Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Pizza Works

Episode Date: November 10, 2018

Sure it's everywhere and there's a more-than-90-percent chance you eat it once a month. But we'll bet you don't know the full history of that pizza (or tomato pie) you're about to chow down on. Join Chuck and Josh as they explain it to you, bite by bite. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Chuck here to introduce my pick for the stuff you should know select this week about pizza. Boy, oh boy, do we have fun on this one. October 11, 2012 shall live in infamy because we talked all about pizza from its origins to where it stands today, where to get the best pizza. Oh my goodness, it was so much fun. It's going to make you hungry too. So please enjoy it everyone. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I'm a little under the weather, a little rundown, but I feel better than I sound. I am over the weather. Yeah. Whatever that means. It means you're in great spirits, good shape.

You can put your hand through that wall next to you. I probably could actually on certain days, but not today. That's good, Chuck. You doing okay? Yeah, great. Okay, glad you're feeling better, even though you sound crappy. Man, I really do, don't I? It's always reminiscent of the six month period that you were sick early on.

Now I'm healthy. I don't smoke. I exercise. I eat right. I juice all the time. Isn't it remarkable how you don't get sick as often when you live right? Yeah, when you treat your body correctly. Well, Chuck, that's an excellent segue, because in my opinion, one of the best ways to treat

your body is to stuff it full of really good pizza. Yeah. Have you had pizza before? Yeah, dude, I love pizza. I don't eat that much of it. Oh, really? No, I mean, I don't know how much. I mean, we have stats on the average American and stuff.

May I spit one out? Sure. Every day, Americans eat about 100 acres of pizza. I guess it would be Sicilian, because in acres, it would be squared, although it didn't have to be square. No. You can have a round acre. Yeah, I guess you could.

Just forget what I said. I've never seen a round acre before. I imagine an island, if it's round, would be round acreage. There's not really any real round islands, there's no such thing as a perfect circle in there. Sure. It's just so round. No.

Just a circle. No. Yeah. I love pizza. I don't know how much I eat of it, though, compared to most people. I'd say we order a pizza maybe once a month. What? We'll order a pizza.

That's the only pizza you have every month? Yeah. We'll order a pizza delivery, and then probably we'll throw in one visit to Antico, which- A month? You got me beat there. I need to get out there more often. Yeah. Once every six weeks to two months for Antico.

Yeah. Here in Atlanta, Chuck and I have a pizza place. I guess everybody in Atlanta has it, but we're very fortunate to have a place called Antico Pizza. It's really good. And now I understand the name after researching this article. Yeah. It's kind of close to the original pizzeria.

I think that's the point. Is it? I would imagine. I don't think they follow the traditional rules, though. Okay. We're spoiling all of them. Man. Well, for my part, you and me and I are crazy about pizza, and we eat it like all the time.

From frozen pizza to Domino's, to pizza out like by the slice. Yeah. It's good. I ate a lot more pizza when I lived up in the New York area, because I would get it after class, just the single slice, which is- The big, huge slice. Yeah, and you fold it in half, and it's just great. Did you want pizza while you were researching this?

No. I did. Did you? Oh, yeah. All right. Antico, though, is really, really good pizza. The best pizza in Atlanta most people agree on, and judging by the line out the door every single day, then I would say we're right.

I've even gotten into an argument with them on the phone, which I don't do very often, about whether or not you can order a pizza without cheese, and I'll still go back there after hanging up on them in anger. Wow. Yeah. They do it their way. They definitely do. That's the point.

Oh, man. They also have the dressing station, which is like the basil plants. They don't even have- it's not dried basil or even leaves. It's like the plant. They pick the leaves off there, and they get the big chunks of garlic, and it's just kind of so good. Yeah. You can hear your food go, ow.

Now I want pizza. Okay. Good. All right. That's what I was going for, Chuck. You got me. It worked. So everybody, I'm sure, is familiar with pizza.

I don't think there's going to be too many huge surprises there, but there's a lot about pizza that I would imagine you don't know. Yeah. We're going to tell you that kind of stuff. Agreed. One example at its core, pizza, really, is bread, cheese, and sauce. Yeah. That's it.

Tomato sauce. Right. Unless you're getting funky. But you can't get funky and still call it pizza, customarily. Yeah. It's one of those things where it has to be made a certain way or else it's not really pizza. It's like a tomato pie.

I don't know, though. I would call it a pesto pizza pizza. But you were a born American. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So you're speaking as like a native Sicilian? Well, no, but I'm saying like maybe as a citizen of the world.

Oh, OK. You know. We're in the midst of globalization, Chuck. Let's do this. All right. Let's talk pizza history, then, huh? Yeah. I used to hear from uninformed people like, you know, pizza's really American.

It didn't even come from Italy. Right. They're talking about chop suey. Just not true at all. Yeah. Pizza did come from Italy, in a way. We need to back up even further, probably to Greece, where some people attribute like the original flatbreads that they would decorate with things as like the first pizza style

thing. Right. You're talking like third century BC. Yeah. A long time ago. Right. But I don't think they didn't call it pizza until what, 81,000 in Naples? Yeah.

Of course. Well, Naples is like the cradle of pizza. Yeah. I didn't realize. I didn't notice that it went back that far. That's pretty interesting. Well, that's what was first named, pizza meaning pie. OK.

So I also saw a discrepancy here. I saw pizza also could mean to pinch. Oh, really? Or slice. Hmm. That's what I got pizza meant, not necessarily pie. Well, that's what this person says. OK.

So we're at AD 1,000. Right? Yes. This is such a cool date. It is. And the reason pizza started to take off was because the peasantry didn't have that much money and this stuff was kind of easy to come by. Yeah.

You made your bread. You made some cheese, maybe some kazoo marzu with the maggots, and maybe some seasonings and some olive oil. That's about it. Yeah. It wasn't until one of the biggest main ingredients, it wasn't until the Columbian Exchange started to take place that tomatoes were introduced to Italy because those are a new world food. Yeah.

I did a little tomato research because that's kind of fascinating on its own, I think. Tomatoes come from Peru. They believe originally. And because the fruit of the nightshade, the deadly nightshade looks like a tomato, a lot of people thought it was poisonous over the years, many years ago. And actual stems and leaves of a tomato plant do contain a toxic tomatine. But you have to eat a lot of it. But what will happen to you?

Well, I think there's been one reported death. You're eating tomato stems and leaves? Yeah, crazy. Supposedly. I don't know if that's true, though. They figured out, well, the stems and leaves are kind of gross anyway. Let's just eat the tomato. So thank you, Spain.

And also interestingly, even though it came from South America, you would think it made its way up through the states via Central America and Mexico. But it didn't. It took the circuitous route via European immigrants. Only through the Philippines, too. If you're interested in that, dude, you should really read 1493. It's all about that stuff. Is that guy going to just keep writing books?

Is there going to be a 1494 or 1495? If there is a benevolent God, yes. Okay. 1495. So anyway, tomatoes, people discovered, hey, they're not poisonous. They're really delicious. Let's start throwing them on the spread. Exactly.

And then now we have pizza. So we're talking like the 17th century, I think, was when the term, no, it wasn't. Okay, so that kind of, yeah, that goes against that research, too. I think I saw somewhere that the term was coined in the 18th century. Like 1738, they started making pizzas as we know them today. You know, I think there's some discrepancies just in pizza lore. Because that long ago, I don't think they were necessarily keeping track of all this stuff like we do today.

Okay, so possibly in AD 1000 or in 1738, about 750 years later, the word pizza was used to describe this flatbread, right? Consisting of now tomato sauce, cheese, bread, right? But the one thing that is not disagreed upon was that both of these took place in Naples. That's right. And Naples was the center of, and like we said, the peasantry was really hip to pizza because it was cheap and it was abundant. Street food.

Yeah. And so if you wanted to go find pizza, you basically had to go into the peasant districts of Naples and there it was, in abundance, being sold from street carts. Now is that where the first pizzeria was? Yes. Okay. In 1830. Was it in the peasant land?

Yeah. Okay. So Antica, Pizzeria, Portalba. Yeah. So Antica, I wonder if that's the same as Antica, I wonder what the difference is. I don't know. Someone will probably explain it to us. Hopefully in Italian.

Yes. He's there in authority on that. All right. So that's 1830, the first pizzeria. Right. And also, I didn't see it in here, but I came across that a pizzaioli was a pizza maker. That was the name of a pizza maker. Oh, yeah?

Yeah. So the peasantry in Naples, and probably it's starting to spread a little bit beyond that, but the peasantry in Naples has been eating pizzas for well over a century, almost two centuries, by the time Queen Margarita and King Umberto first margarita. Queen who? Margarita. Ah. Yeah.

Does that name sound familiar in regards to pizza? Yeah. Especially when you see it spelled out. Right. You're like, oh, wait a minute. That's where it came from. Exactly. Reportedly.

So Queen Margarita was apparently like a pretty hip queen. She was down with the common person, and she and Umberto went and toured the country in 1889. One of the places they went was Naples, and one of the things they did was eat pizza, and she was like, I love this. I want more of this. Bring me Raphael Esposito. Her personal chef.

Yeah. I don't know if it's her personal chef. It was her personal pizza chef, at least. And he said, Queen, I'm going to make you some good pizza, including one of the Italian flag, and that is the legend, at least, of how we got Margarita pizza because you have the red tomato, the white mozzarella, and the green basil, and there's your Italian flag. Yeah.

It's a great story, hopefully true. So supposedly he made her that one, the Margarita pizza, which she liked the most and is named after her. Another one with pork fat, cheese, and basil, that sounds pretty awesome. And then another one with garlic, oil, olive oil, and tomatoes. All of them sound great, but she chose the Margarita, and that's the one that was named after her. And the upshot of all this is that the Queen was suddenly eating peasant food.

The Queen's the most popular person in all of Italy, all of a sudden. And now, all of a sudden, in places, other parts of Italy where pizza wasn't heard of or eaten or whatever, people are starting to make it. And that's like 1889, 1890s. Yes, which is a great time for pizza to be coming into its own because there was a little country called America coming into its own. And with the arrival of Italian immigrants in the late 19th century, in places like New York and Chicago and Philly, New York Light, they would eat pizza.

And it was, again, sort of like street food at the time, at least. Right. So about the time, I guess when Margarita was extolling the virtues of pizza, I guess this wave of immigration had such a tangible connection to the old world that almost immediately they were making pizzas in these cities, like you said. Apparently New York was the first city with an actual pizzeria. I believe that. Lombardies, Genaro Lombardi apparently opened his shop in 1905 at 53rd and a half Spring

Street in New York. I wonder what's there now. Lombardies. Oh, is it still there? I believe. It's still functioning. Wow, that's pretty great. Yeah, and did we say that Antico pizzeria in Naples is still in the same spot, still

selling pizzas since 1830? We did not, but that is true. And that is very cool. That makes me want to go to Naples quite badly. Yeah, I mean, you could get an original pizza from the original pizzeria. That's pretty cool. And we'll get to this in a little bit, but you may be kind of surprised when you eat a pizza, a Neapolitan pizza at the place where it all started, compared if you're used

to like Papa John's. I had the pizza in Italy once. You know, I was there and I figured, why not? I guess I'll do as the Italians do. Exactly. Okay, so that's pretty much, oh no, we didn't finish the history. Yeah, United States was coming into its own, Italian immigrants coming in, bringing in pizza, then after World War II, of course, with a lot of things, GIs came back with these

flavors for different countries' foods and drinks. And they said, man, this pizza stuff is really great, so let's start building chains and degrading the product. And we did so with the Shakies in 1954, it was the first pizza chain in the United States, California chain. Pizza Hut was founded in Kansas of all places in 1958. And the reason, apparently, as legend has it, that they're named Pizza Hut was because the building kind of looked like a hut and there was only room for nine spaces on the

sign. So Pizza Hut. That makes sense. Yeah. Have you ever been to Shakies? No. As a matter of fact, no. The only time I've ever seen Shakies was in the movie licensed to drive with the two

quarries. Yeah, they're all over L.A. and sort of Pizza Hut-y in feel, like a family joint, pictures of beer, not so great pizza. But apparently, Sherwood Shaky Johnson got that name because of some like affliction he had that made him shake. No. Goodness. But I guess he embraced it.

Well, yeah. Because he named this a very popular chain after it. And they're still around, huh? Oh, yeah. I'm surprised it hasn't spread by now. 1954, there's Pizza Hut's everywhere. Yeah, I mean, I think they have them outside of California, although I'm not positive. I didn't get to look that up.

But I know they don't have them over here, down south, over here in the southeastern Bible Belt. Yeah. All right. Doe? Yeah, so that's a piece of history. Yeah. We should probably get to the basics.

Yes. And there's nothing more basic than dough. No. And there's an art to this. There's three ingredients that are demanded, flour, water, and yeast. Everything else is just icing on the cake. Yeah. But you probably are going to throw a little salt in, a little sugar, a little shortening

to make it do the things you want it to do, perform like you want it to perform. Yeah. And you can go to Mellow Mushroom Pizza and get a gluten-free pizza. I myself have not had one because I don't have celiac, right? And I'm not about to just, no. Yeah. But if you are gluten-free, you are SOL in a lot of ways because the flour used in pizza crust, pizza dough, is high gluten, high gluten flour.

That's why gluten-free pizza tastes like crap. I've not had it, so I can't say. Yeah. Well, that's just my opinion. Yeah. You've had it? Yeah. I've tried it.

It's just not the same. It's just gluten in the flour because gluten makes a crust tough and it won't crack apart, makes it stand up to the water. Keeps it ropey? Yeah. Keeps it nice and ropey. Yeah. And I guess we need to talk about water at some point.

Any time. Because water is, you know, the old saying about New York pizzas is because the water, that's like the old saying. I don't know. It's the old saying. But they changed their water. Now they have like water you can drink right out of the tap. Did they change their water?

Oh, yeah, man. They overhauled their sewer system. There's a bottle of water you can buy now that's just New York City tap water and stuff is so clean and pure. Well, it's because it comes from, I think 90% of it comes from two aqua ducks and the cat skills, ship it into Manhattan. We should do a podcast on how Manhattan gets water. It's pretty amazing.

Oh, okay. Now? No. Can we wait until we research it? Yeah. It's pretty amazing, though. But I read this Wired article that kind of broke down the pizza, water, New York thing. And they got in touch with Mario Batali, very famous Italian chef, and asked him and he

said, well, one of the reasons before we get to water is that the oven, he said captures the Gestalt, or if you're German, the Gestalt of a beautifully cooked pizza. So basically over time. Totally did say that to me. Over time, well, it makes sense though, over time you're going to get particles like volatiles particles caking onto the walls and the roof of your oven. And then the convection process will just like work that into whatever you're cooking over the years.

So because they've been making pizza for so long in New York, some of these old ovens like have this Gestalt that can't be matched anywhere else. He says. Okay. And Chicago as well. But then with the water, he says, yeah, the biggest problem with California pizza is the water. It's just not the same.

No. It's the poop water. Although he doesn't, he doesn't use New York water. At his restaurant Del Posto, he actually clones water from Italy. No, he doesn't. He does. No. Yes.

Clones it? That's what he said. It's, he's created his own mineral water composite working from a chemical analysis of Lacroix Italiana and it said that basically it's a clone of this Italian water. Sounds kind of pretentious. We should go sell him some like real estate or something. But that's why the, I think the food detective show did a test, a blind test on New York water and pizza crust and everyone picked the New York pizza in a blind test.

So there may be something to it, the mineral composition. Oh, I'm sure there is. Yeah. There may be even the slightest belief in molecular gastronomy. Sure. It makes sense. Which would explain why New York bagels are the best too, because bagels are boiled. Yeah.

Because everyone knows. Yeah. Or the right, if you make it the right way, it's boiled. Yeah. Yeah. Where did you go Chuck? That's my water sidebar. It's Chuck on water.

Well, I've always heard that, you know, New York pizzas because the water is because the water from the Catskills. Yeah. I had heard that. I didn't know it was from the Catskills or it had anything to do with just salt or anything like that. Gistalt? Yeah.

All right. And you should know stuff you should know. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor. Stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point. but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck, stuff you should know. The third vital ingredient is yeast. And yeast basically creates the precursor to beer. Remember in the beer episode? Could you imagine if there was no yeast?

We'd be in big trouble. No pizza, no beer. What's the point? No bread. This would be, this world would be, it'd be sad. Actually, there's yeast-free bread, I think. But still, you know? Yeah, no, I know.

So what's the deal with yeast? Well, basically, the yeast goes in and eats the sugars found in the flour. And then you may also add your own sugar to increase the fermentation. But it causes the dough to rise because it expels gas as a byproduct, and that gas gets trapped in the dough and it causes it to rise.

It makes it more malleable. It makes it tastier. The texture of it is softer. It's just basically yeast. It's the happy, fun guy that you add to the whole mix. The magic ingredient? Yeah. If you add a little salt, it's going to add some flavor,

obviously. It's going to slow the fermentation. Shortening is going to make it more pliable by providing lube. And shortening would be like olive oil. You're not going to use Crisco unless you're some sort of heathen. No, you can use canola oil, but olive oil is what I would go with.

Sure. Sure. Yeah, Crisco. Crisco is great, though, for some things. Oh, yeah, for sugar cookies, especially the kind that's like just the shortening, the thick solid shortening. That stuff is crazy. That's the only way I thought you could cook growing up

because of my grandmother's. I thought, well, when you cook, you get out that big can and a big ice cream scoop, and you go to town. With that wadded up piece of wax paper in there that you used to scoop it out? Yeah, yeah. It's just completely covered in Crisco now. Either that or the grandmother's also used,

they saved all their grease. So they would be cooking with grease that they've been using for the past year. It's really good. That's nice. Sugar changes the fermentation rate. Yeah, it can accelerate it. It can increase the amount of gas released.

And it also causes the crust to brown. Oh, yeah? Yeah. That's the sugar? Yep. So what if you don't put sugar? You get a glowing yellow crust. Oh, really?

Doesn't brown as much? Doesn't brown. OK. You want to ball it up? Use your hands. Yeah, I think you should say here, like you're teaching people how to make legitimate real pizza dough here.

Yeah, so I mean, in rough strokes. OK. Like I don't think anyone could, like, we're not providing measurements. You know what I'm saying? No, no. But I'm saying once you've created this dough, now you're about to tell them what to do with it.

Yeah, yeah. How to make it. You want to ball it up with your hands. You don't want it all cracked. You want it tight, and you want to put it on an oiled sheet pan and then proof it, which means you cover it with wax paper and let it sit and let the yeast do its thing until it, like, doubles in size.

Yeah, because the yeast is just sitting there eating sugars and pooping out gas. Gas. Then you need to retard it. You need to put it in the fridge for about 12 hours. And then this slows the yeast down, but it's still doing its thing. They're like, this sugar's so good.

It's cold. And then if you do this, you've got pizza dough that you can use for, like, three to five days. Yeah, I would imagine most people who are really, really into pizza would be like, you can't save that for three to five days. You think? I would think so.

Fresh. You think most restaurants do it, like, yeah. The same day. No, I'm not saying that, but I'm saying, like, a pizza purist. Like, you can't use five-day-old dough for a decent pizza. True. But I buy the dough sometimes at, like, Trader Joe's, you know, or the farmer's market,

like the pre-made dough balls. And those are, you know, not necessarily that day. Or eat the oven. Well, you left out the sauce. Most of the time, it's tomato sauce. But if you're still worried that tomatoes are poisonous and that the aristocracy is trying to kill you by giving them to you, you can eat garlic butter sauce, which

will give you a white pizza. Yeah. You don't like white pizza? I love white pizza. And if you go to Fellini's, I think we're going to name every single pizza place in town. If you go to Fellini's in order a white pizza slice, you know, they use the pre-made slice.

And they build the white pizza on top of it. So you get a little tomato sauce with your white pizza. It's really good. But it's not white pizza, then, right? No, not. You're the one who calls like everything pizza. You run around and that's a pizza. Look, there's a pizza over there.

I don't want to hear it from you. All right. I'm not a fan of white pizza. I like some tomato sauce on mine. Yeah, I'm with you, but I like white pizza, too. OK. And the cheese, you know, mozzarella traditionally. Right.

And the way you build it is actually kind of important, too. Yeah, depending on where you are. It's not just the ingredients. It's the amount and the distribution. Yes, where they are in relation to one another vertically. Well, let's go ahead, then. New York is sauce, then cheese. Yeah, from the dough up.

Yeah, dough, sauce, cheese. Right. And then not that many toppings. Well, if you're a purist, again, a cheese slice is what you're going for. I'm not big on just cheese. What are you, pepperoni guy? No, not anymore.

Not since I was a kid. No, I'm just kind of like pepperoni. It's so bleh. I like a good homemade Italian sausage. Oh, yeah, that's good. Yeah, that's really good. I like sliced tomatoes on it. Not sun-dried fresh.

Yeah. Basil, black olives. Yeah, basil always. Ham, not in olives. I like sausage. I don't like the green olives. I like black olives. Do you like the Hawaiian pizzas?

I've only, in the last couple of months, gotten into pineapple. And I'm still feeling my way around it. Pineapples and strawberries. I used to eat strawberries when I was a kid, and I've rediscovered them recently. I'm like, yeah, when we were in the suite at the Marriott and we were doing interviews at Comic-Con.

Oh, yeah, you ate the strawberries. Did you eat like 15 pounds of strawberries? They were so good. The chocolate covered or regular? No, they were regular. Yeah, I don't even need chocolate covered anymore. It's like I'm free. Strawberries are delicious.

Yeah. But Hawaiian, I'll tell you in a month or two. I'll try it. Emily likes it. She's big on mushroom, green pepper, and pineapple. Together? Yeah, she doesn't do the meats at all. Just it's a food.

While we're talking about wives and pizza preferences, Yumi had this place in DC she used to go to, and she'd get like a huge slice of pizza. And this place also sold Indian food. So she'd get chicken sag and put the sag on the pizza. And she said it was awesome. Wow. Yeah, we have to do the half and half.

And I get like sausage on one half and she does veggie. And then it's like, your sausage juice got on my half. I'm like, well, your mushroom got on my half. You like a cheeseburger pizza? I love cheese. I'm not too big on beef on the pizza. I'll give you one more tip. OK.

Get yourself some complete seasoning, some, I can't remember what it is in Spanish, but complete seasoning. It's like a Mexican blend. OK. And put it on your pizza. It doesn't matter what kind of pizza it is. It works on popcorn too.

But on your pizza, it'll make you smile. Well, my friend Eddie, who I would say, get a bottle of ranch dressing in your all set. Oh, yeah, that's good too. All right, so man, that was a sidebar. So you were saying New York you built from the dough up? Dough up. Dough, sauce, cheese, and then maybe a couple toppings.

Yeah. Chicago, it's the opposite. Yes. And this is apparently a tomato pie the way it's built. Yeah, super deep dish baked in a pan. Yeah. And then you've got the cheese on the bread itself on the dough. Right.

And then the toppings. And then they put this ungodly, thick, delicious sauce on top. Yeah, I've not had it. Really? And I love Pizza Hut's pan pizza. Well, I mean, you should definitely have a true Chicago style pizza. I mean, it's great.

You eat it with a fork and knife. I am a New York pizza guy through and through. I like it too. But every once in a while, it's like when in Chicago. Well, this is like when in Italy. Exactly. This is one of those things where I don't think you have to choose sides.

No. Let's just all eat all kinds of pizza all the time. Yeah, but people get really passionate about their pizza. I know, but these are, you know, it's like, man, it's pizza. Enjoy all pizza. I agree. If there's one thing we can all just settle down about, it's pizza.

Even Mexican pizza, come on. Yes. Oh, yeah. It's not pizza. What are you crazy? You can't just run around saying that. What you eat is not pizza unless it's exactly what the Neapolitan's are making.

It's not pizza. It's not Neapolitan pizza. No, it's not pizza. All right, so now the ovens? I guess. I thought this was an odd little thing that they put in there. What, about the different kinds of ovens? Yeah, it just seemed intuitive to me.

Well, sure, well, you use a peel. Not many people know that big spanking paddle. It's called a peel. I didn't, I have to say. OK, so you slide it in there. They can be electric. They can be cooked right on a conveyor belt, like if you're at a big pizza chain, which, you know.

Or if you have a conveyor belt oven at home. That's true. But the King Daddy of all is the brick oven pizza. Yeah. Cooked with wood. And like your crush should have little bits of black char on it if you ask me for the best taste. Which is actually, it's spent carbon.

Yeah. Little spoiler there for an upcoming show. And then here in Atlanta, Antico, I think they brought those three ovens over from Naples, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I can see that. So a lot of Gestalt going on there. Man, there's tons of Gestalt.

Neapolitan pizza? Yeah, so Neapolitan pizza is extremely thin crust. It's bubbly crust. You put on sauce, and then maybe basil and mozzarella. You don't cover the sauce. It looks like pretty much equal parts, just visibly looking down over the pizza. It appears like equal splotches of basil, mozzarella,

and sauce. Yeah, kind of spare. They don't overdo it. And to be a true Neapolitan pizza, as of December 2009, the European Union issued a protection, that regional protection at Champagne. And what was the other thing we talked about recently?

Was it a cheese? I had to a bit, probably. Yeah, and also I think Neufchatelle has regional protection as well. But basically, it has to be produced in the area under these certain guidelines to be considered that. Neapolitan pizza enjoys that economic protection now as well.

And to be Neapolitan, it has to be round. It can't be ostentatious. No more than 13 and 1⁄2 inches in diameter. It can only be a 1⁄10 inch tall, which is thin. At its center, yeah. The crust has to be no more than 3⁄4 of an inch thick. So this is a really thin crust pizza, man. Yeah, but not ultra thin.

I got taken to task on Facebook today. Oh, yeah? Because I said it was ultra thin. They were like, not ultra thin. Ultra thin is a tortilla, I guess. Mexican pizza. You have to knead the dough by hand, right? Yeah, and I got a couple more that weren't in the article.

Supposedly, it has to be in a wood-fired oven above 905 degrees Fahrenheit, only San Marzano plum tomatoes, which to me, that's the only tomato if you're going to be cooking Italian style. Is that right? I think so. Is that canned? Yeah.

OK, now I know what you're talking about. I mean, I'm sure you can get them fresh, obviously. But yeah, the canned San Marzano's are like what I use in my spaghetti sauce. Have you been to the Italian market by five seasons on the west side? I have not. It is like right, like half a block down,

and it is authentic. Really? Yeah, you should check it out if you're into that. I am into that. We'll check it out. All right. And I think that's all, to buy a law. And of course, no one's, they pointed out in the article

I read that no one's going out and punishing anybody. It's just a set of standards that they like to hold dear. They're not going to throw you in jail for calling something Neapolitan, although they should. So that's Neapolitan. We talked about New York and Chicago. California pizza, that is super thin crust, usually made with what vegetables are in season.

I like California pizza kitchen. It's OK. It's pretty good. You like barbecue sauce on your pizza. No, they have a tostada pizza that's really good, too. Man, you've got to expand your horizons. It's not just New York and Chicago. There's a whole world of pizza.

I've been to CPK. It's fine. The black bean salad there is delicious. Their guacamole is pretty good, too. And then Greek? Yeah. That's also in a pan, like Chicago. It's just feta.

I'm not big on feta. Feta and spinach sometimes, olives. Yeah. I like feta. And then Sicilian. And there's American Sicilian and Italian Sicilian. That's right. And if you're in America and you're making a Sicilian pizza,

it's rectangular square. Thick crust. I'm not a fan. The reason it's thick is in Sicily, they bake the ingredients into the crust. Yeah, I'd like to try that, actually. It's like they heard about stuffed crust pizza and started mimicking it.

Oh, man. Pizza hat drives me nuts with all those things. It's like the rope of cheese in the crust. Or then they had the one crust. It was the one the pizza eat backwards. Yeah, yeah. Like they just come up with all these things. It are completely unnecessary.

There was the pizza that eats you. Yeah, the pizza that eats you. Yeah. And speaking of Soviet Russia, there's some pretty crazy toppings around the world. What do they eat there in Russia? They eat something called makba, which is a blend of tuna, mackerel, sardines, onions, and salmon,

which I have to say sounds kind of good. You know what I thought good was good? The Japanese, the Mayoyaga, jaga? Yeah. Manes, bacon, and potato mixture? They cook their hot dogs in there, too. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it's really good.

I'll have to check that out. In India, a little pickled ginger and tofu, maybe, and a little minced mutton. Yeah, gross. Sounds good to me. You don't like mutton? No. I had a pet goat.

That's this is a lamb. I know. It's a totally different animal. They can't even mate, I don't think. Oh, I bet they could. Well, they can, but they can't reproduce. OK. In Brazil, you might get some green peas on your pizza.

Yeah. Costa Rica, you might get a little coconut. Equally woof. Yeah, I think so. I'm not big on coconut. And anchovies are generally regarded as the least favorite pizza topping. What's the number one pizza topping in America?

There's pepperoni, of course. Wrong. Really? It got toppled this year. Wow. Chicken. As far as protein goes, chicken. Really?

Yep. And is that, how do they calculate that? Is that like in restaurants or? There's actually a surprising amount of pizza industry marketing and lobby groups, trade groups. Yeah, that's true, the pizza owner's association. Yeah, I ran across a blog post and I don't remember. I followed it to this press release from some pizza

association, and I don't remember which one it was. But they said that chicken topped pepperoni, as far as pepperoni toppings goes. So that means that Americans consume more than 250 million pounds of chicken on their pizza. Yeah, which makes sense, because chickens heavier than pepperoni. That's true.

And that's a lot of pepperoni. Maybe they go by weight. Yeah, we've got some awesome stats here, don't we? Yeah, go ahead and fire some of those out. So the number of pizzas sold in the US each year, 3 billion. I'm responsible for at least a million and a half of those. 350 slices sold every second, not bad. And every year, the average American eats 46 slices.

That's child's play. 93% of Americans eat pizza at least once a month? Yeah, that's a lot. That is a lot. I mean, that means almost every American eats pizza at least once a month. That is pretty staggering. I can't imagine that there's any other food like that,

except maybe a cheeseburger. I bet pizza tops that even. I would think so. It's just such an easy go-to. Because vegetarians can eat pizza, cheese pizza. Yeah, and if you go to McDonald's or something like that and you have a family of four, you're going to spend more than you would on a pizza that'll

feed that family of four to. And you don't get the cold breakfast leftovers either. Exactly. With McDonald's. You do, but what else was there? Anything else? There was a guy in my elementary school, actually. Remember the little rectangle elementary school pizzas?

They were so great. There was one dude, Brett Standish, that did not eat pizza. And he was the only kid I ever knew that it didn't eat pizza. So every time we had pizza, it was like there was a battle royal to find out who would get Brett Standish's pizza. And he would up his asking price each week when I found out it was a valuable commodity.

Smart kid. Yeah, what was the most he ever got for it? No, I have no idea. Probably a bunch of Pringles and a little time behind the school, you know what I'm saying? No, my imagination is racing right now. Oh yeah, there's this little sidebar in this article that said that more than 30 pizzerias in New York

are operating under the name Rays. More than that. That sounds like a lot until you realize there's 9,000 pizzerias in New York alone, New York City. Well, I thought this is pretty interesting. Should we talk about Rays? Sure. If you've ever been to New York or Atlanta's

got four Rays pizzas. Is that right, famous original Rays? Atlanta has Rays New York pizza. And you know how it always says since whatever year? Since 1990. Right. In Atlanta. That's not too bad.

But yeah, by the count I got, there are 49 pizzerias in New York that use some form of the name Ray. And here is the story behind it. Ray, Ralph Cuomo, opened the first Rays on Prince Street in 1959. He's grandfather to Rivers and father of Mario. We're going to say. And his nickname he claimed to be Ray because he said it was

Ralphie, then Ray, then Ray. I'm not quite so sure about that. OK. He opened a second one in the 1960s. And then someone named Rosalino Mangano, but the second Rays changed the name to famous original Rays even though that wasn't true. So things started to get a little messy.

Then Mangano now goes by Ray, which is also bogus. Opened several more famous original Rays all over the city, sold that to a new owner who began using other variations of the Rays. So it kind of just spread. But ironically, three quote unquote Rays got together to trademark the name, none of them are named Ray. They have all gotten together to try and

trademark the name Ray and to shut down, at least in name places like Ray's New York Pizza in Atlanta. Who you just probably got in trouble. I don't think so. They know about them. So you don't know that. It sounds like a cartel. I think it is.

Speaking of cartels, Chuck, the big three, Pizza Hut, Domino's, Papa John's, of those three, the one that has the most urban legends associated with it is Domino's. I had heard, I think, one of these. The 30 minutes or less went away because they killed some kid in a car, a delivery person did. It's such a ready-made urban legend.

Supposedly, there were lawsuits from people being hit. At least one person was hit. But they didn't say it had anything to do with the 30 minutes or less. One person was killed. Yeah, that's right. One person killed, so then at least one person hit. We're both kind of right.

But they did do away with that. There was also a rumor that the owner of Domino's contributed a lot to anti-abortion groups, which may or may not have been true, but he didn't know Domino's probably at the time because the guy who founded the company. Tom Monaghan? Yeah, he sold it in 1998 for a billion, which is pretty tiny. But he is a staunch Catholic and obviously a supporter of

pro-life and is building his own little Catholic town outside of Miami. One of those, and I've heard of these before, where you basically like, I'm going to build my own little town filled with people that are like me. Exactly, because I'm incredibly wealthy. Exactly. So I don't know what the status is on that now, but supposedly

more than 30,000 residents will occupy this town. And eventually they'll go to war with Celebration Florida. And then there's all these goofy pizzas. I don't get into all this stuff. Like the 3,000 euro pizza with cognac, marinated lobster, and edible gold, and champagne soaked caviar. For the most expensive with gold, there's actually two categories in Guinness as far as most expensive pizza,

with edible gold and without. Apparently if you just want to throw some edible gold on your pizza, you can just tip the scales brain-wise. But if you want the most expensive pizza in the world without gold, that record was recently broken in Stevenson Pizza Company in Vancouver, which apparently is affiliated with the guy from Hell's Kitchen. Oh, shut it down.

Yeah, Gordon Ramsay. Yes, they have a $450 pizza called the C6 Pizza. It has lobster, Thermador, black, Alaskan cod, and caviar on it. It looks kind of good. They do stuff like that to get press and get people in there. I get it. What about the largest pizza ever built and eaten?

I like that they have that caveat. Yeah, agreed. Havana, Florida from 1987. I'm surprised no one has tried to break it since then. 44,457 pounds of pizza, over 94,000 slices. Yeah, devoured by 30,000, at least 30,000 people hanging out. How did they bake that thing, I wonder? I don't know.

That's a great question. That's the one I want listener mail on. Not your favorite pizza topping. No one cares about that. How did they bake that thing? I mean, maybe it was sun baked. I don't know. Does it in Florida?

Or maybe they're like, wow, this is really chewy. Like they make it, and they're like, oh, wait. Yeah. Because it says eaten. Or maybe there's another record tied to it for the largest pizza oven in the world. And then the longest pizza delivery, 2004. A Domino's franchise owner named Lucy Clough

delivered a pizza 10,532 miles, 16,950 kilometers, from London to Melbourne. It was a vegetarian pizza as part of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. I was about to disparage it. I know. That's why I got all that out in one breath before you could break it. Yeah, OK.

I was saving you from yourself. Make-A-Wish, then. I support it. Way to go, Chuck. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts

flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place,

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. That's pizza. Yeah. You know what's awesome about pizza?

It's like guarantee you there's dark corners to all this that we didn't even hit. Oh, sure. That we're going to hear about, that we want to hear about. This will be one of those, which I love. Yeah, I love pizza. If you love pizza, you can read more about it at HowStuffWorks.com, type the word P-I-Z-Z-A

into the search bar at our beloved HowStuffWorks.com website, which is now two words, I think, as far as AP goes. What, website? Yeah. I thought it was a long time ago. I was taught when I was hired here. It's capital W-E-B, separate word, lower case, S-I-T-E. Right, now it's lower case, all one word.

Oh, it's all one word now. I thought you were saying it's two words now. No. Gotcha. Yeah, no, it's one word. OK, which is great. And if I did say two words, I was wrong. We'll find out.

Anyway, I think I said search bar in there, so it's time for the listener mail. Chuck. Yes. We should tell everybody about something very special and dear to our hearts, New York City. That's right, we are going to Comic-Con, and we will be doing a live podcast on Friday, October 12th,

at Comic-Con at the Jabbit Center. That's like our new thing. We did San Diego, now we're doing New York. That's right. Next up, Albuquerque. So if you are going to Comic-Con, you should come by and see that. But after Comic-Con, we have one of our famous,

that's famous to us, All-Star Tribune Knights. Right. Where is it going to be, the cutting room? It is at the grand reopening of the cutting room in the Flatiron District, which is, what's the address? It is 44 East 32nd Street in New York, and it's in the Flatiron, you said? Yep, and doors open at 7.30, trivia goes down at 8.30.

And what is first come, first serve, right? Free, free, free, first come, first serve. We will have a bar there that you can buy drinks. Yep, you can buy us drinks. That's right, that is legal. We're going to basically be having a really good time. If you're not familiar with our Tribune Knights, like just come out and check it out.

It'll be worth your while. Absolutely, and stay tuned for info on Facebook and Twitter about the makeup of the All-Star team. We are filling that out as we speak, but we will have some special guests that you will want to meet. Yeah, and at the very least, you can come take on me and Chuck, right?

Yeah, yeah, okay. It's just fun. So what is that? That's Friday, October 12th, right? Yep. The panel's at when? The panel is at, I believe, 6.45. Okay, and then we're going to be at the cutting room

starting at 8.30. Tribune starts at 8.30, doors at 7.30, be there, be square. You are good at this. Thank you. All right, is it time for a listener mail? Yep. I'm going to call this accidents thanks to us. We cause an accident.

A good one? No. Like? No one got hurt. Okay. This is from Annie, and Annie was going off to college, which was several states away, so her family decided to road trip with her

to the college as a little mini vacation. That is very sweet, depending on how Annie feels about her family. Well, you're about to find out. It may sound fun, but it's not easy to agree on music when you're a James Blunt loving mom, Miley, virus loving younger sister. She is just heading off to college, huh?

Yeah, and weird Euro metal loving older brother are all crammed into a car together. After a few hours of me wondering if I could get a refund on my soundproof headphones, they agreed to let me pick the music, and I picked stuff you should know. Turns out everyone loves slash doesn't hate stuff you should know.

That's good. We were all interested, more importantly, not yelling or throwing CDs out the window. Plus it was fun to go back through my favorites. Jack the Ripper, for instance, made my mom a little green. That's a good one. However, you know what?

We heavily edited that one. Yeah, it was worse. It was way worse. I think, yeah, I remember going through there and being like, dude, we can't say the same. It was factual. No, it was. It was so cool.

Yeah, yeah. However, during a time when it was my goofy brothers turn to drive, parentheses, I really can't stress how weird he is. At the end of the cast about genius, you were reading some other listener mail from a lady truck driver and told her to honk her horn, which my brother did, really loud like a truck would do.

It wouldn't have been a problem, but we were in one of those curvy two lane highways behind a senior citizen. And basically this lady thought that they were honking at her. Oh, no. She slammed on her brakes. Oh, no.

And caused the person riding behind her to butt into her rear end. Oh, no. No one was hurt, but I was laughing because over the screech of tires, I actually heard Chuck say, I hope we didn't just cause an accident. Wow, this is insane.

Everyone was fine. There was no damage to either car, but my mom made my brother give them both info because my mother thought that he was live. Thanks, mom. Yeah, exactly. She just drove him straight to jail. And she says, I was the one to awkwardly explain

to the old lady what a podcast was. P.S. I hope my dorm mate likes you guys. That's from Annie. Thanks a lot, Annie. That was really nice. I'm glad everyone's safe. Me too. Man, that's crazy, Chuck.

It sounds a little made up, but. Oh, yeah? We've fallen for it before. Sure. Man. The marriage, the wedding proposal. Yeah. I still have egg on my face about that.

Sorry, man. We all do. We all do. If you have a great story about how your family's been brought together by stuff you should know, we want to hear it. We also want to know how the citizens of Havana, Florida baked their 94,000 slice pizza.

Yeah. We really, really want to know that. Agreed. And how delicious it was. Yeah. You can tweet to us all of this information to SYSK Podcast. Seriously, our Twitter is killing it.

Is it? Yes. That's great. It's one of the best Twitter feeds on the internet. Wow. I scout it all, man. It has wacky news. It has important news.

Criticism of Twitter when they suspend people's accounts. It has we talk to people back and forth. Sometimes we pester Hodgeman for no good reason. Yeah. There's just all sorts of great stuff on Twitter. Or we'll see a tweet from the Jim Henson company that they like the Muppet podcast. Yeah, yeah.

So pretty cool stuff like that is going down. Yeah, it is. It's very cool. So you can follow us on Twitter. So it's the at symbol and then SYSKPODCAST. At SYSK Podcast. We're also killing it on Facebook. Our Facebook page is awesome.

That's facebook.com slash stuff you should know. Yeah, right? For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life.

Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.