It’s a fact that pizza is the best food in the solar system, or close to it at least. And I’m not talking about the pizza you get from a few particular chain companies that I won’t mention. Quite honestly, I’m not sure how they’re still in business. But that’s a topic for a different time.

Right now I want to focus on good pizza. Now there is a particular company (perhaps more than one) that specializes in take Take ‘N’ Bake pizza, and I think their pizzas taste pretty good, but what I really want to talk about are pizzas that are cooked in a wood fired brick oven. To me, that’s how real pizza should be made.

Let me get one thing out of they way with right now. Pineapple should never ever be put on a pizza. I don’t know where that idea got its start but it has set a dangerous precedence. One day, people might just start putting whatever they want on their pizza. And if history has shown us anything, if that were to happen, the world would quickly descend into utter chaos and complete anarchy would ensue.

Bananas are also a big no no. Don’t even entertain the thought. They might seem harmless, but rest assured they are equally as dangerous as pineapple.

Now that I’ve given warning of the dangers of a couple particular toppings, let me bemoan my lack of a brick oven. Sadly, I only have a conventional oven that reaches a maximum temperature of 550° F (~ 285° C). Don’t get me wrong, that’s plenty hot enough to cook basically any store bought pizza or even when cooking my own. It’s just that conventional ovens will never be able to produce a pizza that’s even close to competing with a pizza cooked in a stone oven.

The whole process is an art form all its own. The perfect pizza should absolutely begin with dough that’s been aloud to slow rise over multiple days. When the dough is ready, a master pizza chef (I don’t know if that’s a real title) artfully transforms the ball of dough into a thin circular canvas, ready to be sauced and topped to perfection.

Here are a couple links so you can make your very own pizza dough and pizza sauce at home: Basic Pizza Dough and Sweet Basil Pizza Sauce

Once the uncooked pizza is ready, the pizza chef slides the pizza off the long peel and into a very hot brick oven where it gets rotated on a regular basis to avoid burning the pizza. In this way, the intense heat quickly cooks the thin dough and causes the pizza to bubble up in various places. That’s why pizzas that have been cooked in an extremely hot oven look so amazing.

The key to awesome pizza is to let your dough slow rise for at least two days, and cook it in a very hot oven. Most people won’t have the luxury of owning a wood fired brick oven because they are pretty expensive, but if you happen to have one and know how to cook a good pizza, please leave a comment in the section below!