Dear readers,
On our first day of FWP, we went on a pizza tour. I had never went on a pizza tour before. The pizza tour was directed by Scott, and the pizza tour's name is Scott's Pizza Tours. (Heh).
The first restaurant we went to was Keste Pizzeria. Keste was a pizzeria that made pizza from Naples. As Scott explained to us, Neapolitan pizza is made is brick ovens. The brick oven burned wood, which is unlike some brick ovens that burn coal, because the wood put in natural flavors. The oven of the restaurant was shaped is a dome, which was not built for decoration, but rather natural convection. You see, modern-day ovens/microwaves depend upon a fan to blow the heat around. The dome-shaped oven needed no fan, because the fire was on the left side of the dome, and the smoke tried to escape. Instead of going directly to the entrance by floating to the counterclockwise direction, it went the long way by going clockwise; therefore passing the pizza naturally instead of by fan. The design of the oven was so efficient that the oven could reach temperatures to 1010 degrees Fahrenheit. (Scott had a special laser that could test the temperature just by beaming it at a certain area). It wasn't only the oven that was special; the ingredients were unique as well. The flour was imported from Naples, and it made such a soft dough. We all got feels the dough, and in my opinion, it was as soft as a cloud. Dough made from wheat from America would be much tougher. Pizzas made from this kind of dough cooked in the special kind of oven took less than two minutes to make, but did not mean it tasted bad. In Naples people would get their own personal pizza. In Keste, we just got the traditional New York way of getting just a slice. The first pizza we ate was mast'nicola, which is actually the first type of pizza that was ever made. It had no tomato sauce like the pizza we often interpret in our minds. It was a thin, light slice from that special dough, unlike that type of heavy, greasy pizza you get in NY. The main topping on the pizza was the pecorino romano, a grainy, salty cheese made from sheep milk. The other toppings were basil and lard. The taste was definitely nothing short of delightful. With the salty taste from the cheese, added on with the unique dough, basil, lard, and aromas plugged in by the oven, it had a twirling taste that moved around your mouth as if the taste was a fluid dripped from paradise. The second pizza was the margherita pizza, which is the pizza you would imagine in your mind. It had was tomato sauce, mozzarella, and basil, which had a mixture of a cooked brick taste and a fresh taste, added on with the special dough, making a wonderful pizza.
The next restaurant we went to was John's, which served New York pizza. Almost everything was different between Keste's and John's. What I really liked was the graffiti carved in on the red walls, and the graffiti that didn't display John's in a negative way, but rather showed how historic it was. (Even the cash-register was old-fashioned). The pizza was just the regular New York pizza that's greasy and heavy in taste. However, the pizza made me compare the two restaurants. John's was a restaurant with much history, but served modern New York pizza. Keste's served pizza that was invented a long time ago, but the restaurant itself was newer. The pizza was made by a coal oven of 620 degrees. (I learned that different oven temperatures fit different types of pizzas). After we left John's we also learned that the cheese is greasy because people take out the water of the cheese and it with oil.
The last restaurant we went to was Famous Ben's. The dough mixer and the cheese cutter were operated by the same machine, which is pretty cool. They had a type of food that is called palermo pizza in the U.S., but is classified as a type of bread in Sicily. A rectangular shaped pizza, with a sauce that had onions. It had a sweet and salty taste which was in my opinion, very palatable.
From this tour I learned a lot about pizza, and before I just thought pizza was a very simple... study. After the tour I found out that the variety of pizza is very complex.
