My family has been eating pizza for 7 straight days. This is highly unusual, but circumstances converged into a perfect pizza storm.
First we went to my favorite restaurant for my birthday Thursday. Then I got pizza for my son’s class on the last day at his daycare Friday. They sent a whole pizza home. We went away for the weekend on a hotel package that included , yes, pizza for dinner. Today, my boss got pizza for all of us to celebrate press awards garnered in the features department.
Obviously, I haven’t had to cook very much. I’ve just been reheating pizza for what seems like a year.
It occurs to me that reheating pizza is something I feel strongly about. There is a right way to recapture that fresh-from-the-oven experience, and about a billion ways to destroy it.
Here are my rules:
1. ALWAYS REHEAT IT: If you’re out of college and have your own oven, stop wasting perfectly good ‘za by eating it flavorless and congealed.
2. DO NOT USE THE MICROWAVE: Pizza has done nothing to deserve the damage done by nuking. The crust gets hard in places and soggy in others. Parts get hot and parts get mushy. For some reason, the cheese simply disappears.
3. USE DRY HEAT: Toaster ovens and conventional ovens take longer, about 15 or 20 minutes (total). This might seem like too long for leftovers, but to me if you’re not going to use an oven, you might as well just throw the leftovers away.
4. PREHEAT THE OVEN TO 400.
5. COOK THE PIZZA UNTIL YOU CAN SMELL IT. Not a minute more. That’ll take about 10 to 12 minutes. If you’re not sure, open the oven and take out the pizza to get a good look. If the sauce is bubbling and/or pepperoni is sizzling, you’re done.
6. DON’T BURN IT: Once you go to all this trouble, you’ll kick yourself for burning the crust. Refer to Rule 5.