Pizza Wars

I am married to a (mostly) reformed picky eater.  This caused several moments of edible confusion when we first started preparing meals together, as in “What do you mean you don’t eat tomatoes?” and “Who doesn’t like mint?” and “You mean people actually eat Shake’n’Bake?  I thought it was just a commercial!”

We have, for the most part, worked out our delectable differences, but one of the areas where we will never agree to disagree is pizza.  This stand-off goes way deeper than pepperoni vs. sausage – we’re talking all out pizza war here, people.

You see, my husband has a very firm opinion about the preparation and presentation of pizza.  I’m not really even going to comment on his favorite toppings: ham, sauerkraut, and pineapple at the same time.  Well, OK, using italics is a comment.  No, this is a philosophy running much deeper, down to the very crust of the matter.

He prefers a chewy, sweet crust and babbles on about “the balance between crust and toppings” as if he had his own show on the Food Network.  Whereas I am all about the toppings.  The crust is merely a tool to get the toppings to my mouth, so the thinner, the flatter, the crispier the better – in my opnion. 

The next stratum is the sauce, and I like a tangy, zingy, tomato-ey sauce, spread sparingly.  He prefers a sweeter, more ketchup-y sauce, spread thickly over the crust.  Are you sensing a theme here?  He likes the sweet stuff in and on his pizza, but I am clearly a savory kind of girl.

For toppings, I like pretty much anything – except ham and pineapple.  Bring on the olives, onions, sausage, pepperoni, peppers, mushrooms…   Yeah, pretty much everything he hates.  Well, he likes meat, but peppers?  They might as well be green snakes curled up on a pizza pie.

Our last point of contention with pizza ingredients is the cheese.  He likes his gooey and melty, with strings swinging from the slice like Tarzan’s vines, catching on his chin and leaving an orange trail of melted-cheese-grease.  And I love the cheese that spills off the pizza in the oven, cooking down to a crunchy, nutty crisp.  Please cook my pizza until the cheese is turning a warm, toasty brown – no cheese trails for me, thank you!

Finally, he all but refuses to eat any pizza that is not sliced into wedges.  Apparently, without a rim of crust as a handle, the flavor in a pizza runs right off the pan and hides in the back of the oven, never to be tasted again.  And I truly couldn’t care less what shape my pizza takes.  I kind of like the smaller square pieces because it seems that gravity isn’t trying as hard to slide my toppings and cheese off the crust when it has been cut into squares.  It’s either that or I choose to prefer a square-cut pizza simply because It annoys my husband.  No… I would never do something as petty as that to the man who has banned mint toothpaste from our home. 

I swear on (under) my secretly minty-fresh breath that I wouldn’t do that.

So, tell me your pizza philosophy!  Or just agree with me that mine is right…