2016 Stlpizzaguy Year-End Wrap Up

I want to end this year with a bang, with a special Christmas themed post. It’s been a great year for Stlpizzaguy, with more than 5,000 visitors to my little pizza site. I am truly humbled. My last post for 2016 is Black Thorn Pub, a place I first discovered during my 1L year of Law School with my roommate Aaron Moores and other members of the SLU Law Softball League which played at Tower Grove Park.

Next year I will finish my top 10 list and start visiting requested pizza places from blog viewers around the St. Louis area. So far on my list to visit are Faraci Pizza and Felix's Pizza.

Motivation For Starting A Pizza Blog

Probably the best thing about moving to the St. Louis City in 2010 was the opening of a whole new world of undiscovered restaurants. In  the St. Louis area there is a city/county divide that people do not often cross when visiting restaurants. Most people who have not lived in the city haven’t visited Black Thorn, while most who live in the city haven’t been to Ya Ya’s Euro Bistro, a favorite of Chesterfield residents. A huge reason I started the Stlpizzaguy was to get people out of their neighborhood, into other neighborhoods in search of better tasting pizza. I would like to thank my fiance Adria who really motivated me to start the blog and first thought of Stlpizzaguy. I'd also like to thank my sister Krista who helped by giving me a signature P of Approval. 

In Case You Missed it

Here are some posts that will educate you on St. Louis-style pizza, and also about the new fast-casual pizza taking over the area.

Guide to Provel cheese:
http://stlpizzaguy.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-best-guide-to-provel-cheese-part-1.html

What makes St. Louis-style Pizza
http://stlpizzaguy.blogspot.com/2016/03/now-you-can-tell-your-out-of-town.html


The Great Pizza Debate, my post on fast-casual pizza
http://stlpizzaguy.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-great-pizza-debate-has-technology.html

Refutation of Where To Eat Pizza

Daniel Young's Where to Eat Pizza is a very ambitious encyclopedia of pizza, but falls short of my expectations because of its failure to include St. Louis-style pizza and Provel cheese. Released in late March of 2016, the 526-page behemoth of a book devotes hardly a page to the best pizza places in St. Louis. Out of the abundance of great pizza places in St. Louis, the book lists only five, while also listing five pizza places in Omaha, Nebraska.

Are you kidding me? I actually got nervous when I read the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, which highlighted the release of this book. It appeared that someone else had already done stlpizzaguy's job by finding the best pizza places in the area.

"Have no fear, I am still the holder of many St. Louis pizza secrets not mentioned in Where to Eat Pizza."

Where To Eat Pizza is written by someone I could only dream to be someday: the aficionado of all aficionados when it comes to pizza: Daniel Young. He is the organizer of the London Pizza Festival, which is a yearly pizza tasting and competition featuring some of the best pizzas in Europe.

In order write this book, Mr. Young couldn't have possibly gone to every major U.S. city and ranked the pizza. I'm sure that if he did visit St. Louis, Young might have devoted a full chapter to St. Louis pizza and given Provel cheese and our local spots the credit they deserve. Instead, he employed regional food experts. Ian Froeb was chosen as the regional food expert for Missouri Pizza. Mr. Froeb is a very accomplished food critic in Missouri, and known for his 100 top St. Louis restaurants on stltoday.com. In the case of pizza, however, he misses the mark.

Out of the five St. Louis pizza places listed in the book on pages 408-409, only one of the five listed in the book are in my top 10.

According to Where To Eat Pizza, the BEST pizza places in St. Louis are:

• Pastaria
• Black Thorn Pub & Pizza
• La Pizza
• Pizzeoli
• Pizzeria Tivoli

All of these pizza places are certainly great, but then again it is rare that I meet a pizza that I don't like. My bone to pick is the lack of any St. Louis-style pizza places listed by the author. Pastaria is wood-fired Neopolitan, while Black Thorn is Chicago-style deep dish. La Pizza is a New York-style pizza, while Pizzeoli is Neapolitan, along with Pizzeria Tivoli. 

Maybe the Neapolitan Pizza mafia along with the Chicago-style Pizza mafia paid a visit to the author of the book. All jokes aside, if you want to find out my top-10 pizza places from someone born and raised in St. Louis, then stay tuned because my list coming soon.

Now you can tell your out-of-town friends what EXACTLY makes a great St. Louis-style pizza, plus dazzle friends and family with amazing pizza facts.

• 93 percent of Americans have eaten pizza within the last month, thereby making PIZZA more American than Apple Pie or a Big Mac hamburger.
• Pizza originated in Naples, Italy.
• Pepperoni is the most popular pizza topping in the United States.
• When do people order the most pizza? The most pizzas are ordered on SUPER BOWL Sunday.

St. Louis-Style Pizza

Every once in a blue moon friends tell me, you're the pizza dude, so what exactly differentiates St. Louis-style pizza from others. My basic, uninformed answer is the super-thin crust, combined with provel cheese and is cut into squares. Nothing is wrong with that answer, but let us get a little more specific so we can give our friends a good, thorough answer next time we are asked that question. We should know our pizza and be proud of our region, because sometimes the St. Louis-style comes under attack from out-of-towners and provel cheese haters.

THE LONG ANSWER:

The definitive characteristics of St. Louis-style pizza are a extremely thin crust made without yeast, the common use of Provel processed cheese, and pizzas cut into squares  instead of wedges.

• The thin, cracker-like crust is made without yeast. The crust is crispy and cannot be folded.
• As a result of its thin crust, St. Louis-style pizza can be layered deeply with many different toppings because of the sturdiness of the cracker-like crust.
• The pizza is cut into three or four inch squares. According to legend, Ed Imo, founder of Imo's pizza back in 1964, was a tile layer and possibly got inspiration from this type of work.

THE CHEESE: PROVEL

Provel cheese was developed by the St. Louis company Costa Grocery in the 1950s and is made in Wisconsin primarily for the St. Louis market. According to St. Louis Post-Dispatch food critic Joe Bonwichstates that Provel was developed to meet perceived demand for a pizza cheese with a "clean bite": one that melts well but breaks off nicely when bitten. Provel is not legally labeled as simply cheese because it does not meet the moisture content required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Provel is instead considered a pasteurized processed cheese.

HOWEVER, it is although Provel is a hallmark of St. Louis-style pizza, two popular St. Louis pizza establishments DO NOT use Provel cheese: Fortels Pizza and Pappo's.

THE SAUCE:

The tomato sauce is often seasoned with more oregano than other pizza.  Some of the sauces have a greater sweetness to them than pizzas from other places in the U.S.

RECIPES TO MAKE YOUR OWN ST.LOUIS-STYLE PIZZA:

Just in case the plethora of pizza places in St. Louis would somehow all shut down, and you would be forced to make pizza yourself, here are two noteworthy recipes to make your own.

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/st-louis-style-pizza-recipe

http://www.food.com/recipe/imos-pizza-recipe-st-louis-style-pizza-380004