On The Art Of Pizza
From Atlantic Roleplay Wiki
Title: On the Art of Pizza
Author: Stephanos
The pizza is an ancient and commendable dish, but it is also subject of much confusion. Across Britannia, bakers and cooks seem to think it is simply a matter of slapping sausage or cheese on a disk of dough and baking it in an oven.
Pizza is not this. Pizza is an art. Pizza is a science. Pizza demands perfection.
As we begin, dear reader, you must abandon your understanding of 'pizza'.
That label slips too easy off the tongue onto dishes unworthy of it, culinary anti dishes unworthy of it, culinary anti-virtues as opposed to a true pizza as Deceit is to Honesty. Indeed, you could cook a flatbread laden with ingredients by any number of methods: with rolling pin, on a campfire, kneaded for but a moment, and any might be called a 'pizza' by those who chose self-deception over truth.
But we commit no such sin, for we know well that true pizza is more exacting than the peversion if its name hopes us to believe.
To begin, one must take a pitcher of fresh water and an opened sack of flour, combining using hands and a rolling pin, to create a dough. This dough must then be left to rest for a day... dusk to dusk or dawn to dawn serve best as markers... so it might develop its texture and flavour.
With this dough appropriately developed, one must sift cheese or sausage atop the dough, and with great speed follow this second step with the last: with a skillet on must complete the bake. This is the most demanding step of all, that which divides the true pizza from the pale imitation: the heat must be wood-fire and it must be HOT.
As such, the 'ovens' favoured by bakers must be supplemented by a proximate fireplace so fire-glowing logs might be shoveled to the baking surface. With heat so derived, in merely a minute (no more, no less) one's pizza will be complete, and properly worthy of the name.
A perfected dish demands perfected accompaniment, and this ought ideally be an ale, though cider and liquor may do in a pinch. With proper libations, a true pizza will envigorate the mind and uplift the senses, a worthy reason for the efforts it demands.
Let fools call their sad preparations what they really are, dear reader, saucy flatbreads and open-topped pies. Let the wise heed the lessons I convey, and dine well on true glory of pizza!