as it looks."
• For some reason, people cannot stop talking about how Justin Bieber ordered a bunch of fans some pizza while they were trying to snag SNL tickets. It started on the teen blog circuit and now it's on Yahoo. Sigh.

Anything good on your radars?

VIEW SLIDESHOW: Top This: The Salad Pizza (à la Grey Block Pizza)

[Photographs: Kelly Bone]

It's the pizza you love to hate! Yet Grey Block Pizza has managed to build a reputation on the Salad Pizza. When owner Thomas Schiffer noticed that his customers frequently ordered pizza and salad, he seized the opportunity to create a combos—no, not a combo, a combos—and smashed the two together. The choice between salad and pizza is a universal struggle as well as a popular motifinstockphotography. But with the salad pizza, you get to have them both.

As we've seen before, the bagel crust is piled high with mounds of crisp lettuces, lightly wilted from the hot pizza. Feta and avocado add salty softness , rounding out the crunch of the vegetables and helping hold it all together. But the secret to melding a pizza with a salad lies in a simple binder: a light layer of sour cream.

Am I losing you? Does your idea of a salad pizza looks more like this? Does this pizza sound too weird or possibly gross? Well it's not, it's delicious! For those of you still having trouble getting on board with salad pizza, Zack Brooks of Midtown Lunch put it best:

The idea of ruining a perfectly good slice of pizza by topping it with salad, completely disgusts me. But the idea of improving a perfectly horrible salad, by putting a delicious slice of pizza below it is completely genius!

Get the step-by-step instructions in the slideshow »

What You'll Need

• 1 portion of dough
• Mozzarella
• Red onion
• Sour cream
• Avocado
• Mixed greens
• Tomato
• Feta
• Lemon and olive oil vinaigrette

Grey Block Pizza

1811 Pico Blvd. Santa Monica, CA 90405 (map)
310-314-2777; greyblockpizza.com

About the author: After nearly a decade in Brooklyn, Kelly Bone landed back in Los Angeles where she writes The Vegetarian Foodie. She spends the rest of her time designing office cubicles... you might be sitting in one right now! Follow her on Twitter at @TheVegFoodie

VIEW SLIDESHOW: 5 Valentine's Day Recipes for Dessert Pizza

Disclaimer: Some alternative themes and titles for this post might include:

• For a Mardi Gras Touch: "5 Desserts Masquerading As Pizza"
• For Singles: "5 Desserts That You Can Binge Eat By Yourself On Valentine's Day, But Still Refer To As 'A Pizza Dinner' In Passing Conversation"
• For Pizza Purists: "5 Desserts That Are Circles"

So does dessert pizza really count? We wondered the same thing in a poll back in 2010, but consensus was elusive. Last year, our very own Erin Jackson issued a heartwarming manifesto in its defense, proudly declaring:

Dessert pizza will always have a pizza my heart.

Sure, these 5 "pizzas" may have virtually nothing to do with the real thing. But they (a) taste delicious, (b) look pretty cool, and, best of all, (c) they are fun to say out loud. See all five of these beauties (plus one freaky BONUS pizza) in the slideshow »

Go Straight to the Recipes

Cakespy's Pizza Pie Dessert
How to Make a Pizookie, or a Pizza-Cookie
Nutella, Berry, and Ricotta Stuffed Pizza
Sweet Cinnamon Pizza
Peepza Rustica: Peeps + Pizza Rustica

We couldn't leave Hambone and Yuba out of the fun! [Photograph: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

It's Valentine's Day! But honestly, who needs a Valentine when there's pizza to be had? Here's a little inspiration from the animal kingdom, because nothing says romance quite like the passionate love affair between (m)animals and pizza. Turns out it really is the universal food!

N.B. We do not officially endorse feeding your pets pizza. Because that's probably not the best idea. That said, if you're going to do it anyway, please send your pictures to pizza@seriouseats.com.* Immediately. We want to see them. And put them in a slideshow.

Puppy's Midnight Snack

Chubby Hamsterface

Pot-Bellied Piggy Goes Hog Wild

Happiest Groundhog

Big Pizza, Tiny Duck

Kitty Downs a Slice

Seagull Pizza Party

This Dog Eats an Entire Slice in One Bite. On Command.

Swan is Champion Bandit

Baby Raccoons Win Pizza Lotto

Sneaky, Sneaky Husky

Blind Pigeon Gets Soooo Close

About the author:Niki Achitoff-Gray is the editor of Slice and a part-time student at The Institute of Culinary Education. She likes offal. A lot.

Is co-opting pizza's good name okay? Yesterday's dessert pizza post got us musing about the meaning of pizza. We know better than to dive headfirst down the pizza-definition-hole with reckless abandon. But there's nothing wrong with a friendly round of "one of these is not like the other." Or, in this case, "are any of these self-proclaimed pizza products at all like pizza?"

Where do you draw the line? Give a vote to each product or category that you think uses the term "pizza" legitimately.

Did we forget any pizza-ish products that deserve to join the ranks? Let us know and we'll add them to the poll!

Need More Data?

Taste Test: Mini Pizza Bagels »
Pizza in a Cone »
In Defense of Dessert Pizza »
Cinnabon's Pizzabon »
The Best Frozen Pizza, PERIOD »
Burger King's Pizza Burger »