Mozza is decent. Great selection of wine tho.

The Neapolitan pizza is ephemeral. The bread structure reaches its peak in an incredibly short window at astonishing speed. Cooking at anywhere from 750 up to 900 degrees the ovens that produce these pizzas are marvelous at producing very high temperature dry conditions that create leopard skin charred blisters while producing a delicate just cooked moist dough that is destroyed by merely pinching lightly. It’s more grilled than baked as in the New York pie.

These pizzas can be transcendent with the simplest ingredients. It’s why tomato purée from San Marzano, fior di latte, and basil can produce perfect resonance. The bread is the star and should not be lost in trying too hard. Naples, New York, San Francisco, Austin, and New Haven all have traditions of pizzaiolo who can pump these suckers out. There’s a pizzaiolo out in Milwaukee who is astonishingly talented. A good pizzaiolo is the most essential ingredient in a Neapolitan pizza because the ovens are fickle and require constant work to maintain temperature, placement and movement of pies, choices of perfect toppings, sourcing, choices of fuel (wood – oak), the weather, the batch of dough…

There’s a pizza shop in Bologna called Due Torri under the two towers that makes the finest New York style pepperoni slice in the world. They cook the bread the way it is baked all over NY. There are a few places like this around the world but very very few.

The bread in a New York slice is less difficult to perfect, it is closer to baking pies. It needs structure to carry a much heavier load. Following a good recipe will get you to the finish line. The place to get this Pizza is NY. I am often torn between two places in the village.

Latent yeast and water ph is not a myth.

Speaking of those Celtics, can you name the six Celtics who started a game for Boston in the NBA Finals that year? I’ll spot you Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins (it’s not Sam Cassell, by the way, I was just checking to see if Cassell got into any Finals games that year and I was surprised to see that one of those five guys missed a start in that Finals).

Oh, he’s totally washed, but even washed-up players can typically still fill a nominal role on decent teams. Like Sam Cassell on the Celtics 10 years ago.