Professor Essert on the law school’s most ubiquitous free lunch food
Christopher Essert is a new Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, teaching property, torts, and a unique course on homelessness this year. He also loves pizza.
Prof. Essert says the great thing about pizza is the huge diversity of styles, and claims that this is the key ingredient missing from the Toronto pizza scene. In his opinion, “all of the best pizza places in Toronto are basically one style” – neapolitan.
He told us that traditional style pizza was invented in Italy in the 1800s, and brought into New England by Italian immigrants in the 1880s. New England flour was “harder” than its Italian counterpart and resulted in the crunchier, more bread-like pizza crust distinctive of New England-style pizza in New Haven, where Essert was a graduate law student.
One pizzeria in New Haven, which has been open for over 100 years, is known for its “really good” white clam pie that’s reminiscent of traditional clam pastas – it’s a white pizza with clams and garlic.
Prof. Essert also likes Detroit-style pizza, which has “a complicated thing with the sauce. They put the sauce on top of the cheese after the pizza comes out of the oven,” he explains. It is “similar to Pizza Hut—but good.” As a Toronto native and alumnus of University of Toronto Schools, Pizza Hut is close to his heart. He remembers going with friends to the Pizza Hut at Bloor and Avenue, where if your $5 personal pan pizza was not ready in five minutes, it was free!
On the secret to making pizza at home: stick to a pan pizza, since your oven will never get hot enough for Toronto’s favourite neapolitan style. His method is to heat up a cast-iron pan on a very hot stovetop and get his oven running as high as possible for as long as possible. Then he puts the dough directly into the hot pan, adds the toppings, and gets it into the very-hot oven. “The combined heat of pan and the oven makes the pizza cook in the right amount of time, so you can actually make a pretty good fake Detroit-style pizza,” he says.
When going to a new pizza place, Prof. Essert says to start simple: “my preferred pizza is pepperoni, and then margherita.” His current favourite pizza in Toronto is the pepperoni at General Assembly at 331 Adelaide Street West.
His two go-to at home pizzas are a traditional margherita or pepperoni, and a white cauliflower pizza. His sample pizza party menu would include those two pies, cold roasted vegetable antipasto, case salad, and an ice cream or fruit tart for dessert. He would pair that with a French sparkling wine, but not champagne, or a light lager like Howe Sound Lager.
Controversial pizza takes:
Chicago Deep Dish? Weird.
Pineapple on Pizza? No.
Dessert Pizza? Not a pizza.
Sushi Pizza? Also not a pizza.
Cauliflower Crust? Yet to try it.
For more tips on pizza, Essert suggested checking out the pizza episode of David Chang’s Ugly Delicious and reading the Serious Eats food blog to find out how to make different styles of pizza.
