Schenectady Slices

NY style pizza. It’s a thing. It’s also a particular thing. I think the average pizza eater is confused as to what it is. NY Style pizza is not just round thinner pizza, and I’m probably guilty of making that incorrect assumption in the past as well.

NY slices are another thing altogether. The pizza is cooked ahead of time, then when ordered the triangle is thrown back into the oven to be reheated. The bottom of the pizza crisps up, making for a crunchy crust. Eating a reheated slice is not quite the same as eating one fresh out of the oven.

Having participated in FUSSYlittleBLOG’s Tour de Slice Schenectady, I’ve come to realize that NY style slices don’t get me excited. Not that they aren’t tasty, they are, and their popularity is a testament to that, but given my druthers, they wouldn’t be my first choice.

I’ve written before about my devotion to Neapolitan style pizza, and after eating five of the best slices in Schenectady, I’m more a fan of puffy, tender, charred Neapolitan pies than ever.

We ate five slices on the tour, from five different shops. I wish I could say one had a tender, flavorful crust. I found the end crusts all to be lacking in flavor; I also found them to be too dense and crunchy for my tastes. I longed for the charred, tender cornicione of Neapolitan pizza.

A proper NY pie is sauced lightly, with a thin layer of cheese. I’m no fan of gobs of cheese and gallons of sauce, great pizza is light in my opinion and NY style has that going for it. But only two of the five slices we tried were both (properly) cheesed and sauced with a light hand. Ironically, one had so little sauce that I couldn’t taste it; it needed more.

I ordered cheese slices all day. Maybe had I eaten slices with toppings I would have been less underwhelmed by the whole experience. I wanted more flavor, more ‘something’.

The entire affair was worth it. I learned some things about pizza, but more importantly, I discovered that my love of Neapolitan pizza is not misplaced. And I can make a case for why I think it’s the best pizza style in the world. I’ll still grab a NY slice on occasion, and should Daniel lead another slice tour next year, I’ll happily participate. But I don’t see myself going out of the way for NY style pizza, at least not anytime soon.