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this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
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New York pizza culture is deeply personal to all involved. The idea of using someone else’s recipe would be repugnant.
People putting culture over health will always be silly to me. The fact that we find out we did it wrong the entire time is a possibility for progress.
We used to smoke cigarettes with asbestos filters, for fucks sake.
I put culture over health every time I make bacon.
It’s not just culture, it’s artistry. The ability to for a small restaurant to consistently turn out a product that has the same flavor, consistency, texture, and high standard customers have come to expect is not easy task. You have to make sure your supply line is consistent as well as make sure your employees are trained on prep/finish.
Corporate places like McDonalds achieve consistency by serving you food that’s so processed it requires no effort to taste exactly the same across time zones. Changing your base ingredients is going to alter your outcome from the beginning, so it’s on the chef to figure out how to amend their recipe with new ingredients yet not alter the final product. It’s a welcome challenge for those who have a passion for cooking.
Copying someone else’s recipe would be like suggesting to Picasso “why not just paint like Rembrandt” if he lost access to his normal brushes.
I would agree but will remind you that we once used paints with lead and arsenic mixed in. Van Gogh used those paints, but we do not longer use them, because they kill you. It's incredibly silly to keep using 19th century tecniques that we now know cause cancer, because we think using them makes us a better painter (it does not).
The comparison is not about ceasing to use the dangerous product (be it a food or paint additive), it’s that the additive was doing something in the original product and that the artist must now find a way to replicate the work by substituting a safer ingredient. Painters aren’t even the greatest example because someone like Picasso doesn’t paint the exact same painting day in and day out for different customers, he’s more like a chef that specializes in his signature style cuisine. Each meal might be different, but it’s got the same “pizazz”.
Pizzarias can live or die on one product, and a major component of that product is the crust. If your crust is one of the most important at aspects of your pizza, changing flour brands is a nightmare. Culinary expertise is an art, but baking is a science. Your diehards are going to notice the change. Hopefully a bit of education (we’re changing recipes because the ingredient is unsafe) gets them to cut you a little slack, but they’ll also love it if you take the time to figure out how to keep delivering what they fell in love with.
My experience with taste, as a sommelier, is that the regular customer is not really good at discerning tastes. They are good at rehashing what thinks ought to be, though.
For instance the pasta carbonara is a wild ride from a reasonably flexible original idea with parsley and pancetta, to ideologues who say only five ingredients make a carbonara.
Even though the pasta carbonara is really recent in history, people make it up to be the biggest deal in culinary history.
Most carbonara recipe are great, most people wouldn't take the difference. But most people do somehow cling to weird standards
I totally agree that the average customer is inconsistent with their ability to discern taste from one to another, but would argue that if a restaurant, especially a limited offering restaurant, had spent years establishing consistency a major shake up would be noticed. They have enough memory to notice “this isn’t it”. I’ve seen plenty of well established owner/operator restaurants sell their brand when they retire and tank in under 6mo because the new owner thinks that the name and recipes are enough then fires the seasoned staff to hire cheaper labor. While recipes should be enough, following A-Z does not guarantee you get something like what they do remember.
Now, please correct me if I’m mistaken, but don’t wines from the same vineyard have degrees of tolerable variance year to year even if the goal is consistency because weather can affect the grapes. I’m sure a winemaker can take that into account when producing and adjust as needed, but they are still limited by how early in the process that occurs; they won’t know if they got it until the wine is ready. Food prep is usually rapid turnover from product arrival to service. Your produce might vary in base flavor, but that’s where the skill comes in. The night of service you can add a tablespoon of salt when the normal recipe calls for a teaspoon.
The real kicker is the crust. People might not be as attuned to discrete flavor changes but they notice when something they’re used too feel wrong in their mouth; too doughy, too chewy, missing that crackle. Again, not as familiar with wine, but do you think clients who are invested in a specific vineyard’s offering would notice if suddenly the new bottle tasted as expected but the body was too thick or too watery?
But that still doesn't change they want to tweak their recipe vs copying someone else's , that's the fun part for a lit of people that make food is coming up with things yourself
Sadly most places aren't doing anything worth writing home about, but if this family actually cares then you're very right and they need to learn exactly how the new ingredient will work in their kitchen.
In my experience bromated flour makes dough that I don't like at all, so I'll be glad when that's gone.
New York pizza culture is a cult. Tired of people acting like it's something handed down by a God. NY style pizza is honestly pretty mid in the grand scheme. It's a generic American pizza style originally created in the early 1900s and largely became popular because it was affordable leading into and coming out of The Great Depression.
Clearly not a NYer. NY pizza culture goes beyond the pizza itself, though I will also strongly disagree that it's mid- them's fighting words. It's a result of NYC's crazy lifestyle. It is:
I no longer live in NYC sadly but it's my home city and the pizza culture is honestly one of the things I miss most. That's not to say other cities don't have good pizza (shout-out to Detroit style) but they lack the other elements of that culture. Tangentially related, wtf is going on with Pittsburgh style pizza?
Edit: I didn't feel like I needed to specify but toppings are a huuuge part of it
Okay and altering the recipe to remove potassium bromate will change exactly zero of those things.
I never argued that it would
if it was perfectly crisped, you wouldn't be able to fold it in half.
NYC-style pizza has one thing going for it: it's genuine fast food. It's on par with other fast food.
Have you even seen Altoona-style pizza? Made widely famous thanks to it being where Luigi was arrested. Sicilian-style pizza dough, tomato sauce, green bell pepper, salami, topped with American cheese and cut into squares. That's an abomination.
That style of food you don't care for is a style that other people grew up with and think of as "the good old days." There are food styles you do like that exist in precisely the reverse situation. That's all perfectly normal.
Damn man, sounds like you're just a hater. "Pretty mid" are you judging an entire city of pizza based on one interaction you've had? There are multiple types of pizza within just NY, you can't tell me a slice in the Bronx and in Brooklyn are the same.
Yes, not every 99c pizza (where you can find em still, increasingly $1.50 min) is going to be mind boggling, but the standard is significantly higher than the rest of the states and any country outside of Italy. I can walk into damn near any joint in the city and walk out with acceptable pizza, something you absolutely cannot say about the rest of America. There's a reason pizza hut and dominoes and the rest of that garbage don't do well here, but seemingly have a hold everywhere else.
Then, when you're ready to start finding the best? Takes slightly more work but that's here too, usually a little bit more expensive than the 99c places but your history lessons aren't going to tell you where to find it lmao like that has anything to do with pizza quality a century later in a city like NY.
you don't like grease with a side of pizza?