Rescuing Mediocre Pizza
I Know Why the Pizza at Seattle’s PCC Supermarket is So Bad
The PCC in our neighborhood has an open kitchen. Must be comforting for the upscale customers — few of whom have ever worked one day of food service in their lives — but probably annoying for the workers. This means you can see the dedicated pizza person in front of a fancy-looking gas pizza oven. Making bad pizza.
I don’t think the oven at PCC is hot enough - it’s certainly not burning bright like at Tutta Bella - the wood-fired chain place across the street. Their dough is terrible - guessing they don’t have room to ball it up and proof it properly and that the recipe is off somehow. The sauce is awful - people this is not rocket science! Low quality cheap mozzarella cheese is being used here. Wrong moisture level of cheese for the cooking situation. A store geared to the rich might want to examine why they are selling a Domino’s level of bad cheese to their highfalutin customers. The toppings are weirdly not good other than the fresh mushrooms - which are impossible to fuck up. How does one cut and store green peppers incorrectly?
A worse pizza (is that possible?) might be the PCC take and bake pizza. Last night nostalgia prevailed, though, and I broke down and bought a PCC cheese take and bake for $12.99. This bland, inoffensive product was a (last resort) staple for our young family long ago, when it was only $9.99. The kids always preferred Seattle corporate chain Pagliacci. For a pizza expert/snob like me it’s all bad.
To augment this and make it edible I added tomato paste, slivers of garlic in olive oil, olives, Vermont pepperoni, mushrooms, onions, oregano, red pepper and Parmesan cheese.
Worked good. Edible.
Apologies for the low quality image - I’m a photographer who insists on natural light, which is why my activity in that department shuts down during the Seattle winter.
Seattle has some really really good pizza now including the fabulous Windy City Pie, which produces incredible Chicago style pan deep dish pizzas and (my favorite) Chicago style tavern thin crust pizza.
—Alex Mayer
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Well I have to agree. When Mr suggests going out for pizza I cringe. I don’t believe in the 1000 degree pizza. Pags crust just is inedible . We used to get a good pie at Loup in Fremont but it closes early and they changed their dining area after Covid. I’ve never eaten a take and bake. HOWEVER I do make my own. I’ve changed my dough recipe using more hydration and fogettabout chilling the dough. And I’m now NOT cooking my sauce. I have eaten pizza in Italy and in Nice but I think I make a fine pizza these days. People need to cook. Take out is SHITE. Eating out is expensive and only good for Thai or Vietnamese food cause my attempts are always meh.