S Tier:
Real Italian Sausage from a good pizzeria
Spinach
Feta Cheese
A Tier:
Crushed Red Pepper
Pizza Hut BBQ beef (its ONLY redeeming quality)
Bacon
Chicken (only with BBQ sauce replacing tomato sauce)
Pineapple
Any bell pepper but green
French Dressing
B Tier:
Olives
Pepperoni
Ham
Chicken (otherwise)
Diced Tomatoes
C Tier:
Frozen Italian Sausage they use at most franchises
Pork Sausage
Beef Sausage
Green Bell Peppers
D Tier:
Onions
Anchovies
Lettuce
Mayonnaise (I had no idea that people put that on pizza until this thread…fucking *really? *My stomach turns thinking of this one.)
My current team is Ham and Sausage with Black Olives and Onions. The Ham and Sausage complement each other perfect with the Ham being sweet while the sauage nice and greasy and adding that good spicy bite. The Black Olives are of course the perfect assist. The only thing I’m unsure about are the unions. Usually they add that bit of sweetness to the Pizza but the Ham covers that, I’m feelin the onions might be a bit redundant.
If I’m the mood, which is rare or the pizza cold (you know, left overs) then i’ll add Ranch as a dip sauce. A good hot pizza tho really doesn’t need a dip sauce.
This is all on a red sauce pizza with a normal layer of cheese. Extra cheese is redundant and a waste of a character slot.
I’ll agree with the assessment on stuffed crust Pizza. All your doin is forcin yourself to win the round quickly before that shit gets hard and, then its an uphill battle to regain momentum. Stuffed crust is better as a bread stick appetizer to warm up for the meal but even then it has issues since the cheese is heavy and can easily spoil the main event if your not careful. Shits dangerous. Gotta know what your doin or else you’ll get blown up.
Also, God Tier pizza is pepperoni, bacon and sausage, optionally ham and hamburger as well if you wanna go full blown meatlovers, I prefer keeping those two out though.
Tossing olives on there isn’t bad either, preferably black ones.
“Pizza” and “tiers”? SRK, you’ve crossed the line.
also, another spot I’d recommend that has good grandma’s style pizza, like the Schenectady guy mentioned, is Rizzo’s on Steinway in Astoria. think their other location is 93rd and lexington
As a chef and an avid pizza snob I’m here to tell you that toppings are all about managing water content. Ham and pineapple is immediately doomed to be a soupy mess unless it’s partially dried before use as a topping. Your dough is never going to be fully cooked in the center under all that h2o. The oven simply isn’t hot enough to evaporate all that water off before the bottom burns - even if you’re working at 700. Same thing with grease management. Load a bunch of cured meats on a pie and you’re going to have too much fat sliding all over the place.
I limit it to 2 topping of which only 1 can be high water/oil content.
My personal favorite: Straight pepperoni or fresh tomato sauce and cheese (sauce on top in the case of the latter - you par bake the dough with the cheese for a few minutes and then top it with the tomato sauce near the end so that the tomato sauce never gets very cooked, just warm)
Fancy style: Salami, goat cheese.
And I’ll thank you to keep your fucking herbs away from my pizza unless I ask for them. They don’t even have any business in the tomato sauce. 3 things belong in tomato sauce: tomato, olive oil, and salt. That’s It. If a customer wants oregano, let them add it themselves.
I learned about pizza in Napoli. There are 2 general styles in the shops: cheese or straight tomato sauce.
Cracking an egg on a pie halfway through baking on a standard mozzarella pie is God Tier. But it’s super super rich, so it’s reserved for special occasions.
Nearly every place in America loads the sauce up with all these unnecessary things (what the fuck are you putting onion in my sauce for? That’s a topping, not an automatic assumption.) and while it produces perfectly acceptable pies, they’ll never rise to that Yomi Layer 7 purity.
I’ve had breakfast pizza before, with eggs cracked in the middle and topped with bacon or prosciutto. Pretty damn tasty I must say. Yolks don’t cook all the way through and you can sop em up with the crusts. Delicious, but not what anyone is thinking about when they hear pizza. I mean, dessert pizzas exist too, but no one’s putting chocolate or marshmallows up against pepperoni on the tier lists.
To me pizza sauce and tomato sauce are two different things. Pizza sauce imo should consist of tomato, basil, oregano, parm-reg, olive oil, salt, and cooked with a bay leaf or two. (And if I’M making the sauce for my specific tastes it also has some pepper flakes added) Regular tomato sauce you use as a base for your marinara or what have you should just be tomato, evoo, and salt.
It wouldn’t really be of use for me to post my tier list, after all I pretty much love nothing but veggies on my pizza. The only meat I’m really tolerant of is pepperoni, and I hate onions.
