Pittston Dispatch // PD Columnists // Jack Smiles - Smiles and Frowns

Sunday January 11, 2009 | 12:00 AM

I don’t know why the second week of January isn’t the biggest week of the year around here. After all, it’s National Pizza Week.

Luckily, I’m a pizza expert. I don’t mean I’m an expert pizza maker, rather more of an expert pizza eater who knows a lot about the history of pizza locally. I can make a pizza at home from a Gina’s kit, but I can’t make pizzeria-quality pizza at home because at home I lack the two secrets to high quality pizza: fresh homemade dough and a super hot oven.

Because there’s no accounting for taste, sauce and cheese have little to do with the quality of pizza. Some people like tangy sauce and some like sweet. Some like stringy mozzarella cheese and some like sharp cheddar.

My wife likes the stringy cheese. She loves Cooper’s sharp (just ask the folks at Modern Market) but not on her pizza. She hates pizza where the cheese sticks to her teeth, she always says. For years my daughter broke my heart over pizza. Fifty million mom and pop joints around and she wanted nothing but Domino’s. Lately, though, she’s digging Tony’s.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, a super hot oven. Pizza is best when cooked evenly at 500 degrees or more. That’s why there are such things as pizza ovens. They get hot and they cook evenly. It wouldn’t do to have the dough ahead of the topping or the other way around. And that’s why it’s nearly impossible to make a restaurant quality pizza in a conventional home oven.

The source of the heat may have an effect of pizza quality, too. Some pizza connoisseurs swear that wood-fired pizza can’t be beat. My brother-in-law took me to a wood-fired place in Connecticut once, but it was 20 minutes or so from his house and we had to reheat when we got back, so I’m not sure I got the full effect. More on that in a bit.

I come by my local pizza expertise through three stories I wrote -- two for the Dispatch about the Fort Caf� and Sabatini’s and one for Pennsylvania Magazine about Old Forge.

The Fort was the first pizza restaurant in the Valley and it is the patriarch of a family tree of pizza joints whose branches include our own Tony’s and the Grotto. Originally the Fort pizza was baked in a brick oven fired with anthracite coal. (And they think wood-fired pizza is a big deal.) The Fort sauce was made from hand-packed locally grown tomatoes. Pittston tomatoes, if you will. The Fort had a walk up concession at Hanson’s at Harvey’s Lake and eating there is my earliest pizza memory. Man, how I loved that stuff. They served it by the slice on some kind of paper. Next time you stop at the Fort note the framed copy my story on the bar wall.

When I wrote the Fort story Andy Sipko, an in-law of the Pagliante family which founded the place, was making the pizza. Andy, who has since died, said the pizza was at its best the moment it came out of the oven. He believed the second the pizza had cooled enough to eat without burning the mouth, the quality was deteriorating. That’s true, especially of the round thin styles. And that’s why I couldn’t get the full effect of the wood fired pizza. Not that the Fort or Tony’s or Sabatini’s pizza isn’t good reheated, heck it’s good cold for breakfast.

Andy sold the restaurant and the recipe and I’m happy to report the new folks are holding down the Fort and keeping it real.

Other areas may claim their pizza is better.

That’s debatable, but this isn’t: nowhere are there more pizza joints per capita or a wider variety styles.

Consider Cebula’s. Now where in the world could you go to get something like that? Nowhere but Dupont, PA.

About the Author

Jack Smiles covers for the Times Leader. Reach him at or jsmiles@psdispatch.com.

TimesLeader.com

About the Author

Archives

Reader Comments

COMMENT HERE