The Gaming Den

My personal favorite is pepperoni, breakfast bacon, green olives, spinach, and feta cheese sprinkled with crushed dried red pepper.

My most hated topping that you can ask for on a pizza without getting a funny look is pineapple. My most hated toppings that are otherwise common on pizzas are ground beef and italian sausage. White onions taste nasty when they're by themselves but taste fine with a bunch of other vegetables.

My favorite pizza toppings vary by source. I don't like mushrooms from most sources because by they time they get to you, they're all withered and nasty.

So, from Domino's I like simpler pizzas and avoid their specialty ingredients. From Pizza Chicago I like their fancy ingredients, the more the merrier. From Pizza My Heart I like simple pizzas, but their fancy ingredients. But their Red Onion and Tomato; it's fresh tomatoes and red onions and with their sauce and new york style crust is nummy.

-Crissa

Double pineapple, Canadian Bacon, extra sauce. Or a classic Mediterranean.

Yeah, ham n pineapple all the way.

Unfortunately, the local pizza places around here have gone from 'real' pineapple to crushed, canned pineapple, which is not very good at all.

Some have also switched from slices of ham to shredded ham, for some damn reason, although it's not as disastrous as with the pineapple.

Pineapple & Jalapeno is without a doubt one of the most awesome pizzas out there.

If you think it weird, go ahead and try a bite. When I worked as night security at my old college dorm, I converted people by the drove everytime I ordered a pie. Also a great conversation starter.

Also artichokes are wonderful.

Stuff that sucks, Anchovies, pepperoni (bad cold and even worse hot) and sausage (normal and not Italian.) Also barbecue chicken and steak and any sort of beef.

Italian sausage rocks.

I loathe pineapple on pizza. It's gross. Horribly, horribly gross. It is less gross when it's real pineapple and not canned - though only slightly.

But I have a few favorites... I adore the classic margherita pizza with a sauce that's on the spicy side, and I like pepperoni and sausage - but only if it's not too greasy, which is hard to find. I also really, really like chicken, canadian bacon, spinach, tomatoes, green onions, and red peppers in that white garlic sauce stuff (usually just a garlic ranch dressing). And of course, Thai pizza is awesome - peanut sauce, broccoli, onions, chicken, and red peppers.

I used to prefer more vegetable oriented pizzas because I hated grease, but they tend to be more bland because sausage and pepperoni lend a certain kick to the overall flavor. So now, I eat the flavorful stuff and have a salad on the side.

I do like pineapple and jalapeno. It makes even the worst jalapenos edible.

-Crissa

http://www.godfathers.com/menu/pizza/

Jumbo meatlover's pizza. For about $23 US dollars.

Favorite pizza in the world.

I myself am a fiend for mushrooms (shitake, miitake, button, portabella, oyster, etc. Not the other type), and would happily put them in anything if the GF would let me (she not a mushroom fan). So naturally, I love heavy mushrooms on a pizza. Even better if I make it myself and know the mushrooms are fresh.

As far as others, I like sausage on my pizza. Pepperoni is not my favorite but it's edible. Chicken can be good if done correctly (domino's manages to dry the chicken too much).

I can't stand any sort of vegetable on my pizza. (Well, the common vegetable pizza toppings like peppers, onions, etc. I've had eggplant pizza that was really good before. Wait, eggplant is a fruit.)

I could see artichokes being good on a pizza, never tried it though.

I almost always do pepperoni and pepperoncini, sometimes substituting jalapeño. Some of the best pizza I've had, though, was from this place. I'm not sure if it's unique or if Afghani-style pizza is something you can get at most Afghani restaurants. So, yeah: gyro meat, curried chicken, or beef kebab with spicy sauce and mint chutney. It sounds insane, but it works.

There's some brilliant stuff there, Catharz. Is the crust naan?

Here in Czech Republic you have to be very careful about the pizza you order. A pizza will only have tomato, spices, or cheese if these are listed as actual toppings. Yes, you can get pizza that does not have any oregano on it and is basically tomato puree and cheese on thin bread. Even when there is cheese, the cheese does not cover the entirety of the toppinged surface. If they say that there will be pepperoni, they will give you chunks of bell pepper. And by chunks, I mean like half a bell pepper in three pieces somewhere on the pizza. If you want a less "giant chunks of bell pepper" experience, you gotta cut it yourself. At least they give you a knife.

-Username17

'naan' just means 'bread' unfortunately. And yes, pizza crust and traditional wheat-based oven naan are the same ingredients in the same order with the same raising and the same pasting into a stone oven.

O-o

-Crissa

mrr: the ingredians are the same but the method of making a naan is a tad bit different. But it's similar enough.

Crissa wrote:'naan' just means 'bread' unfortunately. And yes, pizza crust and traditional wheat-based oven naan are the same ingredients in the same order with the same raising and the same pasting into a stone oven.

Not quite.

Just like you can get many different shades of chai (which just means tea), doesn't mean that all chai tastes the same.

Both naan and pizza crust include oil as an ingredient, for example, but there is one hell of a flavor difference between olive oil (pizza), and ghee (naan).

My roomies at college used to put yoghurt in their naan, which isn't very common in pizza crust, and they also put spices in their naan - which even if done in pizza crust, is yet another totally different flavor profile.

So maybe if you're comparing totally mass-produced pizza crust to totally mass-produced naan, what you're saying might be true. But I don't eat that crap. I eat the handmade stuff, and while they are both leavened flat bread, they're not exactly the same.

I'm just saying the same thing, Maj. That 'naan' isn't a very specific term, and as it goes, it's pretty similar to how you make pizza dough.

It's not like many American pizza chains don't use random oils as replacements, either. I named three places with very different doughs each.

-Crissa

As an intuitive chef, Crissa's opinions on naan vs. pizza crust is making my head explode.

I know this sounds ridiculous to everyone except me, but it honestly is true that food tastes different depending on the feel you put into it.

Even if Naan and Pizza dough have similar ingredients, they're not the same.

I know that's not something I can make anyone who isn't me understand. Although my cooking style is unpolished I can feel my way through almost anything.

Count: I understand what you mean. It's chemistry. Similar chemicals but different composition is what it boils down to.

They're both raised the same amount of time, they're both punched and rolled the same, and they've both cooked the same.

Look, I open many cookbooks, and unless you're getting into fancy stuff, they have the same proportions as well.

That's all. I've made them both, and they have the same timings.

-Crissa

Crissa: Like I said, you wouldn't understand. And it would take a palate at least as sensitive as mine to tell the difference. The bad side about my cooking is teaching anyone else how I cook things would be like explaining purple to a blind person. I don't have a metric as to how much I put in stuff based on how I feel at the particular moment, I just do it.

Cynic wrote:Count: I understand what you mean. It's chemistry. Similar chemicals but different composition is what it boils down to.

I don't know if my cooking can be considered a science. Maybe one of the crappy fake sciences like economics or sociology.

Crissa wrote:That 'naan' isn't a very specific term

Yeah, it is. At least in this country it is. Naan is bread from central and southern Asia. Like Persia and India and shit.

It's like chai. Yeah, it just means "tea," but when you order chai in this country, you're getting a specific spiced drink, not Lipton.

And seriously, at this point, you're claiming that your personal experience that they are the exact same thing is somehow more valid than my personal experience which says that while they embody the same basic concept, they are in fact, different enough to have individual identities as food.

So yeah, if you have a recipe that calls for the same ingredients, treated in the exact same fashion, I agree with you - they are exactly the same thing. But I don't share that experience with you. The recipes I'm familiar with are not the same. The ingredients are not the same. And thus, I am just as correct as you are when I claim that they are not identical foods.

CA wrote:I know this sounds ridiculous to everyone except me, but it honestly is true that food tastes different depending on the feel you put into it.

I totally agree with you.

Maj wrote:There's some brilliant stuff there, Catharz. Is the crust naan?

It's something very similar, yeah. Definitely more more of a flatbread than a tossed crust. The place that makes it is a bakery first, so they have the equipment and ability to make a gigantic piece of "nan".

CA wrote:I don't know if my cooking can be considered a science. Maybe one of the crappy fake sciences like economics or sociology.

Cooking sure uses science even if it's not a science in and of itself.

That custard you made? It requires a specific set of reactions between sugar, milk, and eggs in order to thicken properly, and adding the wrong ingredient can totally keep it from setting up at all (That's one reason why foods made without one of the key ingredients - like sugar-free pudding or fat-free sour cream - are full of garbage. Once you take out an important piece of the chemical reaction, you have to find other ways of imitating the overall effect).

And there are dozens of common foods that depend on chemical reactions. Mayonnaise, meringue, cookies, bread... The list is huge.

Catharz wrote:It's something very similar, yeah. Definitely more more of a flatbread than a tossed crust. The place that makes it is a bakery first, so they have the equipment and ability to make a gigantic piece of "nan".

I love pizza. And I especially love making weird pizza - like the Thai one I mentioned. I'm so stealing some ideas from that place you linked to.

speaking of weird pizza.

THe best pizza that I've ever had was in a pizza hut in Shivaji airport in Mumbai, India.

It was a personal pan but it had paneer tikka with a spinach chutney base sauce. Delicious.