Pizza Strip Challenge
They call them “pizza strips” here in Rhode Island.
My understanding is that there are just a few places in the country that truly put this tasty little oddity on a pedestal. Philly and upstate New York reportedly serve up pizza strips with pride, although the name will change depending on where you are. “Tomato pie,” “bakery pizza,” “sheet pizza,” “party pizza,”…these are some of the names given to this masterfully simple treat that generally has two ingredients: sauce and bread. The bread can vary in texture but is usually a uniform thickness somewhere between thin crust and Sicilian pizza. In some cases, but less common, the crust ventures more towards a focaccia style bread that’s airy, less uniform, and light. What’s important about the crust is that it is designed to be delicious well after the pizza has cooled and it needs to support a thick layer of sauce (maybe along with a little extra oil). The sauce is thick, almost a paste, and rarely has any chunks of tomato or anything else (onion, etc.). On a classic pizza strip, the sauce sits about a quarter of an inch high and is “set” in a manner that keeps it from running or spilling. Pizza strips are purchased, served, and eaten at room temperature. When you take a bite from a pizza strip, you leave a clearly defined bite mark that’s identical in the bread and the sauce. Nothing pulls, tears, or slides off.
The name “sheet pizza” is a reference to how these are put together. Bakeries generally use large sheet pans to cook a batch of strips, spreading the dough evenly across the rectangular pan, covering it with sauce, and throwing it in the oven—easy peasy. The huge rectangle sheet pizza is then cut into the long rectangular strips you find at the bakery counter. Some places may sprinkle a little Parmesan or Romano cheese, but most leave that kind of serious decision to the consumer.
The lack of cheese on pizza strips causes great discomfort and even disdain among a cohort of non-believers. I’ve seen the look of confusion many times when people pick up their first pizza strip. Hey, is this intentional? Is there any pizza at this party that has cheese? Am I the only one seeing this?!?! Ultimately, at that moment, something important happens. A person will decide whether to embrace something that challenges their preconceptions of “pizza” or crawl into the emotional safety of pizza-as-they’ve-always-known-it.
I’ll say two things here…
First, as far as we know, pizza without cheese (“pizza marinara”) has been served in Napoli since the early 1700’s. Second, in my years as a professional cook, I learned quickly that serving a dish with only two (very familiar) components takes a lot of guts. Let’s do a mental experiment. Think about a slice of pizza with pepperoni, sausage, and mushroom. Or maybe it’s broccoli, feta, and roasted garlic. Imagine removing each of the toppings one by one and you can see how much more pressure there is on the remaining toppings to be delicious. Now imagine the toppings are gone and it’s just a slice of cheese pizza…the tension is mounting. There’s no place for that slice of pizza to hide. Now (gasp) remove the cheese. The crust and the sauce are left to carry the full weight of the taste experience. There is no room for mediocrity.
This blog post is about a journey into the world of pizza strips here in Rhode Island. It is…perhaps…a “pizza strip challenge” of sorts. I selected eight Rhode Island bakeries known for their pizza strips (certainly there are more) and decided to see how a group of my friends would react in blind taste tests. Would the bakers of these strips serve up a mere modest spin-off of a greater (cheesier) concept we all identify as “pizza”? Or would there be something more magical at work here. Would there be a real abracadabra! moment, where sauce and bread came together to become something far more than what is belied in its simplicity? Would one bakery, whether through a time-tested recipe or some secret ingredient or sleight of hand, rise to the top and asset itself as ultimate master of the pizza strip?
This is how it played out…
First, there were the bakeries. As I mentioned, there are many bakeries that are not on this list but certainly could be. Nonetheless, these establishments are all impressive in their own ways.
LaSalle Bakery—999 Smith Street, Providence
DePetrillo’s Bakery—1755 Smith Street, Providence
Silver Star—150 Ives Street, Providence
Wayland Bakery—138 Wayland Ave, Providence
Sal’s Bakery—1288 Chalkstone Ave, Providence
Tony’s Colonial—311 Atwell’s Ave, Providence
Crugnale Bakery—237 Newman Ave, Rumford
D Palmieri’s Bakery—624 Killingly Street, Johnston
Four of the participating bakeries above.
Second, there were the rules, this was e-mailed to everyone in the group…
You will receive pizza strips grouped by letters (A, B, C, etc.). Before people tear into the strips, you MUST keep track of the lettering.
You can send a single score for the household (e.g., average), or separate scores for individuals. If you send separate scores, just make sure I can organize them appropriately for the final results. Be clear about whose results I’m reading.
I am asking you to score three elements for each strip: sauce, bread, composition. The first two are pretty self-explanatory. The “composition” speaks more to the overall experience of eating the strip. How did it all come together? Folks can e-mail results in the body of an email, or as an attachment…either way is fine.
Your feedback must include a numeric score (1-10). You can also feel free to send notes for any of your scores. Remember that you will get all of these results back with the identities of the bakeries revealed. So your notes may be helpful for you when buying strips in the future.
In scoring from 1-10, I offer the following guidance:
1. This was terrible in all areas and I want to forget I ever ate this. I am offended.
2. This is just poorly executed all around. Bad food.
3. Very disappointing.
4. Didn’t hate it, but it just felt like a waste of time.
5. Mediocre.
6. It was fine, but probably wouldn’t choose to eat this again.
7. This was good. Solid execution.
8. This was really good. This element was really nice.
9. Wow, this was excellent. This element stands out. I need to know where this was made.
10. This pizza strip is served in heaven. I pledge my loyalty to this pizza strip.
We rated strips from four different bakeries in two consecutive weekends (four bakeries per weekend). I tallied the results in a spreadsheet and sent some teaser notes along the way about the results.
(clockwise from top-left) 1. Jonathan digging in on day one. 2. One of the more intense score sheets submitted during the entire contest. 3. Lucy, in the zone. 4. The four first-round pizza strips laid out for tasting at the Kelly household.
After all of that there was the finale.
We had taken a break on the third weekend, then came back together for the finale on week four. In a blind standoff, DePetrillo’s and LaSalle stood toe to toe. Not knowing the contestants, families once again rated sauce, bread, and composition on a scale of 1 to 10. In the end, DePetrillo’s emerged victorious in a white-knuckle split decision. In general preference, the participants chose DePetrillo’s 9-7 and the calculated scores were 7.5 to 7.3. It was amazing to watch this match up unfold as the e-mail scores came in one by one. It came down to the very last voter and could not have been closer.
(top) Final pizza strips packaged and ready for delivery. (left) The final deciding vote hand delivered to my house with appropriate panache. (right) DePetrillo’s wins by a nose.
But here’s the true sleight of hand…finding the best pizza strip in Rhode Island was never the real challenge here. The very notion of doing so is absurd. Our state is blessed with dozens of amazing neighborhood bakeries and, every day, delicious pizza strips are served up to hundreds of Rhode Islanders. Every bakery has its own recipe. Every pan is a little different and every batch has its own quirks, small failures, and moments of genius. Everyone who eats pizza strips has different tastes and is looking for a slightly different magic.
No…there is no “best pizza strip” in Rhode Island.
So, what was this all about? Being honest with myself, maybe the real challenge here was to see whether a box of pizza strips could help me keep my sanity during a pandemic. Maybe it was that simple. But, then again, maybe it wasn’t just about me. Maybe everyone who participated felt a little relief, and by sitting with our food, deliberately placing our attention into every bite, all of us connected ourselves more deeply to a Rhode Island culinary tradition that goes back over 100 years.
Maybe the challenge was to remind us all how amazing it will be, when the pandemic lifts, to linger in local bakeries and wonder which pastry we might like to try, as if that’s truly the most important thing we could be thinking about at that moment. Just for a moment, no politics, no vaccines, just the smell of a morning bakery as our neighborhoods come back to life in the backdrop outside. I like to imagine that one of my friends might have this moment years from now when she comes across a tray of pizza strips at a random get-together. Perhaps she’ll pause and remember the weight of all those months that dragged on and pushed us to our limits. And then she’ll remember that ridiculous pizza strip challenge, laughing together with her family, feeling warm indoors while it was cold outside.
Maybe we’ll all remember it’s not just the bakers who can do magic with just two elements, something as simple as sauce and bread. We’ll remember that people who care for each other can sit together over some special treat they bought at the store and use that moment to restore just a little bit of hope. Could a box of pizza strips rise to that kind of challenge? It just did.
Abracadabra.