Eleven places for perfect pizza

Courtney's Pizza, made with goat cheese, olives, roasted garlic, mushrooms,... — Courtney's Pizza, made with goat cheese, olives, roasted garlic, mushrooms, at Coolfish in Syosset. (October 12, 2010) Credit: Barbara Alper

By PETER M. GIANOTTI, ERICA MARCUS, JOAN REMINICKpeter.gianotti@newsday.com,erica.marcus@newsday.com,joan.reminick@newsday.comOctober 20, 2010

Pizza is the world's perfect food. Why shouldn't it be lavished with maximum artistry and the best ingredients? "No reason at all," declares a new generation of local pizzaioli as they usher in a new wave of serious pizza.

Best ingredients does not mean most ingredients. These serious pizzas stand in a rebuke to a longer-standing Long Island trend of saddling a pie with an entire Italian meal. (You've seen them: the baked-ziti topped pizzas, the veal-Marsala-topped pizzas, the Buffalo-chicken-topped pizzas.) The new-wave pie gets its cred from the restrained deployment of homemade mozzarella and artisanal sausage, from imported San Marzano tomatoes grown on the volcanic slopes of Italy's Mount Vesuvius, from extra-virgin olive oil and fresh-shucked clams and Prosciutto di Parma.

But a serious pizza relies most emphatically on its crust. Neither precariously thin nor ponderously thick, it should approach a perfect balance between toothsome and tender, puffy and crisp, slightly charred but never burned. It is delicious all on its own and yet forms a perfect canvas for its toppings.

These serious pizzas measure about a foot across. Most are baked in a wood-burning oven (perhaps built in Italy), but a gas oven is perfectly capable of turning out a great pie. Fuel, after all, is secondary to craftsmanship.

Here are a dozen places to sample the pizza-maker's art at its highest level. They were chosen by Newsday's food staff: Peter M. Gianotti, Erica Marcus and Joan Reminick.