Pining for a perfect pizza

Forget red and blue states. A far greater divide threatens to split our country, a deep ideological rift rooted in beliefs so strong and so personal they might drive a man to arms.

I speak, of course, of pizza, and the endless war between thin-crusters and thick-crusters.

Before I proceed, let me proudly wave the thin-crust flag. I was raised in New York, where traditional pizza roots run deep. Many of my spare hours are still spent dreaming of New Haven, where you're a partisan of either Frank Pepe's or Sally's — though reasonable ecumenists have learned to appreciate both.

So if you're a deep-dish person, you probably want to click away before you read another word (to this defense of the Chicago pie, for instance). Because I firmly side with Ed Levine, who holds that deep dish is at best a “mighty tasty casserole” — sharing little in common with the true Neapolitan, or Neapolitan-American, form of this most infallible food.

Should you think that Levine, author of "Pizza: A Slice of Heaven" (Universe, $24.95), has it out for the Second City, know that he heaps ample praise on Chicago's other pizza style, the thin-crusted joys that emerge from ovens at South Side joints like Vito & Nick's.  And he has equal derision for frou-frou chefs anywhere who pound dough cracker-thin and serve up pies as firm as a Frisbee.

"There's no art to that, and there's no art to making Chicago-style deep dish pizza, either. It's like a brown-and-serve roll on steroids," Levine says.

You've probably deduced that Levine also hails from New York, which he crowns “the king of pizza cities.” While New Yorkers have a solid claim to pizza fame, Levine's book is dedicated to uncovering true pizza joys all across the land.

He gives extensive credit to New Haven's famed pizzas, like those from Pepe's and Sally's, perhaps the only pies to make a true-blooded New Yorker acknowledge the existence of other ZIP codes. He heaps praise upon Chris Bianco of Phoenix's Pizzeria Bianco, who not only seeks perfection in dough but makes his own mozzarella. He and a handful of foodie pals offer recommendations from Memphis (Coletta's Restaurant) to San Francisco (A16). He even downs a few slices in Buenos Aires.

His point: Great pizza can exist anywhere pizzaioli (pizza makers) are fully, personally committed to perfection.

Or as Peter Reinhart, author of “American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza” (Ten Speed Press, 2003) puts it: “The pizza becomes the vehicle through which the pizza maker and the pizza eater connect in a soulful manner.”