The book that would say all there is to say about pizza - a dish with many complexities, variations, and pitfalls - would be astronomically large, like Borges’ Library of Babel; the best I can hope to do here at Salt & Fat is start small and keep going. Today, I’ll use my weekend dinner as an example.

Pizza with tomato-butter sauce, Scalia anchovies, garlic, and fresh oregano.

More on the first two ingredients later; The Book of Anchovy is a multi-volume treatise as well.

First, let’s note that this is a cheeseless pizza. This is not so because I’m vegan, lactose-intolerant, or because I’m watching my fat intake. It’s simply because not every pizza needs cheese. It’s not a hippie affectation, not a menu substitution: cheeseless pizza is its own fully-fledged thing. In this case, had I added cheese, the garlic and the fresh oregano would’ve fought it somewhat. I wanted a salty-bread type of feeling to my dinner, and the freshly-made sauce needed to show off its sweetness. The creaminess of mozzarella - delicious as it is - would’ve mellowed all this out too much.

A controversial generalization: most pizza is overcheesed. There, I’ve said it.

Next, the order of the ingredients: the pizza went in the oven with tomato sauce, garlic, and a drizzle of oil on it. Both anchovies and fresh herbs are too delicate to be exposed to all that direct heat. When a pizza is good and ready, it’s hot enough to cook a pound of anchovies on contact, so mine go on after baking. No dried-out, bitter acciughe or wilted herbs in my house. Garlic is tricky; a bit of roastiness is great, but turn your back to it for ten seconds and it can burn badly. I used Gus Mueller’s baking method, which results in a cooking time short enough that I could sit there and watch the oven. No, I had nothing better to do on a Saturday night.

I usually go in with another drizzle of olive oil on the slices when plating, but that’s just because I absolutely love Lucini oil; if any savory bread gets between me and it, it’ll get oiled and eaten. And yes, there’s salt on that pizza, too, in addition to the sauce and the anchovies. Just a bit, I swear!

That’s all for now. Keep your toppings first-class and few, perfect your dough and oven before anything else, and trust your gut.