Not I, but the Pizza, Teaches

Not enough can be said about pizza. From one dollar slices at Laventina's in Newport Beach to gourmet pies at Dewey's in Cincinnati, it gracefully covers the spectrum from take-out to dine in. It has lasted through centuries and traveled across the globe, continously evolving as it goes along.

In addition, pizza is an excellent place to enter the world of baking breads. The dough is pretty hard to truly screw up, and even then it's still good. Face it, a cardboard box covered in meats, sauces, cheeses, vegetables and herbs would still taste good. But get it right, a nice pillowy dough, and homemade pizza is downright heavenly. Split the dough up into strips and you have breadsticks. Hold the sugar and change some small details and you have it's mediterranean cousin, pita.

Just about anything can be put on a pizza. From crazy people making Indian pizzas (no microwave required!?) to twists on the classic ham and pineapple , pizza is definitely flexible. In this writer's humble opinion, none can compare to the tasty Socrates' Revenge. Somehow spinach, olives and feta as a group add a subtle complexity that has to be tried.