Most People Are Making Pizza Wrong! Try These Old Italian Tricks

The dough tears when you stretch it, then keeps shrinking back. The pizza comes out of the oven looking right, and then the slice flops over like a wet rag, the middle is pale and soggy, and the crust tastes like nothing. You do not need a pizza stone, a special oven, or expensive Italian flour. It is the order you do things in. Friday was meatless in my mother Filomena's house in Bensonhurst, so Friday was pizza, every single week, in a regular home oven, in a pan that cost a couple of dollars. In this one I count down her ten rules, and every one starts with plain instructions before I explain anything. Which flour actually works in a home oven, a quarter teaspoon of yeast and a long cold rest instead of a whole packet and one hour, why you stop kneading, why the dough tears and how to stop it, why the rolling pin never touches it, the oiled pan that replaces the pizza stone, the hottest oven on the lowest rack, the right cheese and a sauce you never cook, and at number one, my mother's Friday grandma pie, which breaks the rule everybody thinks is a law. I also settle whether this counts as real Italian pizza. Crisp, golden bottom. A slice that stands straight out when you pick it up. So tell me where you are cooking from, and what your family put on the Friday night pizza.