October 11, 2012 • 50 mins
Sure it's everywhere and there's a more-than-90-percent chance you eat it once a month. But we'll bet you don't know the full history of that pizza (or tomato pie) you're about to chow down on. Join Chuck and Josh as they explain it to you, bite by bite.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I'm a little
under the weather. It's a little run down, but I
feel better than I say on I am over the weather. Yeah,
(00:22):
whatever that means. It means you're in great spirits, good shape.
Sure you can put your hand to that wall next
to year. I probably could actually on certain days, but
not today. That's good, Chucking. You're doing okay? Yeah? Great, okay,
if you're feeling better, even though you sound crappy, man,
I really do. You don't know. It's always reminiscent of
the six month period that you're sick. But yeah, now
(00:44):
I'm healthy. I don't smoke, I exercise, I eat right
a juice. Isn't it remarkable how you don't get sick
as often when you live right? Yeah, when you treat
your body correctly. Um well, Chuck. It's an excellent segway because,
in my opinion, one of the best ways to treat
your body is the stuff it full of. Really good pizza. Yeah,
(01:06):
have you had pizza before? Yeah? Dude, I love pizza.
I don't eat that much of it. Oh really, No,
I mean I don't know how much. I mean, we
have stats on the average American and stuff. Man, I
spit one out every day. Americans eat about a hundred
acres of pizza. I guess would be Sicilian because an
(01:28):
acres it would be squared, although it didn't have to
be square. No, you can have a round acre Uh yeah,
I guess you could. Just forget what I said. I've
never seen a round acre before. I'm gonna imagine an island.
If it's round, would be round acreage. There's not really
any real round islands. There's there's no such thing as
a perfect circle. On Gibligan's Island was so round it's
(01:52):
just a circle. No. Yeah, I love pizza, I don't
know how much I eat of it though compared to
most people. Like I'd say we order a pizza, like
maybe once a month. What we'll order a pizza? Are
the only pizza you have? Every every month? Yeah, we'll
get like it. We'll order a pizza delivery or and
then probably will throw in one visit to Antico, which
(02:14):
a month that you got me beat there. I need
to get out there more often. Yeah, once every six
weeks to two months for Antico. Yeah. Here in Atlanta, Um,
Chuck and I have a pizza place. I guess everybody
in Atlanta has it, but we're very fortunate to have
a place called Antico Pizza. It's really good. And now
I understand the name after researching this article. Uh yeah,
it's kind of close to the original pizzeria. I think
(02:34):
that's the point, is it, I would imagine. I don't
think they follow the traditional rules though. We're spoiling all
of it. Well for my part, you mean and I
are crazy about pizza and we eat it like all
the time. Everything. We're frozen pizza to Dominoes to um
pizza out like by the slice. Yeah, it's good. I
have a lot more pizza when I lived up in
(02:55):
the New York area. Yeah, because I would like get
it after class, just the single slice. Could It's big,
huge slice and you fold it in half and it's
just great. Did you want pizza while you were researching
this No? Did you? Oh? Yeah? Yeah? Alright? So by
the Antico, though, is really really good pizza. The best
pizza in Atlanta, most people agreed on, and judging by
(03:16):
the line out the door, every single day. Then I
would say, we're right. I've even gotten into an argument
with them on the phone, which I don't do very often,
about whether or not you can order a cheese pizza
without cheese, and I'll still go back there after hanging
up on them in anger. Yeah, they do it their way.
They definitely do that. The man. They also have the
(03:37):
big the dressing station, which is like the basil plants.
They don't even have like it's not dried basil or
even leaves. It's like the plant you pick the leads
off there, and they got the big chunks of garlic
and it's just so good. Yeah, I can hear your food.
Go now, I want pizza, Okay, all right, that's what
I was going for, Chuck, you got me. It worked. Um,
(03:59):
so everybody, I'm sure it's familiar with pizza. I don't
think there's gonna be too many huge surprises there. But
there's a lot about pizza that I would imagine you
don't know. Yeah, we're gonna tell you that kind of stuff. Like,
for example, at its core, pizza really is bread, cheese,
and sauce. Yeah, that's it, Tomato sauce, right, unless you're
(04:20):
getting funky. But you can't get funky and still call
it pizza customarily. It's one of those things where like
it has to be made a certain way or else
it's not really pizza. It's like a tomato pie. I
don't know though, like I would call like a pesto
pizza pizza. But you were born American? Yeah, sure, yeah.
Well do you think I was speaking as like a
(04:42):
native Sicilian? Well no, but I'm saying like maybe as
a citizen of the world. Okay, you know we're in
the midst of globalization, Chuck, Let's let's do this all right,
let's talk pizza history then. Huh uh. Yeah. I used
to hear from uninformed people like, you know, pizza is
really American. It didn't even come from Italy, right, they're
talking about chop suey. Just not true at all. Pizza
(05:03):
did come from Italy in a way. We need to
back up Eiven even further, probably to Greece, where some
people attribute like the original flatbreads that they would decorate
with things, is like the first pizza style thing, right,
You're talking like third century BC, a long time ago, right,
But I don't know. I mean, they didn't call it
pizza until what one thousand in Naples. Yeah, of course,
(05:27):
Well Naples is like the cradle of pizza. Yeah, I
didn't realize. I didn't notice that it went back that far.
That's pretty interesting. Well that's what was first named pizza,
meaning pie. Okay, so I also saw a discrepancy here.
I saw pizza also could mean um to pinch or slice.
That's that's what I got, pizza, not necessarily pie. Well
(05:49):
that's what this person says. Okay, So we're at a
D one thousand, right, Yes, this is such a cool
cold date. It is um. And the reason pizza started
to take off was because the peasantry didn't have that
much money and this stuff was kind of easy to
come by. You made your bread, you had some cheese,
(06:10):
maybe some kazu marzoo with the maggots, uh and um,
maybe some seasonings and some olive oil. That's about it.
It wasn't until you know, the one of the biggest
main ingredients. It wasn't until um, the Colombian Exchange started
to take place that tomatoes were introduced to Italy, because
those are a new world food. Yeah. I did a
(06:32):
little tomato research because that's kind of fascinating on its own,
I think, and tomatoes come from Peru, they believe originally.
And uh, because the fruit of the night shade, the
deadly night shade looks like a tomato, a lot of
people thought it was poisonous over the years, many years ago.
And uh, actual stems and leaves of a tomato plant
(06:56):
do contain a toxic u tomatine. Huh, but um, what
is it? But what will happen to you? Well, I
think there's been one reported death for eating tomato stems
and leaves, supposedly. I don't know if that's true, though
they figured out, well, the stems and leaves are kind
of gross anyway, let's just see the tomato, So thank
(07:17):
you Spain. Um. And also interestingly, even though it came
from like South America, you would think it made its
way up through the States via Central American Mexico, but
it didn't. It like took the circuits circuitous route via
European immigrants, probably through the Philippines too. If you're interested
(07:39):
in that, dude, you should really read four all about
It's all about that stuff? Is that? Gonna just keep
writing books as they're gonna be a fo is a
benevolent God. Yeah. So anyway, tomatoes all people discovered, Hey
they're not poisonous, they're really delicious. Let's start throwing them
(07:59):
on the spread exactly. And then now we have pizza.
So we're talking like the seventeenth century, I think was
when the term uh no, it wasn't. Okay, so so
that kind of yeah, that goes against that research too.
I think I saw somewhere that the term was coined
in the eighteenth century, like seventeen thirty eight, they started
making pizzas as we know them today. You know, I
(08:21):
think there's some discrepancies just in pizza lore because that
long ago. I don't think they were necessarily keeping track
of all this stuff like we do today. Okay, So
possibly in a d. One thousand or in seventeen thirty eight,
about seven hundred fifty years later, the word pizza was
used to describe this flatbread right, consisting of now tomato, sauce, cheese,
(08:44):
bread right. Um. And but the one thing that is
not disagreed upon was that both of these took place
in Naples, and Naples was the center of them. Like
we said, the peasantry was really hip to pizza because
it was cheap and it was abundant. Yeah, and so
if you wanted to go find pizza, you basically had
to go into the peasant districts of Naples, and uh,
(09:09):
there it was an abundance being sold from street carts. Now,
is that where the first pizzeria was? Yes, in peasant land? Yeah, okay,
so Antiqua pisaria porta so Antica. I wonder if that's
the same as Antico. Who won't know what the difference is.
I don't know. Someone will probably explain it to us,
hopefully in Italian. Is there an authority on that? All? Right?
(09:31):
So that's eighteen thirty the first pizzeria, right, And also, um,
I didn't see it in here, but I came across it.
A Pizzaioli was a pizza maker. That was the name
of a pizza maker. Yeah. So the peasantry in Naples,
and probably it's starting to spread a little bit beyond that,
But the peasantry in Naples has been eating pizzas for
well over a century, almost two centuries by the time
(09:54):
Queen Margharita and King Umberto. Queen Margharita, Yeah, does that
name sound familiar in regards to pizza. Yeah, especially when
you see it spelled out, you're like, oh, wait a minute,
that's where it came from. Exactly reportedly, so, Queen Margarita
was apparently like a pretty um hip queen. She was
down with the common person. And she and Umberto went
(10:17):
and toured the country in eight eight nine, and one
of the places they went was Naples, and one of
the things they did was eat pizza, and she was like,
I love this, I want more of this. Bring me
Raphael Esposito, her personal chef. Yeah, I don't know if
it's a personal chef, it was a personal pizza chef
at least. And he said, Queen, I'm gonna make you
(10:38):
some good a pizza, including one of looks a luck
at the Italian flag. And that is the legend, at
least of how we got Margharita pizza, because you have
the red tomato, the white mozzarel and the green basil
and there's your Italian flag. Yeah, it's a great story,
hopefully true. So supposedly he made her that one, the
Margharita pizza, which she liked the most in his named
(10:59):
after or her um another one with pork, fat, cheese
and basil. It sounds pretty awesome. Uh, and then another
one with garlic oil, olive oil and tomatoes. All of
them sound great, but she chose the Margarita, and that's
the one that was named after her. But the upshot
of all this is that the queen was suddenly eating
peasant food. The Queen's the most popular person in all
(11:21):
of Italy all of a sudden, And now, all of
a sudden, places other parts of Italy where pizza wasn't
heard of or eating or whatever, people are starting to
make it. That's right, And that's like eighteen nineties, yes,
which is a great time for pizza to be coming
into its own, because there was a little country called
America coming into its own. And uh, with the arrival
(11:46):
of Italian immigrants in the late nineteenth century in places
like New York and Chicago and Philly, New York light. Uh,
they would eat pizza and it was again sort of
like street food. Um at the time, at least right. Um,
so about the time I guess when Margarita was extolling
the virtues of pizza, I guess her. Um. This wave
(12:08):
of immigration had such a tangible connection to the old
world that like almost immediately they were making pizzas in
these cities. Like you said, apparently New York was the
first city with an actual pizzeria, Um, Lombardies. General Lombardi
apparently opened his shop in nineteen o five at fifty
(12:29):
third and a half Spring Street in New York. I
wonder what's there now, Lombardies. I believe still functioning. That's
pretty great. Yeah, and did we say that Antico Pizzeria
in Naples is still in the same spot, still selling
pizza since eighteen thirty. That is true, and that's very cool.
That makes me want to go to Naples quite badly. Yeah,
I mean you could get an original pizza from the
(12:52):
original pizzeria. Yeah, that's pretty cool. And we'll get to
this in a little bit. But you may be kind
of surprised when you eat a pizza, a Neapolitan piz
at the place where it all started, compared if you're
used to like Papa John's. I had pizza and Italy ones. Yeah,
you know, I was there and I figured why not,
I guess I'll do is the Italians do exactly? Okay,
(13:15):
so that's pretty much. Oh no, we didn't. We didn't
finish the history. Yeah, United States was coming into its
own Italian immigrants coming in bringing in pizza. Then after
World War Two, of course, with a lot of things.
G I's came back with these flavors for different uh countries,
foods and drinks, and they said, Man, this pizza stuff
is really great, so let's start building chains and degrading
(13:38):
the product, and we did shot with the Shaky's in
was the first pizza chain in the United States. California
chain Pizza Hut was founded in Kansas, of all places,
and the reason, apparently, as legend has it, that their
named Pizza Hut is because the place the building kind
(13:59):
of looked like a hut and was only room for
nine spaces on the sign. So Pizza Hut, that makes sense. Yeah, uh,
Shaky Have you ever been the Shaky's. No, As a
matter of fact, um no. The only time I've ever
seen Shaky's was in the movie License to Drive with
the two Corries. Yeah, they're all over l A and uh,
you know, sort of pizza Huttie didn't feel like a
(14:21):
family joint pictures of beer. Not so great pizza. But
apparently Sherwood Shaky Johnson got in that name because of
some like affliction he had that made him change No, yeah, goodness,
but I guess he embraced it. Well. Yeah, he name
is very popular chain after it, and there's still around
huh oh. Yeah, I'm surprised it hasn't spread by now.
N there's pizza huts everywhere. Yeah, I mean, I think
(14:45):
they have him outside of California, although I'm not positive.
I didn't get to look that up, but I know
they don't have them over here down south over here
in the Southeastern Bible Belt, all right, do Yeah, so
that's a piece of history. We should probably get to
the basics. And there's something more basic than dough, and
(15:05):
then there's an art to this. There's three ingredients that
are demanded flour, water, and yeast. Everything else is just
icing on the cake. Yeah, but you probably are gonna
throw a little salt in, little sugar, a little shortening
to make it do the things you wanted to do,
perform like you wanted to perform. Yeah, and you can
go to Mellow Mushroom Pizza and get a gluten free pizza.
(15:26):
I myself have not had one because I don't have Celiac, right,
and I'm not about to just no, but um, if you,
if you are into. If you are gluten free, you
are s o l in a lot of ways because, um,
the flower used in pizza crust, pizza dough, um is
high gluten, high gluten flour. That's why gluten free pizza pas.
(15:49):
I've not had it, so I can't say, yeah, well
that's just my opinion. Yeah you've had it. Yeah, I've
tried it. It's just not it's not the same. I'm
sorry everybody. They need gluten in the flower because a
is gluten makes the crust tough and uh, it won't
crack crack apart, makes it stand up to the water
keeps it ropey. Yeah, it keeps it nice and ropey.
(16:10):
And um, I guess we need to talk about water
at some point anytime, because waters. You know, the old
saying about New York pizzas is because the water. Oh yeah,
that's like the old saying. I don't know. So they
now they have like water you can drink right out
of the tap. Did they change their water? Oh yeah, man,
they overhauled their serious system. There's a bottled water you
(16:32):
can buy now that's just New York City tap water
and stuff is so like clean and pure. Well, it's
because it comes from it comes from two aqua aquaducts,
and uh, the cat skills ship it into Manhattan. We
should do a podcast on how Manhattan gets water. It's
pretty amazing. Okay, now now can we wait until we
research it? Yeah, that's pretty amazing now. But um, I
(16:55):
read this Wired article that kind of broke down the
pizza water New York thing, and um, they got in
touch with Mario Batali, very famous tian cheff and asked
him and he said, well, one of the reasons before
we get to water is that, um, the oven, he said,
captures the gestalt or if you're German, the gestalt of
(17:16):
a beautifully cooked pizza. So basically, over time, over time,
well it makes sense, over time, you're gonna get uh,
particles like volatized particles kicking onto the walls and the
roof of your oven, and then the convection process will
just like work that into whatever you're cooking over the years. So,
(17:36):
because they've been making pizza for so long in New York,
some of these old ovens like have this gestalt. They
can't be matched anywhere else, he says, and in Chicago
as well. Um, but then with the water. He says, Yeah,
the biggest problem with California pizza is the water. It's
just not the same. Although he doesn't he doesn't use
(17:56):
New York New York water at his restaurant Del Posto,
he actually clones water from Italy. He does, yes, clones it,
that's what he said. It's uh. He's created his own
mineral water composite, working from a chemical analysis of Laqua
Italiana and it said basically, it's a clone of this
(18:19):
Italian water. That sounds kind of pretentious. We should go
sell him some real estate or something. But that's why
I think the Food Detective Show did a test, a
blind test on New York water and pizza crust, and
everyone picked the New York pizza and a blind test,
So there may be something to it. The mineral composition. Yeah,
(18:41):
I mean, if you have even the slightest belief in
molecular gastronomy, it makes sense, which would explain why New
York bagels are the best too, because bagels are boiled.
Everyone knows or the right if you make it the
right way, it's boiled. Yeah, where do you go, Chuck,
that's my water side, its chokou water. Well, I've always
that you know in your pizzas because the water is
(19:01):
because the water from the cats because I had heard that,
I didn't know it from the catskills are and had
anything to do with just stalt or anything like. Yeah, alright, Um.
The third vital ingredient is yeast, and yeast basically creates
the precursor to beer. Remember in the beer episode, could
you imagine if there was no yeast, will be in
(19:22):
big trouble. No pizza, no beer. What's the point? No bread?
This would be this world would be it'd be sad. Actually,
there's yeast free bread, I think, but still you know, yeah, no,
I know. So what what what's to deal with you? Well, basically,
the yeast goes in and it eats the sugars found
in the flower um, and then you may also add
(19:44):
your own sugar to increase the fermentation. Um. But it
causes the dough to rise because it expels gas as
a byproduct, and that gas gets trapped in the dough
and it causes it to rise. It makes it up
more malleable, it makes it um tastier. Yeah, the texture
of it is softer. It's just basically yeast is It's
(20:07):
the happy fun guy that you add to the whole
the magic ingredient. Yeah. Uh, if you add a little salt,
it's gonna add some flavor. Obviously, it's gonna slow the fermentation.
Shortening is gonna make it more pliable by providing lube
and shortening would be like olive oil. You're not gonna
use Criscoe unless you're some sort of heathen. No, you
can just connote oil. But olive oil is what I
(20:27):
would go. But sure, um, yeah, Crisco. Chrisco is great
though for some things. Oh yeah, for like sugar cookies,
especially the kind that's like just the just the the shortening,
the thick solid Yeah, shortening that stuff is crazy. That's
what I thought. That's the only way I thought you
could cook growing up, because of like my grandmother's I thought, well,
(20:49):
when you cook, you get out that big can and
big ice cream scoop and you cut it down with
that wadded up piece of like wax paper in there
that you used to scoop it out. Yeah, it's completely
covered in Christco now, either that or the grandmothers also
used you know, they saved all their greats so they
would be cooking with grease that they've been using for
the past year. It's really good. Um, sugar changes the
(21:14):
fermentation rate. Yeah, you can accelerate it. It can increase
the amount of gas released. And it also causes the
crust of brown. Oh yeah, yeah, that's his sugar. So
what if you don't put sugar, you get a glowing
yellow crust, doesn't brown as much, doesn't brown. Okay, you
want to bail it up, use your hands? Yeah, I
think I think you should say here, like you're teaching
(21:36):
people how to make legitimate, real pizza dough here, Yes,
I mean gold in rough strokes like I don't think
anyone could Like, we're not providing measurements, you know what
I'm saying. No, no, but I'm saying, once you've once
you've created this, though, now you're about to tell them
what to do with that, how to make it. You
want to ball it up with your hands. Um, you
don't want it all cracked. You want it tight, and
(21:57):
you want to put it on an oil cheap pan
and then proof it, which means you cover it with
wax paper and let it sit and let the yeast
do its thing until it like doubles in size. Because
they used to system in there eating sugars and pooping out. Yes. Uh,
then you need to retard it. Um. You need to
put it in the fridge for about twelve hours and
(22:20):
then this slows the yeast down, but it's still doing
its thing right there, like the sugar. It's cold. Um.
And then if you do this, you've got pizza dough
that you can use for like three to five days. Yeah.
I would imagine most people who are really really into
pizza would be like, you can't save that for three
to five days? You think I would think so fresh
(22:43):
almost almost always to do it like yeah, the same day. No,
I'm not saying that, but I'm saying like a pizza pierist,
like you can't use five day old dough for a
decent pizza. But I buy the dough sometimes like Trader Joe's,
you know, the farmer's market, like the pre made doughballs,
and those are you know, not necessarily that day or
(23:04):
at the oven. Well, you left out the sauce. Most
of the time it's tomato sauce. But if you're still
worried that tomatoes are poisonous and that the aristocracy is
trying to kill you by giving them to you, Um,
you can eat garlic butter sauce, which will give you
a white pizza. You don't like white pizza. I love
white pizza. And if you go to Fellini's, I think
(23:26):
we're gonna name every single pizza place in town. If
you go to Fellini's in order a white pizza slice,
you know, they use the pre made slice and they
build a white pizza on top of so you get
a little tomato sauce with your white pizza. That's really good,
but it's not white pizza then, right, No, not. You're
the one who calls like everything pizza you run around,
Now that's a pizza. There's a pizza over there. I
(23:46):
don't want to hear it from you, all right, I'm
not a fan of white pizza like some tomato saw something. Yeah,
I'm with you if I like white pizza too. Um,
and the cheese, you know mozzarella traditionally, right, and the
way you build it is actually kind of important to Yeah,
depending on where you are, it's not just the ingredients,
it's the amount and the um the distribution. Yes, where
(24:11):
they are in relation to one another vertically, Well, let's
go ahead. Then New York is sauce then cheese, yeah,
from the dough, dough sauce, cheese, right, and then not
that many toppings. Well, if you're a purist again, cheese,
a cheese slice is what you're going for. I have
not big on just cheese. What are you pepperoni guy? No,
(24:35):
not anymore and not since I was a kid. No,
I'm just kind of like pepperoni. So I like a
good homemade Italian sausage. Oh yeah, that's good. Yeah, that's
really good. Um. I like sliced tomatoes on it, not
soun dried fresh. Yeah, basil, black olives. Basil always am
not in olives. I like sausage. I don't like the
green olives. I like black olives. Do you like the
(24:56):
Hawaiian pizzas? I've only in the last couple of months
got into pineapple and I'm still feeling my way around it.
Pineapples and strawberries. I just I used to eat strawberries
when I was a kid, and I've rediscovered him recently.
I'm like, yeah, when we were in the suite at
the Marriott when we were doing interviews at Comic Con,
ate like fifteen pounds of strawberries. They were so good.
(25:16):
The chocolate covered are regular, No, they're regularly okay. Yeah,
I don't even need chocolate covered anymore. It's like I'm free.
Strawberries are delicious. Yeah, but Hawaiian I'll tell you in
a month or two, I'll try it. Emily likes that
she's big on mushroom, green pepper, and pineapple together. Yeah,
she didn't do the meat, you know, at all, just
as a food as while we're talking about wives and
(25:38):
pizza preferences. Yeah, you may have this place in DC
she used to go to and she'd get like a
huge slice of pizza in this place also sold Indian food.
So she gets chicken sog and put the sog on
the pizza and she said it was really awesome. Yeah. Yeah,
we have to do the half and half and I
get like sausage on the half and she does veggie
and then it's like, your sausage juice got on my
(25:59):
app Like, well, your mushroom got on my half. You
like a cheeseburger pizza. I love cheese. I'm not too
big on beef on the pizza. I'll give you one
more tip. Okay, get yourself some complete seasoning. Some I
can't remember what it is in Spanish, but um, complete seasoning.
It's like a Mexican blend, and put it on your pizza.
(26:20):
It doesn't matter what kind of pizza it is. It
works on popcorn too, but then your pizza. It's just
it'll make you smile. Well, my friend Eddie, who you know,
would say, get the bottle of ranch dressing in your
all set. Oh yeah, that's good. Alright. So man, that
was a sidebar. So you're saying New York you build
from the dough up doe dough, sauce, cheese, and then
maybe a couple of topics. Chicago it's the opposite. And
(26:44):
this is apparently a tomato pie the way it's built. Yeah,
because you do it for deep dish baked in a pan,
and then you've got the cheese on the bread itself
on the dough, and then the toppings and then they
put this like ungodly thick, delicious bass on top. Yeah.
I have not had it really, and I love pizza
huts pant pizza. Well, the I mean you should definitely
(27:06):
have like a true Chicago stall pizza. I mean it's
it's great. You eat it with a forking knife. I
am a New York pizza guy through and through. But
you know, every once in a while, if like when
in Chicago, well this is like um, when in Italy exactly. Uh,
this is one of those things where I don't think
you have to choose sides. No, let's just all eat
all kinds of pizza all the time. But people get
(27:28):
really passionate about their pizzas, you know, but these are
you know, it's like, man, it's it's pizza. Enjoy all pizza.
If there's one thing we can all just settle down about,
it's pizza, even Mexican pizza. Come on, yes, oh yeah,
it's not pizza. What are you crazy? You can't just
run around saying that what you eat is not pizza
(27:48):
unless it's exactly what the um Neapolitans are making. It's
not pizza. It's not a Neapolitan pizza. No, it's not pizza. Alright.
So now the ovens, I guess that this was an
odd little thing that they put in there. What about
the different kinds of ovens? It just seemed intuitive to me. Well, sure,
(28:10):
well you use a peel. Not many people know that
that that big spanking paddle it's called a peel. I
didn't I have to say, okay, so you slide it
in there. They can be electric. They can be uh
cooked right on a conveyor belt, like if you're in
a big pizza Jane, which you know if you have
a belt even at home. That's true. But the king
daddy of all is the brick oven pizza cooked with
(28:33):
wood and like your crush should have little bits of
black jar on it if you ask me for the
best for the best taste, which is actually soot it's
spent carbon. Yeah, a little spoiler there for an upcoming show.
And then here in Atlanta, the Antico, I think they
brought those three ovens over from Naples, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah,
(28:53):
I can see that. A lot of going on there.
There's tons of gestalt um Neapolitan pizza. Yeah, so Neapolitan pizza.
Um is extremely thin crust. That's bubbly crust. Um. You
put out sauce and then maybe basil and mozzarella. You
don't cover the sauce. It looks like pretty much equal parts.
(29:18):
Just visibly looking down over the pizza, it appears like
equal splotches of basil, mozzarella and um sauce. Yeah, kind
of spare They don't overdo it and to be a
true Neapolitan pizza. As of December two thousand nine, the
European Union issued a protection that regional protection that like
Champagne and what was the other thing we talked about recently?
(29:41):
Oh was it a cheese? I had to a bed
probably yeah, um. And also I think neu chatel neu
Chtel has regional protection as well, but basically like it
has to be produced in the area under these certain
guidelines to be considered that. Um, Neapolitan pizza enjoys that
economic protection now as well. And to beat Neapolitan it
(30:05):
has to be round. It can't be ostentatious. No more
than thirteen and a half into is in diameter. Um,
it can only be a tenth of an inch tall,
which is thin at its center. Yeah yeah, Um. The
crust has to be no more than three quarters of
an inch thick. So this is a really thin crust pizza, man. Yeah,
but not ultra thin. I got taken to task on
(30:27):
Facebook today because I said it was ultra thin. They
were like, not not ultra thin, ultra thins and tortilla.
I said, Mexican pizza, you have to kneed the dope
by hand, right, Yeah, And I got a couple of
more that weren't in the article. Supposedly it has to
be in a wood fired oven above nine and five
degrees Fahreneit only San Marzano plum tomatoes, which you know,
(30:50):
to me, that's the only tomatoes you're gonna be cooking
Italian style? Is that right? I think? So? Is that canned? Yeah, okay,
I know what you're talking about. I mean, I'm sure
you can get them fresh, obviously, but yeah, they can say.
Marzano's are like what I use in my spaghetti sauce.
Have you been to the Italian market by five seasons
on the West Side? I have not. It is like
right like half a block down and it is authentically Yeah,
(31:13):
you should check it out if you're into that. I
am into that. We'll check it out, all right, um.
And I think that's all too to buy law. And
of course, no one's they pointed out in the article
I read that no one's going out and like, you know,
punishing anybody. It's just a set of standards that they
like the whole deer. Uh. You know, they're not gonna
throw you in jail for calling something in Neopolitan right. Yeah, um,
(31:35):
although they should so that's neopolitan. We talked about New
York and Chicago. Um, California pizza that is super thin crust,
usually made with um, what what vegetables are in season?
I like California Pizza Kitchen. It's okay. It's pretty good,
like barbecue sauce on your pizza. H No, they have
(31:56):
a tostada pizza that's really good too. You should check, man,
you got to expand it for rise is. It's not
just New York and Chicago. There's a lot. There's a
whole world of pizza. I've been to CPK. It's fine.
The black bean salad there is delicious. They're they're guacamolea
is pretty good too. And then Greek. Yeah, that's also
in a pan like Chicago. It's just I'm not thinking
(32:17):
of feta feta and spend it sometimes olives. Yeah, I
like feta. Um. And then uh Sicilian and there's American
Sicilian and Italian Sicilian. That's right. And if you're an American,
you're making a Sicilian pizza. It's rectangular, square, thick crust.
The reason it's thick is in uh Sicily, they baked
the ingredients into the crust. Yeah, I'd like to try that. Actually,
(32:41):
it's like, um, they heard about stuff crust pizza and
started mimicking it. O man, pizza head drives me nuts.
With all those things. It's like the rope of cheese
in the cross. Or then they had the one crust,
there was the one the pizza eat backwards, like they
just can come up with all these things that are
completely unnecessary. There was the pizza that eats you the pizza. Yeah.
(33:04):
And speaking of Soviet Russia, Um, there's some pretty crazy
toppings around the world. What do they eat there? In Russia?
They eat something called makba, which is a blend of tuna, mackerel, sardines, onions,
and salmon, which I have to say sounds kind of good.
You know what I thought good was good was the
Japanese the mayo yaga jaga mayonnaise, bacon and potato mixture.
(33:27):
They their their hot dogs in that too. Oh my gosh. Yeah,
it's really good. A lot to check that out. Uh.
In India, little pickled ginger and tofu maybe and little
minced mutton. Yea so good to me. You don't like
mutton had a pet goat that's this is a lamb,
totally different animals. They can't even mate. I don't think
(33:49):
I bet they could. Well they can, but they can't reproduce. Okay, Brazil,
you might get some green peas on your pizza. Yeah, Asta, Rica,
you might get a little coconut equally, wolf, Yeah, I
think so. I'm not big on coconut and antrovies are
generally regarded as the least favorite pizza topping. What's the
(34:11):
number one pizza topping in America? Pepperoni? Of course, really
it got toppled this last this year. Chicken as far
as protein goes, chicken? Really? And is that? How do
they calculate that? Is that like in restaurants or there's
an actually surprising amount of pizza industry UM marketing and
(34:32):
lobby groups, in trade groups and the true of the
pizza and association. I ran across the blog post and
I don't remember I followed it to this press release
from some pizza association UM and I don't remember which
one it was, but they said that um, chicken topped
pepperoni as far as pepperoni toppings goes. So that means
(34:53):
that Americans consume more than two hundred and fifty million
pounds of chicken on their pizza. Yeah, which makes sense
because chicken's heavier than pepperoni, that's true, and that's a
lot of pepperoni. Maybe they go by weight. Yeah, we've
got some awesome stats here, don't we go ahead and
firow some of those out? Uh? So, the number of
(35:13):
pizzas sold in the US each year three billion. I'm
responsible for at least a million and a half of
those three fifty slices sold every second. Yeah, not bad.
And every year, the average American eats forty six slices.
That's child's play. Americans eat pizza at least once a month. Yeah,
(35:35):
that's a lot. That is a lot. I mean that
is that means like almost every American eats pizza at
least once a month. That's pretty staggering. I can't imagine
that there's any other food like that except maybe a cheeseburger.
I bet pizza tops that even I would think. So
it's just such an easy because vegetarians can eat pizza, cheese, pizza. Yeah.
And if you if you go to like McDonald's or
(35:56):
something like that, and you have a family of four, uh,
you are going to spend more than you would on
a pizza that don't feed that family fortune. And you
don't get the cold breakfast leftovers either. Uh exactly, McDonald's
you do. But um, what else was there anything else
I had? There was a guy in my elementary school actually,
(36:17):
you know, remember the little rectangle elementary school pizzas? Yeah,
so great. There was one dude, Brett Standish that did
not eat pizza. And he was like the only kid
I ever knew that it didn't eat pizza. So every
time we had pizza, it was like there was a
battle royal to find out who would get Prett Standish
as pizza. And he would like up his you know,
his asking price each week when I you know, it
(36:39):
was like a valuable commodity. Smart kid, Yeah, what do
you what was the most he ever got for it? No?
I have no idea. Probably a bunch of pringles and
like a little time behind the school, you know what
I'm saying. Uh no, when my imagination is racing right now? Okay? Um?
Oh yeah. There's this little sidebar in this article that
said that more than Lady pizzerias in New York are
(37:01):
operating under the name Raise More than. It's like that
sounds like a lot until you realize there's nine thousand
pizzerias in New York alone New York City. Well, I
thought this is pretty interesting. Should we talk about race? Um,
if you've ever been to New York or Atlanta's got
four raised pizzas? Is that right? Famous Original Race Atlanta
has raised New York pizza. Um? And you know how
(37:24):
I always says since whatever year, since nineteen in Atlanta,
that's not too bad. But yeah, there by the count
I got, there are forty nine pizzerias in New York
that use some form of the name Ray. And here's
the story behind it, um Ray Uh. Ralph Cuomo opened
(37:45):
the first race on Prince Street nine. He's grandfather de
Rivers and father of Mario and uh his nickname he
claimed to be Ray because he said it was Ralphie
than Rayphie than Ray. I'm not quite so sure about that.
Um that he opened a second one in the nineteen sixties,
and then someone named Rosalino Manano Majano. But the second
(38:09):
Rays changed the name to Famous Original Rays, even though
that wasn't true, So things started a little messy. Uh.
Then man John out now goes by Ray which is
also bogus opened. Uh, several more famous original Rays all
over the city sold that to new owner who begin
(38:29):
using other variations of the race. So it kind of
just spread. But ironically, three quote unquote Rays got together
to trademark the name. None of them our name Ray.
Yet they have all gotten together to try and trademark
the name Ray and to shut down at least in
name places like Atlanta's Near Pizza raised Near Pizza in Atlanta.
(38:53):
Who you're just probably got in trouble, I don't think
so they know about them, so you don't know that.
It sounds like a cartel. I think it is speaking
of Cartel's Chuck, the Big Three, Pizza Hut, Dominos, Papa John's. Um.
Of those three, the one that has the most urban
legends associated with it as Dominoes. I had heard. I
(39:15):
think one of these with the thirty minutes or less
went away because they killed some kid in a car
delivery person ready made urban legends. Supposedly, um, they there
were lawsuits from people being hit. At least one person
was hit, but they didn't say it had anything to
do with the thirty minutes or less. One person was killed. Yeah,
(39:38):
well yeah, that's right. One person killed at least, so
then at least one person hit. We're both kind of right,
but they did do away with that. There was also
a rumor that the owner of Domino's contributed a lot
to anti abortion groups UM, which may or may not
have been true, but he didn't known Domino's probably at
the time, because the guy who founded the company, UM,
(40:00):
Tom Monahan. Yeah, he's sold in a billion, which is
pretty tiny, but he is a staunch Catholic and obviously
a supporter of pro life and is building his own
little Catholic town outside of Miami. Yeah, one of those.
And I've heard of these before. We basically like, I'm
gonna build my little my own little town, like filled
(40:23):
with people that are like me because I'm incredibly well
exactly So, I don't know what the status is on
that now, but um, supposedly more than thirty thousand residents
will occupy this town and eventually they'll go to war
with Celebration Florida. Uh. And then there's all these goofy pizzas.
I don't get into all this stuff, like the the
(40:45):
three thousand euro pizza with kannak marinated lobster and edible
gold and okay, so that holds the record, and sooked
caviare for the most expensive with gold. There's actually two
categories in Guinness as far as most expensive pizza with
that gold and without. Apparently, if you just want to
like throw some medable gold on your pizza, you can
just you know, tip the scales by wise. But if
(41:07):
you want the most expensive pizza in the world without gold,
that record was recently broken. Uh and Stevenson Pizza Company
in Vancouver, which apparently is affiliated with the guy from
Hell's Kitchen. Oh yeah, shut it down, yeah, Gordon Ramsay, yes, Um.
They have a four hundred and fifty dollar pizza called
the Sea six. Pizza has lobster, thermador, black Alaskan cod
(41:31):
and caviare on it. It looks kind of good. Yeah,
you know, they do stuff like that to get pressed
and get people in there. And I get it. What
about the largest pizza ever built and eaten? I like
that They have that caveat Yeah, agreed, Havana, Florida. Um
from seven. I'm surprised no one has tried to break
(41:52):
it since then. UM, thousand, four hundred and fifty seven
pounds of pizza. Ninety over ninety four thousand slices devoured
by thirty thousand, at least thirty thousand people hanging out.
How do they bake that thing? I wonder? I don't know.
That's that's a great question. That's the one I want
(42:15):
listener mail on. Not your favorite pizza topic. No one
cares about that. How did they bake that thing? I guess.
I mean maybe it was sunbaked. I don't know. They're like, wow,
this is really like they make it and they're like,
oh wait, yeah, because it says eaten. Or maybe there's
another record tied to it for the largest pizza oven.
(42:35):
And then the longest pizza delivery. Two thousand four, a
Domino's franchise owner named Lucy Clough delivered a pizza ten
thousand five two miles stand hundred fifty KOs from London
to Melbourne. It was a vegetarian pizzas part of the
Make A Wish Foundation. I was about to disparage it,
(42:55):
I know. That's why I got all that out in
one breath before you could break it. Yea, I was
saving from yourself. Make I Wish? Then I support it.
Way to goacha, that's pizza. Yeah, you know what's awesome
about pizza. And I guarantee you there's dark corners to
(43:16):
all this that we didn't even hit that we're going
to hear about that we want to hear about. This
will be one of those which I love. Yeah, I
love pizza. Uh, if you love pizza, you can read
more about it at how stiff works dot com. Type
the word p I z Z eight into the switch
bar at our beloved how stifforks dot com website. Um,
(43:37):
which is now two words. I think as far as
eight P goes website. Yeah, a long time. They know.
I was taught when I was hired. Here it's capital
W E B, separate word, lower case S, I T
E right now it's lowercase all one word. Oh, it's
all one word. Now. I thought you were saying it's
two words. Now I got you. Yeah, No, it's one word. Okay,
(43:57):
this is great. And if I did say two woods,
I was wrong. We'll find out. Uh. Anyway, I think
I said such far in there. So it's time for
the listener mail, Chuck. Yes, we should tell everybody about
something very special and dear to our hearts New York City.
(44:17):
That's right. We are going to Comic Con, and we
will be doing a live podcast on Friday, October twelve
at Comic Con at the jabb At Center. It's like
our new thing. We did San Diego, now we're doing
New York. That's right next up Albuquerque. So if you
were going to Comic Con, you should come by and
see that. But after Comic Con, we have one of
our famous, its famous to us all star trivia nights. Um,
(44:42):
where is it gonna be the cutting Room? It is
at the grand reopening of the Cutting Room in the
flat Iron District, which is what's the address? It is
h forty four East thirty second Street in New York
And it's in the flat Iron you said. And doors
open at seven thirty. Trivia goes down at eight thirty.
And what is the first come, first serve? Right? Free free, free,
(45:03):
first come, first serve. We will have a bar there
that you can buy drinks. Yeah, you can buy us drinks.
That's right. We're gonna basically be having a really good
time if you if you're not familiar with our trivia nights, like,
just come out and check it out. It'll be worth
your while, absolutely, and stay tuned for info on Facebook
and Twitter. About the makeup of the All Star team.
We're filling that out as we speak, but we will
(45:24):
have some special guests that you will want to meet. Yeah,
and at the very least you can come take on
me and chuck right, yeah, okay, it's just fun. So
what is that? That's Friday, October twelfth, right, yep, the
panels that went. The panel is at I believe, okay,
and then we're gonna be at the cutting room starting
at eight thirty. Tribute starts at eight thirty doors at
seven thirty. Be there, be square. You were good at this.
(45:46):
Thank you? All right, the time for listener mail. I'm
gonna call this accidents. Thanks to us, we cause an accident,
a good one, like no one got hurt. This from
Annie and Annie was going off to college, which was
several states away, so her family decided to road trip
with her two uh to to the college as a
(46:07):
little mini vacation. That is very sweet depending on how
Andy feels about her family. Well, you're about it by now.
It may sound fun, but it's not easy to agree
on music when you're James Blunt loving mom, Miley Virus
loving younger sister. She is just said up in college, Yeah,
and weird eurometal loving older brother or all crammed into
a car together after a few hours of me wondering
(46:28):
if I could get a refund on my soundproof headphones.
They agreed to let me pick the music, and I
picked the stuff. You should know. It turns out everyone
loves Slash doesn't hate stuff. You should know. We were
all interested more importantly not yelling or throwing CDs out
in the window. Plus, it was fun to go back
through uh my favorites. Jack the Ripper, for instance, made
my mom a little green. However, you know what what
(46:50):
we heavily edited that one. Yeah, it was worse. It
always way worse. I think, Yeah, I remember going through
there and be like, dude, we can as it was facts.
You all know it was so yeah. Um, However, during
a time when it was my goofy brothers turning to
drive parentheses, I really can't stress how weird he is.
At the end of the cast about genius, you were
(47:10):
reading some other listen listener mail from a lady truck
driver and told her to honk her horn, which my
brother did really loud, like a truck would do. It
wouldn't have been a problem but we were in one
of those curvy two lane highways behind a senior citizen.
Uh and basically this this lady thought that they were
honking at her. She slammed on her brakes and caused
(47:34):
the person riding behind her to butt into her rear end.
Oh no, uh No one was hurt. But I was
laughing because over the screech of tires, I actually heard
Chuck say, I hope we didn't just cause an accident. Wow,
this is um. Everyone is fine. There was no damage
to either car. But my mom made my brother give
them both info because my mother thought that he was liable.
(47:55):
Thanks Mom. Yeahly, she just drove straight to jail. And
she says I was the one to offerdly explain to
the old lady what a podcast was ps. I hope
my dorm mate likes you guys. That's from Annie. Thanks
a lot, any that was really nice. But everyone's safe
you too. Man, That's that's a crazy cho It sounds
a little made up, but oh yeah, we've followed for
(48:17):
it before. Man, remember either way, the marriage, the wedding proposal. Yeah,
I still have to go on my face about that's
all right? We all do, we all do Uh, if
you have a great story about how your family has
been brought together by stuff, you should know we want
to hear it. We also want to know how the
(48:38):
citizens of Havana, Florida, baked their d sliced pizza. We
really really want to know that, agreed, um, and how
delicious it was. Yeah, you can tweet to us all
of this information to uh s y s K podcast. Seriously,
Our Twitter is killing it, is it? Yes, that's great.
(49:00):
It's one of the best Twitter feeds on the internet. Wow,
it's got it all man. It has um wacky news,
it has important news. Criticism of Twitter when they suspend
people's accounts, um it has we we talked to people
back and forth. Sometimes we pester Hodgman for no good reason. Yeah. Um,
there's just all sorts of great stuff on Twitter. Or
(49:23):
we'll like, we'll see a tweet from like the Jim
Henson Company that they like the Muppet podcast. Yeah yeah,
so like pretty cool stuff like that is down. Yeah
it is. It's very cool. Um. So you can follow
us on Twitter at so it's the AT symbol and
then s y s K p O d c A
s t at s Y s K Podcast We're also
(49:43):
killing it on Facebook. Our Facebook page is awesome. Uh
that's Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know, right,
and you can just send us an email like a
normal person would to s White Too. Stuff podcasts at
Discovery dot For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(50:04):
visit how Stuff works dot com
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I'm a little
under the weather. It's a little run down, but I
feel better than I say on I am over the weather. Yeah,
(00:22):
whatever that means. It means you're in great spirits, good shape.
Sure you can put your hand to that wall next
to year. I probably could actually on certain days, but
not today. That's good, Chucking. You're doing okay? Yeah? Great, okay,
if you're feeling better, even though you sound crappy, man,
I really do. You don't know. It's always reminiscent of
the six month period that you're sick. But yeah, now
(00:44):
I'm healthy. I don't smoke, I exercise, I eat right
a juice. Isn't it remarkable how you don't get sick
as often when you live right? Yeah, when you treat
your body correctly. Um well, Chuck. It's an excellent segway because,
in my opinion, one of the best ways to treat
your body is the stuff it full of. Really good pizza. Yeah,
(01:06):
have you had pizza before? Yeah? Dude, I love pizza.
I don't eat that much of it. Oh really, No,
I mean I don't know how much. I mean, we
have stats on the average American and stuff. Man, I
spit one out every day. Americans eat about a hundred
acres of pizza. I guess would be Sicilian because an
(01:28):
acres it would be squared, although it didn't have to
be square. No, you can have a round acre Uh yeah,
I guess you could. Just forget what I said. I've
never seen a round acre before. I'm gonna imagine an island.
If it's round, would be round acreage. There's not really
any real round islands. There's there's no such thing as
a perfect circle. On Gibligan's Island was so round it's
(01:52):
just a circle. No. Yeah, I love pizza, I don't
know how much I eat of it though compared to
most people. Like I'd say we order a pizza, like
maybe once a month. What we'll order a pizza? Are
the only pizza you have? Every every month? Yeah, we'll
get like it. We'll order a pizza delivery or and
then probably will throw in one visit to Antico, which
(02:14):
a month that you got me beat there. I need
to get out there more often. Yeah, once every six
weeks to two months for Antico. Yeah. Here in Atlanta, Um,
Chuck and I have a pizza place. I guess everybody
in Atlanta has it, but we're very fortunate to have
a place called Antico Pizza. It's really good. And now
I understand the name after researching this article. Uh yeah,
it's kind of close to the original pizzeria. I think
(02:34):
that's the point, is it, I would imagine. I don't
think they follow the traditional rules though. We're spoiling all
of it. Well for my part, you mean and I
are crazy about pizza and we eat it like all
the time. Everything. We're frozen pizza to Dominoes to um
pizza out like by the slice. Yeah, it's good. I
have a lot more pizza when I lived up in
(02:55):
the New York area. Yeah, because I would like get
it after class, just the single slice. Could It's big,
huge slice and you fold it in half and it's
just great. Did you want pizza while you were researching
this No? Did you? Oh? Yeah? Yeah? Alright? So by
the Antico, though, is really really good pizza. The best
pizza in Atlanta, most people agreed on, and judging by
(03:16):
the line out the door, every single day. Then I
would say, we're right. I've even gotten into an argument
with them on the phone, which I don't do very often,
about whether or not you can order a cheese pizza
without cheese, and I'll still go back there after hanging
up on them in anger. Yeah, they do it their way.
They definitely do that. The man. They also have the
(03:37):
big the dressing station, which is like the basil plants.
They don't even have like it's not dried basil or
even leaves. It's like the plant you pick the leads
off there, and they got the big chunks of garlic
and it's just so good. Yeah, I can hear your food.
Go now, I want pizza, Okay, all right, that's what
I was going for, Chuck, you got me. It worked. Um,
(03:59):
so everybody, I'm sure it's familiar with pizza. I don't
think there's gonna be too many huge surprises there. But
there's a lot about pizza that I would imagine you
don't know. Yeah, we're gonna tell you that kind of stuff. Like,
for example, at its core, pizza really is bread, cheese,
and sauce. Yeah, that's it, Tomato sauce, right, unless you're
(04:20):
getting funky. But you can't get funky and still call
it pizza customarily. It's one of those things where like
it has to be made a certain way or else
it's not really pizza. It's like a tomato pie. I
don't know though, like I would call like a pesto
pizza pizza. But you were born American? Yeah, sure, yeah.
Well do you think I was speaking as like a
(04:42):
native Sicilian? Well no, but I'm saying like maybe as
a citizen of the world. Okay, you know we're in
the midst of globalization, Chuck, Let's let's do this all right,
let's talk pizza history then. Huh uh. Yeah. I used
to hear from uninformed people like, you know, pizza is
really American. It didn't even come from Italy, right, they're
talking about chop suey. Just not true at all. Pizza
(05:03):
did come from Italy in a way. We need to
back up Eiven even further, probably to Greece, where some
people attribute like the original flatbreads that they would decorate
with things, is like the first pizza style thing, right,
You're talking like third century BC, a long time ago, right,
But I don't know. I mean, they didn't call it
pizza until what one thousand in Naples. Yeah, of course,
(05:27):
Well Naples is like the cradle of pizza. Yeah, I
didn't realize. I didn't notice that it went back that far.
That's pretty interesting. Well that's what was first named pizza,
meaning pie. Okay, so I also saw a discrepancy here.
I saw pizza also could mean um to pinch or slice.
That's that's what I got, pizza, not necessarily pie. Well
(05:49):
that's what this person says. Okay, So we're at a
D one thousand, right, Yes, this is such a cool
cold date. It is um. And the reason pizza started
to take off was because the peasantry didn't have that
much money and this stuff was kind of easy to
come by. You made your bread, you had some cheese,
(06:10):
maybe some kazu marzoo with the maggots, uh and um,
maybe some seasonings and some olive oil. That's about it.
It wasn't until you know, the one of the biggest
main ingredients. It wasn't until um, the Colombian Exchange started
to take place that tomatoes were introduced to Italy, because
those are a new world food. Yeah. I did a
(06:32):
little tomato research because that's kind of fascinating on its own,
I think, and tomatoes come from Peru, they believe originally.
And uh, because the fruit of the night shade, the
deadly night shade looks like a tomato, a lot of
people thought it was poisonous over the years, many years ago.
And uh, actual stems and leaves of a tomato plant
(06:56):
do contain a toxic u tomatine. Huh, but um, what
is it? But what will happen to you? Well, I
think there's been one reported death for eating tomato stems
and leaves, supposedly. I don't know if that's true, though
they figured out, well, the stems and leaves are kind
of gross anyway, let's just see the tomato, So thank
(07:17):
you Spain. Um. And also interestingly, even though it came
from like South America, you would think it made its
way up through the States via Central American Mexico, but
it didn't. It like took the circuits circuitous route via
European immigrants, probably through the Philippines too. If you're interested
(07:39):
in that, dude, you should really read four all about
It's all about that stuff? Is that? Gonna just keep
writing books as they're gonna be a fo is a
benevolent God. Yeah. So anyway, tomatoes all people discovered, Hey
they're not poisonous, they're really delicious. Let's start throwing them
(07:59):
on the spread exactly. And then now we have pizza.
So we're talking like the seventeenth century, I think was
when the term uh no, it wasn't. Okay, so so
that kind of yeah, that goes against that research too.
I think I saw somewhere that the term was coined
in the eighteenth century, like seventeen thirty eight, they started
making pizzas as we know them today. You know, I
(08:21):
think there's some discrepancies just in pizza lore because that
long ago. I don't think they were necessarily keeping track
of all this stuff like we do today. Okay, So
possibly in a d. One thousand or in seventeen thirty eight,
about seven hundred fifty years later, the word pizza was
used to describe this flatbread right, consisting of now tomato, sauce, cheese,
(08:44):
bread right. Um. And but the one thing that is
not disagreed upon was that both of these took place
in Naples, and Naples was the center of them. Like
we said, the peasantry was really hip to pizza because
it was cheap and it was abundant. Yeah, and so
if you wanted to go find pizza, you basically had
to go into the peasant districts of Naples, and uh,
(09:09):
there it was an abundance being sold from street carts. Now,
is that where the first pizzeria was? Yes, in peasant land? Yeah, okay,
so Antiqua pisaria porta so Antica. I wonder if that's
the same as Antico. Who won't know what the difference is.
I don't know. Someone will probably explain it to us,
hopefully in Italian. Is there an authority on that? All? Right?
(09:31):
So that's eighteen thirty the first pizzeria, right, And also, um,
I didn't see it in here, but I came across it.
A Pizzaioli was a pizza maker. That was the name
of a pizza maker. Yeah. So the peasantry in Naples,
and probably it's starting to spread a little bit beyond that,
But the peasantry in Naples has been eating pizzas for
well over a century, almost two centuries by the time
(09:54):
Queen Margharita and King Umberto. Queen Margharita, Yeah, does that
name sound familiar in regards to pizza. Yeah, especially when
you see it spelled out, you're like, oh, wait a minute,
that's where it came from. Exactly reportedly, so, Queen Margarita
was apparently like a pretty um hip queen. She was
down with the common person. And she and Umberto went
(10:17):
and toured the country in eight eight nine, and one
of the places they went was Naples, and one of
the things they did was eat pizza, and she was like,
I love this, I want more of this. Bring me
Raphael Esposito, her personal chef. Yeah, I don't know if
it's a personal chef, it was a personal pizza chef
at least. And he said, Queen, I'm gonna make you
(10:38):
some good a pizza, including one of looks a luck
at the Italian flag. And that is the legend, at
least of how we got Margharita pizza, because you have
the red tomato, the white mozzarel and the green basil
and there's your Italian flag. Yeah, it's a great story,
hopefully true. So supposedly he made her that one, the
Margharita pizza, which she liked the most in his named
(10:59):
after or her um another one with pork, fat, cheese
and basil. It sounds pretty awesome. Uh, and then another
one with garlic oil, olive oil and tomatoes. All of
them sound great, but she chose the Margarita, and that's
the one that was named after her. But the upshot
of all this is that the queen was suddenly eating
peasant food. The Queen's the most popular person in all
(11:21):
of Italy all of a sudden, And now, all of
a sudden, places other parts of Italy where pizza wasn't
heard of or eating or whatever, people are starting to
make it. That's right, And that's like eighteen nineties, yes,
which is a great time for pizza to be coming
into its own, because there was a little country called
America coming into its own. And uh, with the arrival
(11:46):
of Italian immigrants in the late nineteenth century in places
like New York and Chicago and Philly, New York light. Uh,
they would eat pizza and it was again sort of
like street food. Um at the time, at least right. Um,
so about the time I guess when Margarita was extolling
the virtues of pizza, I guess her. Um. This wave
(12:08):
of immigration had such a tangible connection to the old
world that like almost immediately they were making pizzas in
these cities. Like you said, apparently New York was the
first city with an actual pizzeria, Um, Lombardies. General Lombardi
apparently opened his shop in nineteen o five at fifty
(12:29):
third and a half Spring Street in New York. I
wonder what's there now, Lombardies. I believe still functioning. That's
pretty great. Yeah, and did we say that Antico Pizzeria
in Naples is still in the same spot, still selling
pizza since eighteen thirty. That is true, and that's very cool.
That makes me want to go to Naples quite badly. Yeah,
I mean you could get an original pizza from the
(12:52):
original pizzeria. Yeah, that's pretty cool. And we'll get to
this in a little bit. But you may be kind
of surprised when you eat a pizza, a Neapolitan piz
at the place where it all started, compared if you're
used to like Papa John's. I had pizza and Italy ones. Yeah,
you know, I was there and I figured why not,
I guess I'll do is the Italians do exactly? Okay,
(13:15):
so that's pretty much. Oh no, we didn't. We didn't
finish the history. Yeah, United States was coming into its
own Italian immigrants coming in bringing in pizza. Then after
World War Two, of course, with a lot of things.
G I's came back with these flavors for different uh countries,
foods and drinks, and they said, Man, this pizza stuff
is really great, so let's start building chains and degrading
(13:38):
the product, and we did shot with the Shaky's in
was the first pizza chain in the United States. California
chain Pizza Hut was founded in Kansas, of all places,
and the reason, apparently, as legend has it, that their
named Pizza Hut is because the place the building kind
(13:59):
of looked like a hut and was only room for
nine spaces on the sign. So Pizza Hut, that makes sense. Yeah, uh,
Shaky Have you ever been the Shaky's. No, As a
matter of fact, um no. The only time I've ever
seen Shaky's was in the movie License to Drive with
the two Corries. Yeah, they're all over l A and uh,
you know, sort of pizza Huttie didn't feel like a
(14:21):
family joint pictures of beer. Not so great pizza. But
apparently Sherwood Shaky Johnson got in that name because of
some like affliction he had that made him change No, yeah, goodness,
but I guess he embraced it. Well. Yeah, he name
is very popular chain after it, and there's still around
huh oh. Yeah, I'm surprised it hasn't spread by now.
N there's pizza huts everywhere. Yeah, I mean, I think
(14:45):
they have him outside of California, although I'm not positive.
I didn't get to look that up, but I know
they don't have them over here down south over here
in the Southeastern Bible Belt, all right, do Yeah, so
that's a piece of history. We should probably get to
the basics. And there's something more basic than dough, and
(15:05):
then there's an art to this. There's three ingredients that
are demanded flour, water, and yeast. Everything else is just
icing on the cake. Yeah, but you probably are gonna
throw a little salt in, little sugar, a little shortening
to make it do the things you wanted to do,
perform like you wanted to perform. Yeah, and you can
go to Mellow Mushroom Pizza and get a gluten free pizza.
(15:26):
I myself have not had one because I don't have Celiac, right,
and I'm not about to just no, but um, if you,
if you are into. If you are gluten free, you
are s o l in a lot of ways because, um,
the flower used in pizza crust, pizza dough, um is
high gluten, high gluten flour. That's why gluten free pizza pas.
(15:49):
I've not had it, so I can't say, yeah, well
that's just my opinion. Yeah you've had it. Yeah, I've
tried it. It's just not it's not the same. I'm
sorry everybody. They need gluten in the flower because a
is gluten makes the crust tough and uh, it won't
crack crack apart, makes it stand up to the water
keeps it ropey. Yeah, it keeps it nice and ropey.
(16:10):
And um, I guess we need to talk about water
at some point anytime, because waters. You know, the old
saying about New York pizzas is because the water. Oh yeah,
that's like the old saying. I don't know. So they
now they have like water you can drink right out
of the tap. Did they change their water? Oh yeah, man,
they overhauled their serious system. There's a bottled water you
(16:32):
can buy now that's just New York City tap water
and stuff is so like clean and pure. Well, it's
because it comes from it comes from two aqua aquaducts,
and uh, the cat skills ship it into Manhattan. We
should do a podcast on how Manhattan gets water. It's
pretty amazing. Okay, now now can we wait until we
research it? Yeah, that's pretty amazing now. But um, I
(16:55):
read this Wired article that kind of broke down the
pizza water New York thing, and um, they got in
touch with Mario Batali, very famous tian cheff and asked
him and he said, well, one of the reasons before
we get to water is that, um, the oven, he said,
captures the gestalt or if you're German, the gestalt of
(17:16):
a beautifully cooked pizza. So basically, over time, over time,
well it makes sense, over time, you're gonna get uh,
particles like volatized particles kicking onto the walls and the
roof of your oven, and then the convection process will
just like work that into whatever you're cooking over the years. So,
(17:36):
because they've been making pizza for so long in New York,
some of these old ovens like have this gestalt. They
can't be matched anywhere else, he says, and in Chicago
as well. Um, but then with the water. He says, Yeah,
the biggest problem with California pizza is the water. It's
just not the same. Although he doesn't he doesn't use
(17:56):
New York New York water at his restaurant Del Posto,
he actually clones water from Italy. He does, yes, clones it,
that's what he said. It's uh. He's created his own
mineral water composite, working from a chemical analysis of Laqua
Italiana and it said basically, it's a clone of this
(18:19):
Italian water. That sounds kind of pretentious. We should go
sell him some real estate or something. But that's why
I think the Food Detective Show did a test, a
blind test on New York water and pizza crust, and
everyone picked the New York pizza and a blind test,
So there may be something to it. The mineral composition. Yeah,
(18:41):
I mean, if you have even the slightest belief in
molecular gastronomy, it makes sense, which would explain why New
York bagels are the best too, because bagels are boiled.
Everyone knows or the right if you make it the
right way, it's boiled. Yeah, where do you go, Chuck,
that's my water side, its chokou water. Well, I've always
that you know in your pizzas because the water is
(19:01):
because the water from the cats because I had heard that,
I didn't know it from the catskills are and had
anything to do with just stalt or anything like. Yeah, alright, Um.
The third vital ingredient is yeast, and yeast basically creates
the precursor to beer. Remember in the beer episode, could
you imagine if there was no yeast, will be in
(19:22):
big trouble. No pizza, no beer. What's the point? No bread?
This would be this world would be it'd be sad. Actually,
there's yeast free bread, I think, but still you know, yeah, no,
I know. So what what what's to deal with you? Well, basically,
the yeast goes in and it eats the sugars found
in the flower um, and then you may also add
(19:44):
your own sugar to increase the fermentation. Um. But it
causes the dough to rise because it expels gas as
a byproduct, and that gas gets trapped in the dough
and it causes it to rise. It makes it up
more malleable, it makes it um tastier. Yeah, the texture
of it is softer. It's just basically yeast is It's
(20:07):
the happy fun guy that you add to the whole
the magic ingredient. Yeah. Uh, if you add a little salt,
it's gonna add some flavor. Obviously, it's gonna slow the fermentation.
Shortening is gonna make it more pliable by providing lube
and shortening would be like olive oil. You're not gonna
use Criscoe unless you're some sort of heathen. No, you
can just connote oil. But olive oil is what I
(20:27):
would go. But sure, um, yeah, Crisco. Chrisco is great
though for some things. Oh yeah, for like sugar cookies,
especially the kind that's like just the just the the shortening,
the thick solid Yeah, shortening that stuff is crazy. That's
what I thought. That's the only way I thought you
could cook growing up, because of like my grandmother's I thought, well,
(20:49):
when you cook, you get out that big can and
big ice cream scoop and you cut it down with
that wadded up piece of like wax paper in there
that you used to scoop it out. Yeah, it's completely
covered in Christco now, either that or the grandmothers also
used you know, they saved all their greats so they
would be cooking with grease that they've been using for
the past year. It's really good. Um, sugar changes the
(21:14):
fermentation rate. Yeah, you can accelerate it. It can increase
the amount of gas released. And it also causes the
crust of brown. Oh yeah, yeah, that's his sugar. So
what if you don't put sugar, you get a glowing
yellow crust, doesn't brown as much, doesn't brown. Okay, you
want to bail it up, use your hands? Yeah, I
think I think you should say here, like you're teaching
(21:36):
people how to make legitimate, real pizza dough here, Yes,
I mean gold in rough strokes like I don't think
anyone could Like, we're not providing measurements, you know what
I'm saying. No, no, but I'm saying, once you've once
you've created this, though, now you're about to tell them
what to do with that, how to make it. You
want to ball it up with your hands. Um, you
don't want it all cracked. You want it tight, and
(21:57):
you want to put it on an oil cheap pan
and then proof it, which means you cover it with
wax paper and let it sit and let the yeast
do its thing until it like doubles in size. Because
they used to system in there eating sugars and pooping out. Yes. Uh,
then you need to retard it. Um. You need to
put it in the fridge for about twelve hours and
(22:20):
then this slows the yeast down, but it's still doing
its thing right there, like the sugar. It's cold. Um.
And then if you do this, you've got pizza dough
that you can use for like three to five days. Yeah.
I would imagine most people who are really really into
pizza would be like, you can't save that for three
to five days? You think I would think so fresh
(22:43):
almost almost always to do it like yeah, the same day. No,
I'm not saying that, but I'm saying like a pizza pierist,
like you can't use five day old dough for a
decent pizza. But I buy the dough sometimes like Trader Joe's,
you know, the farmer's market, like the pre made doughballs,
and those are you know, not necessarily that day or
(23:04):
at the oven. Well, you left out the sauce. Most
of the time it's tomato sauce. But if you're still
worried that tomatoes are poisonous and that the aristocracy is
trying to kill you by giving them to you, Um,
you can eat garlic butter sauce, which will give you
a white pizza. You don't like white pizza. I love
white pizza. And if you go to Fellini's, I think
(23:26):
we're gonna name every single pizza place in town. If
you go to Fellini's in order a white pizza slice,
you know, they use the pre made slice and they
build a white pizza on top of so you get
a little tomato sauce with your white pizza. That's really good,
but it's not white pizza then, right, No, not. You're
the one who calls like everything pizza you run around,
Now that's a pizza. There's a pizza over there. I
(23:46):
don't want to hear it from you, all right, I'm
not a fan of white pizza like some tomato saw something. Yeah,
I'm with you if I like white pizza too. Um,
and the cheese, you know mozzarella traditionally, right, and the
way you build it is actually kind of important to Yeah,
depending on where you are, it's not just the ingredients,
it's the amount and the um the distribution. Yes, where
(24:11):
they are in relation to one another vertically, Well, let's
go ahead. Then New York is sauce then cheese, yeah,
from the dough, dough sauce, cheese, right, and then not
that many toppings. Well, if you're a purist again, cheese,
a cheese slice is what you're going for. I have
not big on just cheese. What are you pepperoni guy? No,
(24:35):
not anymore and not since I was a kid. No,
I'm just kind of like pepperoni. So I like a
good homemade Italian sausage. Oh yeah, that's good. Yeah, that's
really good. Um. I like sliced tomatoes on it, not
soun dried fresh. Yeah, basil, black olives. Basil always am
not in olives. I like sausage. I don't like the
green olives. I like black olives. Do you like the
(24:56):
Hawaiian pizzas? I've only in the last couple of months
got into pineapple and I'm still feeling my way around it.
Pineapples and strawberries. I just I used to eat strawberries
when I was a kid, and I've rediscovered him recently.
I'm like, yeah, when we were in the suite at
the Marriott when we were doing interviews at Comic Con,
ate like fifteen pounds of strawberries. They were so good.
(25:16):
The chocolate covered are regular, No, they're regularly okay. Yeah,
I don't even need chocolate covered anymore. It's like I'm free.
Strawberries are delicious. Yeah, but Hawaiian I'll tell you in
a month or two, I'll try it. Emily likes that
she's big on mushroom, green pepper, and pineapple together. Yeah,
she didn't do the meat, you know, at all, just
as a food as while we're talking about wives and
(25:38):
pizza preferences. Yeah, you may have this place in DC
she used to go to and she'd get like a
huge slice of pizza in this place also sold Indian food.
So she gets chicken sog and put the sog on
the pizza and she said it was really awesome. Yeah. Yeah,
we have to do the half and half and I
get like sausage on the half and she does veggie
and then it's like, your sausage juice got on my
(25:59):
app Like, well, your mushroom got on my half. You
like a cheeseburger pizza. I love cheese. I'm not too
big on beef on the pizza. I'll give you one
more tip. Okay, get yourself some complete seasoning. Some I
can't remember what it is in Spanish, but um, complete seasoning.
It's like a Mexican blend, and put it on your pizza.
(26:20):
It doesn't matter what kind of pizza it is. It
works on popcorn too, but then your pizza. It's just
it'll make you smile. Well, my friend Eddie, who you know,
would say, get the bottle of ranch dressing in your
all set. Oh yeah, that's good. Alright. So man, that
was a sidebar. So you're saying New York you build
from the dough up doe dough, sauce, cheese, and then
maybe a couple of topics. Chicago it's the opposite. And
(26:44):
this is apparently a tomato pie the way it's built. Yeah,
because you do it for deep dish baked in a pan,
and then you've got the cheese on the bread itself
on the dough, and then the toppings and then they
put this like ungodly thick, delicious bass on top. Yeah.
I have not had it really, and I love pizza
huts pant pizza. Well, the I mean you should definitely
(27:06):
have like a true Chicago stall pizza. I mean it's
it's great. You eat it with a forking knife. I
am a New York pizza guy through and through. But
you know, every once in a while, if like when
in Chicago, well this is like um, when in Italy exactly. Uh,
this is one of those things where I don't think
you have to choose sides. No, let's just all eat
all kinds of pizza all the time. But people get
(27:28):
really passionate about their pizzas, you know, but these are
you know, it's like, man, it's it's pizza. Enjoy all pizza.
If there's one thing we can all just settle down about,
it's pizza, even Mexican pizza. Come on, yes, oh yeah,
it's not pizza. What are you crazy? You can't just
run around saying that what you eat is not pizza
(27:48):
unless it's exactly what the um Neapolitans are making. It's
not pizza. It's not a Neapolitan pizza. No, it's not pizza. Alright.
So now the ovens, I guess that this was an
odd little thing that they put in there. What about
the different kinds of ovens? It just seemed intuitive to me. Well, sure,
(28:10):
well you use a peel. Not many people know that
that that big spanking paddle it's called a peel. I
didn't I have to say, okay, so you slide it
in there. They can be electric. They can be uh
cooked right on a conveyor belt, like if you're in
a big pizza Jane, which you know if you have
a belt even at home. That's true. But the king
daddy of all is the brick oven pizza cooked with
(28:33):
wood and like your crush should have little bits of
black jar on it if you ask me for the
best for the best taste, which is actually soot it's
spent carbon. Yeah, a little spoiler there for an upcoming show.
And then here in Atlanta, the Antico, I think they
brought those three ovens over from Naples, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah,
(28:53):
I can see that. A lot of going on there.
There's tons of gestalt um Neapolitan pizza. Yeah, so Neapolitan pizza.
Um is extremely thin crust. That's bubbly crust. Um. You
put out sauce and then maybe basil and mozzarella. You
don't cover the sauce. It looks like pretty much equal parts.
(29:18):
Just visibly looking down over the pizza, it appears like
equal splotches of basil, mozzarella and um sauce. Yeah, kind
of spare They don't overdo it and to be a
true Neapolitan pizza. As of December two thousand nine, the
European Union issued a protection that regional protection that like
Champagne and what was the other thing we talked about recently?
(29:41):
Oh was it a cheese? I had to a bed
probably yeah, um. And also I think neu chatel neu
Chtel has regional protection as well, but basically like it
has to be produced in the area under these certain
guidelines to be considered that. Um, Neapolitan pizza enjoys that
economic protection now as well. And to beat Neapolitan it
(30:05):
has to be round. It can't be ostentatious. No more
than thirteen and a half into is in diameter. Um,
it can only be a tenth of an inch tall,
which is thin at its center. Yeah yeah, Um. The
crust has to be no more than three quarters of
an inch thick. So this is a really thin crust pizza, man. Yeah,
but not ultra thin. I got taken to task on
(30:27):
Facebook today because I said it was ultra thin. They
were like, not not ultra thin, ultra thins and tortilla.
I said, Mexican pizza, you have to kneed the dope
by hand, right, Yeah, And I got a couple of
more that weren't in the article. Supposedly it has to
be in a wood fired oven above nine and five
degrees Fahreneit only San Marzano plum tomatoes, which you know,
(30:50):
to me, that's the only tomatoes you're gonna be cooking
Italian style? Is that right? I think? So? Is that canned? Yeah, okay,
I know what you're talking about. I mean, I'm sure
you can get them fresh, obviously, but yeah, they can say.
Marzano's are like what I use in my spaghetti sauce.
Have you been to the Italian market by five seasons
on the West Side? I have not. It is like
right like half a block down and it is authentically Yeah,
(31:13):
you should check it out if you're into that. I
am into that. We'll check it out, all right, um.
And I think that's all too to buy law. And
of course, no one's they pointed out in the article
I read that no one's going out and like, you know,
punishing anybody. It's just a set of standards that they
like the whole deer. Uh. You know, they're not gonna
throw you in jail for calling something in Neopolitan right. Yeah, um,
(31:35):
although they should so that's neopolitan. We talked about New
York and Chicago. Um, California pizza that is super thin crust,
usually made with um, what what vegetables are in season?
I like California Pizza Kitchen. It's okay. It's pretty good,
like barbecue sauce on your pizza. H No, they have
(31:56):
a tostada pizza that's really good too. You should check, man,
you got to expand it for rise is. It's not
just New York and Chicago. There's a lot. There's a
whole world of pizza. I've been to CPK. It's fine.
The black bean salad there is delicious. They're they're guacamolea
is pretty good too. And then Greek. Yeah, that's also
in a pan like Chicago. It's just I'm not thinking
(32:17):
of feta feta and spend it sometimes olives. Yeah, I
like feta. Um. And then uh Sicilian and there's American
Sicilian and Italian Sicilian. That's right. And if you're an American,
you're making a Sicilian pizza. It's rectangular, square, thick crust.
The reason it's thick is in uh Sicily, they baked
the ingredients into the crust. Yeah, I'd like to try that. Actually,
(32:41):
it's like, um, they heard about stuff crust pizza and
started mimicking it. O man, pizza head drives me nuts.
With all those things. It's like the rope of cheese
in the cross. Or then they had the one crust,
there was the one the pizza eat backwards, like they
just can come up with all these things that are
completely unnecessary. There was the pizza that eats you the pizza. Yeah.
(33:04):
And speaking of Soviet Russia, Um, there's some pretty crazy
toppings around the world. What do they eat there? In Russia?
They eat something called makba, which is a blend of tuna, mackerel, sardines, onions,
and salmon, which I have to say sounds kind of good.
You know what I thought good was good was the
Japanese the mayo yaga jaga mayonnaise, bacon and potato mixture.
(33:27):
They their their hot dogs in that too. Oh my gosh. Yeah,
it's really good. A lot to check that out. Uh.
In India, little pickled ginger and tofu maybe and little
minced mutton. Yea so good to me. You don't like
mutton had a pet goat that's this is a lamb,
totally different animals. They can't even mate. I don't think
(33:49):
I bet they could. Well they can, but they can't reproduce. Okay, Brazil,
you might get some green peas on your pizza. Yeah, Asta, Rica,
you might get a little coconut equally, wolf, Yeah, I
think so. I'm not big on coconut and antrovies are
generally regarded as the least favorite pizza topping. What's the
(34:11):
number one pizza topping in America? Pepperoni? Of course, really
it got toppled this last this year. Chicken as far
as protein goes, chicken? Really? And is that? How do
they calculate that? Is that like in restaurants or there's
an actually surprising amount of pizza industry UM marketing and
(34:32):
lobby groups, in trade groups and the true of the
pizza and association. I ran across the blog post and
I don't remember I followed it to this press release
from some pizza association UM and I don't remember which
one it was, but they said that um, chicken topped
pepperoni as far as pepperoni toppings goes. So that means
(34:53):
that Americans consume more than two hundred and fifty million
pounds of chicken on their pizza. Yeah, which makes sense
because chicken's heavier than pepperoni, that's true, and that's a
lot of pepperoni. Maybe they go by weight. Yeah, we've
got some awesome stats here, don't we go ahead and
firow some of those out? Uh? So, the number of
(35:13):
pizzas sold in the US each year three billion. I'm
responsible for at least a million and a half of
those three fifty slices sold every second. Yeah, not bad.
And every year, the average American eats forty six slices.
That's child's play. Americans eat pizza at least once a month. Yeah,
(35:35):
that's a lot. That is a lot. I mean that
is that means like almost every American eats pizza at
least once a month. That's pretty staggering. I can't imagine
that there's any other food like that except maybe a cheeseburger.
I bet pizza tops that even I would think. So
it's just such an easy because vegetarians can eat pizza, cheese, pizza. Yeah.
And if you if you go to like McDonald's or
(35:56):
something like that, and you have a family of four, uh,
you are going to spend more than you would on
a pizza that don't feed that family fortune. And you
don't get the cold breakfast leftovers either. Uh exactly, McDonald's
you do. But um, what else was there anything else
I had? There was a guy in my elementary school actually,
(36:17):
you know, remember the little rectangle elementary school pizzas? Yeah,
so great. There was one dude, Brett Standish that did
not eat pizza. And he was like the only kid
I ever knew that it didn't eat pizza. So every
time we had pizza, it was like there was a
battle royal to find out who would get Prett Standish
as pizza. And he would like up his you know,
his asking price each week when I you know, it
(36:39):
was like a valuable commodity. Smart kid, Yeah, what do
you what was the most he ever got for it? No?
I have no idea. Probably a bunch of pringles and
like a little time behind the school, you know what
I'm saying. Uh no, when my imagination is racing right now? Okay? Um?
Oh yeah. There's this little sidebar in this article that
said that more than Lady pizzerias in New York are
(37:01):
operating under the name Raise More than. It's like that
sounds like a lot until you realize there's nine thousand
pizzerias in New York alone New York City. Well, I
thought this is pretty interesting. Should we talk about race? Um,
if you've ever been to New York or Atlanta's got
four raised pizzas? Is that right? Famous Original Race Atlanta
has raised New York pizza. Um? And you know how
(37:24):
I always says since whatever year, since nineteen in Atlanta,
that's not too bad. But yeah, there by the count
I got, there are forty nine pizzerias in New York
that use some form of the name Ray. And here's
the story behind it, um Ray Uh. Ralph Cuomo opened
(37:45):
the first race on Prince Street nine. He's grandfather de
Rivers and father of Mario and uh his nickname he
claimed to be Ray because he said it was Ralphie
than Rayphie than Ray. I'm not quite so sure about that.
Um that he opened a second one in the nineteen sixties,
and then someone named Rosalino Manano Majano. But the second
(38:09):
Rays changed the name to Famous Original Rays, even though
that wasn't true, So things started a little messy. Uh.
Then man John out now goes by Ray which is
also bogus opened. Uh, several more famous original Rays all
over the city sold that to new owner who begin
(38:29):
using other variations of the race. So it kind of
just spread. But ironically, three quote unquote Rays got together
to trademark the name. None of them our name Ray.
Yet they have all gotten together to try and trademark
the name Ray and to shut down at least in
name places like Atlanta's Near Pizza raised Near Pizza in Atlanta.
(38:53):
Who you're just probably got in trouble, I don't think
so they know about them, so you don't know that.
It sounds like a cartel. I think it is speaking
of Cartel's Chuck, the Big Three, Pizza Hut, Dominos, Papa John's. Um.
Of those three, the one that has the most urban
legends associated with it as Dominoes. I had heard. I
(39:15):
think one of these with the thirty minutes or less
went away because they killed some kid in a car
delivery person ready made urban legends. Supposedly, um, they there
were lawsuits from people being hit. At least one person
was hit, but they didn't say it had anything to
do with the thirty minutes or less. One person was killed. Yeah,
(39:38):
well yeah, that's right. One person killed at least, so
then at least one person hit. We're both kind of right,
but they did do away with that. There was also
a rumor that the owner of Domino's contributed a lot
to anti abortion groups UM, which may or may not
have been true, but he didn't known Domino's probably at
the time, because the guy who founded the company, UM,
(40:00):
Tom Monahan. Yeah, he's sold in a billion, which is
pretty tiny, but he is a staunch Catholic and obviously
a supporter of pro life and is building his own
little Catholic town outside of Miami. Yeah, one of those.
And I've heard of these before. We basically like, I'm
gonna build my little my own little town, like filled
(40:23):
with people that are like me because I'm incredibly well
exactly So, I don't know what the status is on
that now, but um, supposedly more than thirty thousand residents
will occupy this town and eventually they'll go to war
with Celebration Florida. Uh. And then there's all these goofy pizzas.
I don't get into all this stuff, like the the
(40:45):
three thousand euro pizza with kannak marinated lobster and edible
gold and okay, so that holds the record, and sooked
caviare for the most expensive with gold. There's actually two
categories in Guinness as far as most expensive pizza with
that gold and without. Apparently, if you just want to
like throw some medable gold on your pizza, you can
just you know, tip the scales by wise. But if
(41:07):
you want the most expensive pizza in the world without gold,
that record was recently broken. Uh and Stevenson Pizza Company
in Vancouver, which apparently is affiliated with the guy from
Hell's Kitchen. Oh yeah, shut it down, yeah, Gordon Ramsay, yes, Um.
They have a four hundred and fifty dollar pizza called
the Sea six. Pizza has lobster, thermador, black Alaskan cod
(41:31):
and caviare on it. It looks kind of good. Yeah,
you know, they do stuff like that to get pressed
and get people in there. And I get it. What
about the largest pizza ever built and eaten? I like
that They have that caveat Yeah, agreed, Havana, Florida. Um
from seven. I'm surprised no one has tried to break
(41:52):
it since then. UM, thousand, four hundred and fifty seven
pounds of pizza. Ninety over ninety four thousand slices devoured
by thirty thousand, at least thirty thousand people hanging out.
How do they bake that thing? I wonder? I don't know.
That's that's a great question. That's the one I want
(42:15):
listener mail on. Not your favorite pizza topic. No one
cares about that. How did they bake that thing? I guess.
I mean maybe it was sunbaked. I don't know. They're like, wow,
this is really like they make it and they're like,
oh wait, yeah, because it says eaten. Or maybe there's
another record tied to it for the largest pizza oven.
(42:35):
And then the longest pizza delivery. Two thousand four, a
Domino's franchise owner named Lucy Clough delivered a pizza ten
thousand five two miles stand hundred fifty KOs from London
to Melbourne. It was a vegetarian pizzas part of the
Make A Wish Foundation. I was about to disparage it,
(42:55):
I know. That's why I got all that out in
one breath before you could break it. Yea, I was
saving from yourself. Make I Wish? Then I support it.
Way to goacha, that's pizza. Yeah, you know what's awesome
about pizza. And I guarantee you there's dark corners to
(43:16):
all this that we didn't even hit that we're going
to hear about that we want to hear about. This
will be one of those which I love. Yeah, I
love pizza. Uh, if you love pizza, you can read
more about it at how stiff works dot com. Type
the word p I z Z eight into the switch
bar at our beloved how stifforks dot com website. Um,
(43:37):
which is now two words. I think as far as
eight P goes website. Yeah, a long time. They know.
I was taught when I was hired. Here it's capital
W E B, separate word, lower case S, I T
E right now it's lowercase all one word. Oh, it's
all one word. Now. I thought you were saying it's
two words. Now I got you. Yeah, No, it's one word. Okay,
(43:57):
this is great. And if I did say two woods,
I was wrong. We'll find out. Uh. Anyway, I think
I said such far in there. So it's time for
the listener mail, Chuck. Yes, we should tell everybody about
something very special and dear to our hearts New York City.
(44:17):
That's right. We are going to Comic Con, and we
will be doing a live podcast on Friday, October twelve
at Comic Con at the jabb At Center. It's like
our new thing. We did San Diego, now we're doing
New York. That's right next up Albuquerque. So if you
were going to Comic Con, you should come by and
see that. But after Comic Con, we have one of
our famous, its famous to us all star trivia nights. Um,
(44:42):
where is it gonna be the cutting Room? It is
at the grand reopening of the Cutting Room in the
flat Iron District, which is what's the address? It is
h forty four East thirty second Street in New York
And it's in the flat Iron you said. And doors
open at seven thirty. Trivia goes down at eight thirty.
And what is the first come, first serve? Right? Free free, free,
(45:03):
first come, first serve. We will have a bar there
that you can buy drinks. Yeah, you can buy us drinks.
That's right. We're gonna basically be having a really good
time if you if you're not familiar with our trivia nights, like,
just come out and check it out. It'll be worth
your while, absolutely, and stay tuned for info on Facebook
and Twitter. About the makeup of the All Star team.
We're filling that out as we speak, but we will
(45:24):
have some special guests that you will want to meet. Yeah,
and at the very least you can come take on
me and chuck right, yeah, okay, it's just fun. So
what is that? That's Friday, October twelfth, right, yep, the
panels that went. The panel is at I believe, okay,
and then we're gonna be at the cutting room starting
at eight thirty. Tribute starts at eight thirty doors at
seven thirty. Be there, be square. You were good at this.
(45:46):
Thank you? All right, the time for listener mail. I'm
gonna call this accidents. Thanks to us, we cause an accident,
a good one, like no one got hurt. This from
Annie and Annie was going off to college, which was
several states away, so her family decided to road trip
with her two uh to to the college as a
(46:07):
little mini vacation. That is very sweet depending on how
Andy feels about her family. Well, you're about it by now.
It may sound fun, but it's not easy to agree
on music when you're James Blunt loving mom, Miley Virus
loving younger sister. She is just said up in college, Yeah,
and weird eurometal loving older brother or all crammed into
a car together after a few hours of me wondering
(46:28):
if I could get a refund on my soundproof headphones.
They agreed to let me pick the music, and I
picked the stuff. You should know. It turns out everyone
loves Slash doesn't hate stuff. You should know. We were
all interested more importantly not yelling or throwing CDs out
in the window. Plus, it was fun to go back
through uh my favorites. Jack the Ripper, for instance, made
my mom a little green. However, you know what what
(46:50):
we heavily edited that one. Yeah, it was worse. It
always way worse. I think, Yeah, I remember going through
there and be like, dude, we can as it was facts.
You all know it was so yeah. Um, However, during
a time when it was my goofy brothers turning to
drive parentheses, I really can't stress how weird he is.
At the end of the cast about genius, you were
(47:10):
reading some other listen listener mail from a lady truck
driver and told her to honk her horn, which my
brother did really loud, like a truck would do. It
wouldn't have been a problem but we were in one
of those curvy two lane highways behind a senior citizen.
Uh and basically this this lady thought that they were
honking at her. She slammed on her brakes and caused
(47:34):
the person riding behind her to butt into her rear end.
Oh no, uh No one was hurt. But I was
laughing because over the screech of tires, I actually heard
Chuck say, I hope we didn't just cause an accident. Wow,
this is um. Everyone is fine. There was no damage
to either car. But my mom made my brother give
them both info because my mother thought that he was liable.
(47:55):
Thanks Mom. Yeahly, she just drove straight to jail. And
she says I was the one to offerdly explain to
the old lady what a podcast was ps. I hope
my dorm mate likes you guys. That's from Annie. Thanks
a lot, any that was really nice. But everyone's safe
you too. Man, That's that's a crazy cho It sounds
a little made up, but oh yeah, we've followed for
(48:17):
it before. Man, remember either way, the marriage, the wedding proposal. Yeah,
I still have to go on my face about that's
all right? We all do, we all do Uh, if
you have a great story about how your family has
been brought together by stuff, you should know we want
to hear it. We also want to know how the
(48:38):
citizens of Havana, Florida, baked their d sliced pizza. We
really really want to know that, agreed, um, and how
delicious it was. Yeah, you can tweet to us all
of this information to uh s y s K podcast. Seriously,
Our Twitter is killing it, is it? Yes, that's great.
(49:00):
It's one of the best Twitter feeds on the internet. Wow,
it's got it all man. It has um wacky news,
it has important news. Criticism of Twitter when they suspend
people's accounts, um it has we we talked to people
back and forth. Sometimes we pester Hodgman for no good reason. Yeah. Um,
there's just all sorts of great stuff on Twitter. Or
(49:23):
we'll like, we'll see a tweet from like the Jim
Henson Company that they like the Muppet podcast. Yeah yeah,
so like pretty cool stuff like that is down. Yeah
it is. It's very cool. Um. So you can follow
us on Twitter at so it's the AT symbol and
then s y s K p O d c A
s t at s Y s K Podcast We're also
(49:43):
killing it on Facebook. Our Facebook page is awesome. Uh
that's Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know, right,
and you can just send us an email like a
normal person would to s White Too. Stuff podcasts at
Discovery dot For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(50:04):
visit how Stuff works dot com
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