Favorite Pizza Toppings

There is a small little hole-in-the-wall pizza place a few blocks from our current home called 2 Brothers. We discovered it one night as we were making our way home from a bar. The smell of hot pizza tempted us and we gave it a try. It’s super cheap at $1.50 per slice and it is made fresh every 15 minutes or so. The place is packed every time we go there so the pizza doesn’t sit around for long getting cold. It’s thankfully always fresh out of the oven. It tastes very good even though it only has a couple of toppings per pizza. I usually like it laden with ingredients, but this simple one satisfies my craving every time.

This got me thinking about my favorite toppings and toppings others put on their pizzas. For example, my family in Germany (the Germans) has been making and selling pizza on the weekends at different sporting and music events for probably two decades now. They can make pizza dough in their sleep. When we visited them last fall, they made thick-crust pizza covered with tuna. They also made a couple of more traditional ones (cheese, ham, etc.) but the tuna was unusual for us Americans. At least I’ve never had tuna pizza in the US.

I don’t usually make my pizza from scratch and either buy pizza dough or the frozen pizza. There really is only one frozen pizza I buy from Trader Joe’s. It’s an Alsacian flatbread (very thin) covered with cheese, ham and caramelized onions. We even got to try the real thing in the Alsace region of France a few years ago (they call it Flammkuchen – a German name) and the Trader Joe’s one measures up pretty well.

When I do buy plain pizza dough, I cover it with as many toppings as possible. My favorites are ham, cheese, bell peppers, olives, corn, artichokes, mushrooms and oregano. Most people are surprised by the corn on pizza, but it tastes very good. I highly recommend it.

Another idea I got from Artichoke, a different NY pizza joint, is making pizza covered with spinach artichoke dip. Very inventive and popular since there was a line out the door at 3am (in January). I’ll have to try making that myself next time.

2 Brothers pizza

Artichoke pizza