The modern pizza has a wonderful odor, and some of the toppings have a delicious flavor, such as pepperoni. However, are our modern actually "better" than the pizzas of previous centuries? I don't think so!

• The pizza dough
Centuries ago the pizza dough would have been made from freshly ground grains, but most modern pizzas are made from highly processed wheat flour that has almost no fat, flavor, or nutritional value.

• The pizza sauces
The sauces of previous centuries would usually have been fresher and more nutritious, also. Their tomato sauces would have contained all pieces of the tomato, including the skin and seeds, because they didn't have the technology - or even the desire! - to strain their tomato sauce and remove what they would have considered to be edible parts of the tomato rather than waste products. I suspect that the skin provided additional nutrients. Most of the seeds probably passed through their digestive system intact, but some seeds would have been crushed by their teeth, and I think that provided additional nutrients and fat. By comparison, the modern pizza sauce is strained to remove the skin and seeds. Some businesses are adding chunks of tomato to their highly strained and processed tomato sauces, but that chunky tomato sauce is not the same as the more natural, less refined sauces of previous centuries.

• The pizza toppings
The toppings that our ancestors put on their pizzas were probably also much fresher and more nutritious. Also, our distant ancestors didn't have access to such industrial items as pepperoni, for example. In fact, I wonder if pepperoni should be classified as a "food". If we fully understood the effect of those processed meats on our health, we might reclassify them as flavoring agents, or we might discover that they are actually harmful to our health, in which case we should either eliminate them, or change the way we produce them.
 

As I mentioned in the main file of this series about food, I think the human body is expecting food to contain a certain amount of carbohydrates, fat, protein, and other nutrients. Therefore, when we produce a food that is missing some of the necessary nutrients, we feel a need to add whatever is missing. The modern pizza crust is a tasteless, nutritionally worthless piece of dough that is primarily carbohydrates, and the pizza sauce is also lacking in fat. I think that the reason we feel a need to put cheese on the modern pizzas is to compensate for its miserable qualities and to increase its level of protein and fat.
 

I have never cared for the slimy quality of milk, not even as a child, and I never considered milk to have a particularly desirable flavor, either. As a result, I stopped drinking milk during my teenage years. Virtually all of the cheeses have a more desirable flavor than milk, but I don't care for the sticky, gooey, slimy consistency of cheese. I prefer food that I can chew, not the pasty, slimy texture of peanut butter, oatmeal, or cheese. Many of the pasty foods taste good, such as Reese's peanut butter cups, but I don't like their texture. I consider the cheeses and other slimy food products to be flavoring agents agents, not "foods".

I don't want a pizza that is covered with cheese, or any other slimy, gooey ingredient. I want a pizza in which cheese is just an optional flavoring agent, and I want the cheese to be in such a small quantity that I notice only the flavor of the cheese, not the slimy texture.
 

From my experiments with making bread, I have come to the conclusion that pizzas require cheese to compensate for the horrible pizza dough and the low quality of the watery tomato sauce and the other toppings. When I make a pizza crust from freshly ground grains, all I have to do is add a sauce to it, and some olive oil if the sauce is watery, and this creates a pizza that has so much flavor and is so nutritionally complete that it is delicious all by itself, and cheese becomes just an optional topping rather than a necessity. Of course, I eat this pizza within minutes after the crust has been taken out of the oven, so it is extremely fresh. I don't know what would happen if I let the bread sit for a few days.
 

When I first decided to grind my own grains and make my own bread, I did so because I assumed it would be healthier than eating the refined white flour. My health was already fine, so I didn't expect to notice any benefits. Rather, I was considering it merely as a preventative measure. 

I was surprised to discover that both I and my stomach feel better a couple hours after the meal compared to when I ate a large quantity of refined flour.

My conclusion is that a lot of foods have a wonderful odor and flavor, but we can't judge food simply by its taste. We have to analyze its long-term effect on both our physical and mental health. If one of my pizzas makes you feel better hours later, and keeps you in a better mood, then you ought to consider eating one of them, even if you prefer the odor and flavor of an industrial pizza with slimy cheese and pepperoni.
 

From my experiences with food, I wonder if the reason some people are overeating is because they are eating unnatural or unbalanced foods. If our stomach or digestive system is expecting a certain blend of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and other nutrients, then people who eat an unbalanced meal, such as a lot of refined white flour or salami, then their digestive system may sense that they're not getting all of what they need, and it may continue sending a signal to their brain to continue eating in order to provide the missing nutrients. 

Perhaps our stomach or digestive system is expecting seems as if our stomach is expecting a certain blend of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and other chemicals, and if you eat a lot of white flour, your stomach senses that something is wrong, and it sends a signal to your brain to continue eating in order to provide whatever is missing.

We might improve society simply by improving our diet

I don't judge my cooking simply by the way the meal looks or tastes. I also judge my cooking by how I feel several hours after I have finished eating it. I suspect that when we eat meals that are more "natural", we will feel better because our digestive system was designed for such meals. By comparison, if we eat a large amount of refined bread or pasta, or a large bowl of ice cream, then our digestive system has to deal with a large amount of food that is extremely unbalanced and unnatural, and this may be causing digestive problems. Furthermore, I don't get sick very often any longer. I used to get a cold or sore throat at least once a year, usually as winter begins, but I haven't had any type of illness for many years.

I suspect that the reason I feel better after eating my meals today is because I am now making meals that have a more natural proportion of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Also, I may be getting much better nutrition as a result of my low temperature cooking techniques.

By comparison, a lot of people today are eating foods that are extremely high or low in one particular nutrient, and much of their food has been cooked to very high temperatures, and this may be causing trouble for their digestive system, in addition to creating nutritional problems. For example, when people today eat a large bowl of ice cream, they are expecting their stomach to process a large amount of fat and sugar, and when they eat a lot of modern bread or pasta, they are getting a lot of carbohydrates, but not necessarily much else. And when we eat meat that has been highly processed or cooked at a high temperature, we may be getting protein but not some of the other necessary nutrients.

I think that if we were to redesign society so that we have access to freshly prepared foods made from fresh ingredients, we would discover that we feel much better, enjoy our food much more, and remain in better health. It would be nice if we had some honest, competent scientists to study these issues and help us to determine what type of foods are best for us, and how to keep us in the best health.

Most modern pizzas are made by spreading some tomato sauce, shredded cheese, and other toppings onto some tasteless, nutritionally worthless, refined flour, and then baking the pizza in a very hot oven. Here are three problems with this technique:

1) In order to prevent the tomato sauce, cheese, and other toppings from getting into the oven and making a mess, the tomato sauce and toppings are kept a noticeable distance away from the outer edge of the pizza, which leaves a large crust of worthless, and often burnt, crust surrounding the pizza. This crust is a waste that has no flavor or nutritional value.

2) There is a conflict in the amount of time needed to cook the pizza. The outer edge of the pizza is just plain dough, without any sauce or cheese, and so it doesn't need much time to cook. The center of the pizza is covered with wet tomato sauce and cheese, and so it needs quite a bit of time for the crust to cook, the sauce to heat up, and the cheese to melt. If the pizza is left in the oven until the center is properly cooked, then the edges are burnt, but if the pizza is taken out of the oven before the edges are burnt, then the center part is still soft and gooey.

3) By baking all of the ingredients together in a very hot oven, all items reach the same high temperature, and they all cook for the same amount of time. Some toppings will be undercooked, others will be overcooked, and some will be burnt. 
 

I think pizzas are much better in both flavor and nutritional value if the pizza dough is made from freshly ground grains, and if the pizza crust is baked first, by itself, without any sauce or toppings. The pizza sauce and toppings should be processed separately so that each of them is cooked only for as long as needed, and only to the temperature that they need. And then the ingredients are combined together to make a pizza. Since the pizza crust is fully cooked, you can spread the sauce all the way to the very edge of the pizza.

If a hot or warm sauce is added to a freshly baked pizza crust, and if the toppings are also already warm from cooking, then the pizza is ready to be eaten. No further cooking is needed. This method of combining ingredients to a fully cooked pizza crust allows all of the ingredients to be cooked to whatever is their most appropriate temperature and for their most appropriate time.

If you are like me and enjoy a rare beef as a pizza topping, then you could cook the beef separately and then put it on top of the fully cooked pizza crust, or you can put pieces of raw beef onto a fully cooked pizza crust, and then put the pizza in the toaster oven at a low temperature. The crust will not cook to any significant extent at the low temperatures needed to cook the beef. Cooking the beef directly on the pizza crust reduces the amount of cooking and cleaning that you have to do. Also, the few droplets of juice that come out of the beef will spread out onto the pizza sauce, thereby increasing the beef flavor. The beef will not produce enough juice to make the pizza soggy. Rather, it will make a delicious beef pizza. 

You can also use this technique with pieces of raw lamb, pork, bacon, and beef. However, I would never use this technique with poultry. I cook the poultry first, and then spread the pieces of poultry meat and its juice onto the pizza.
 

 A pizza doesn't require “pizza sauce”

The tomato-based sauces that are described as "pizza sauces" are excellent on pizzas, but don't be deceived into thinking that a pizza must be made with one of those specially designated "pizza sauces". There are thousands - possibly millions - of different sauces that we can be using for pizzas. Four of the many sauces that I've enjoyed are in this photo below.

Some businesses are producing sauces for specific types of food, but don't make the mistake of assuming that an "enchilada sauce" should be used only on enchiladas, or that you must use a "lasagna sauce" when making lasagnas. Consider the names of a sauce to be nothing more than "suggested uses". An enchilada sauce is simply a spicy variation of a tomato sauce, and so you may enjoy it with anything that you enjoy tomatoes with.

The photo below shows a the knife-cut edge piece of my freshly ground, a whole-grain bread that is loaded full of corn kernels. I'm going to use this as a pizza crust. My bread which is usually 60 to 80% Kamut, 10 to 30% hard red winter wheat, and usually small amounts of other grains, such as millet, but wheat, rye, oats, amaranth, and/or quinoa. This particular piece of bread came out very dense, rather than airy and fluffy.

In the photo below, I am spreading green chili coconut sauce onto a piece of the corn kernel pizza crust. This makes an excellent pizza sauce, regardless of whether there is corn in them pizza crust.

In the photo below, I put a more conventional tomato sauce on one of the pieces of the corn kernel pizza crust.

I would not say that either of the sauces in the photo above is better than the other. Rather, they are equally delicious, but different. I enjoy variety, as opposed to some people that I know who are traumatized by changes.

Both pieces of pizza in the photo above are delicious all by themselves, ie, with only the sauce. Cheese and other toppings are optional. The corn kernel pizza crust is also good with a variety of toppings, and in the photos below, I show two unusual toppings.
 

Chicken soup pizza

A chicken soup pizza might seem to be a joke, but my coarse, freshly ground, freshly baked, whole-grain pizza crust is very absorbent, and this allows the crust to soak up a lot of tomato sauce and chicken juice, giving the pizza crust a delicious flavor. The top of the pizza crust will be soft and moist, but the bottom remains dry. And the pieces of chicken are incredibly juicy and tender. A chicken soup pizza is delicious with all types of tomato sauces, as well as the green chili coconut sauce, and marsala sauce.

A corn kernel pizza crust is not as absorbent as a plain pizza crust, so I cannot add as much of the chicken soup to the corn crust pizza. In the photo below, I'm putting on only a few spoonfuls of chicken soup, rather than drenching it, as I would otherwise do. I have photos and a description of how I made the chicken soup that this page. This chicken is extremely juicy, tender, and flavorful.

 
In the photo below, I put some of the chicken soup onto a pizza that has green chili coconut sauce.

On another piece of the corn crust pizza, this one with some tomato sauce, I added some cubes of raw, ground beef. I will put this pizza in the toaster oven at a low temperature until I see a few droplets of juice oozing out of the meat.

The photo below shows that pizza after I removed it from the toaster oven. Notice that the pizza crust and its corn kernels do not show any sign of further cooking, but the meat has been cooked, and the sauce is slightly thicker due to the evaporation of some of its water, and some of the sauce has also been absorbed into the pizza crust.

 
A close-up of one of the pieces of meat on that pizza shows a small amount of juice on and around the meat. Notice that there is no sign that the meat, the sauce, or the pizza crust has reached a high temperature. None of the pizza has been burnt, either.

These pizzas taste so good that I don't feel any need to put cheese on them. I guarantee that if you visit me and find the courage to eat one of my pizzas, you will consider them to be far more delicious, and hours later you may notice that your stomach feels better compared to the feeling you have after eating a conventional pizza.

It's common for Americans to use mushrooms as a topping for pizza, but pizzas are also good with mushrooms pieces mixed directly into the pizza crust and/or spread over the top of the dough and then baked into the crust. Mushrooms have a very mild flavor, so this allows the pizza crust to soak up some of the mushroom juice and flavor. 

The mild flavor of mushrooms requires that the pizza crust be made from mild flavored grains, such as millet and Kamut, rather than the strong grains, such as whole wheat, amaranth, and quinoa. The sauce and any additional toppings must be mild flavored, also, and they used in small quantities. However, despite the faint flavor of the mushrooms, you might enjoy the variety of a mushroom pizza crust at least once in your life. This type of pizza crust is good with a little olive oil or butter, and a small amount of very mild tomato sauce.

On hot days, or if you just want incredibly crispy and juicy corn pizzas, sprinkle some raw corn kernels on the top. If you sprinkle raw corn kernels on top of a pizza crust that is full of corn, such as the pizza crust at the top of this page, then you create a pizza with a very powerful corn flavor. Plus, you provide yourself with the interesting combination of the soft, sweet, cooked corn kernels that are in the crust with the raw, juicy, crispy corn kernels that are in the topping.

In the example below, the pizza crust is "plain" (no corn kernels mixed into it). I spread a thick layer of tomato sauce on the top of the crust, and now I am adding both yellow and white corn kernels as a topping.

On cold days, it's nice to put these corn pizzas in a toaster oven. If you toast the pizza for a only short period of time, it will merely warm up the corn, and if you let the pizza toast for a longer period of time, you can partially cook the corn, which will make it softer and sweeter. The pizza crust will survive the toasting without becoming overcooked.

The masala sauce from India is excellent as a pizza sauce, and it gives it an "exotic" flavor, at least to those of us in America. (I suppose in India, a plain, drab, tomato sauce would be exotic!) In the example below, I put masala sauce on a mini pizza crust, and then I added some chunks of feta cheese as a topping.

Fruit pizzas

Although I haven't bothered to experiment with fruit peaches, I wanted to point out that there is no rule for bidding us from making pizzas with fruit. And I would bet that the human mind has the intelligence and creativity to come up with a variety of delicious fruit peaches. For example, instead of using a tomato sauce, we could create sauces made from apples, strawberries, or peaches, and then add optional toppings, such as cinnamon, raisins, nuts, and pieces of other fruits.

In this video, I show how apples, bananas, and yams can be cooked at a low temperature, which cause them to become sweet and soft, but they retain their flavor and juice. They can then be mashed. This would create either an apple sauce, a banana sauce, or a yam sauce, all of which could be used as a sauce for a fruit pizza. Also, the apple and yam could be diced, which would allow them to be used as a topping to a fruit pizza.
 

Some of the points that I'm trying to make in this series of files about food and society are:

1) We have the intellectual ability and creativity to create a tremendous variety of foods. have you seen the Salmon skin dessert pizza yet?
2) We should alter our economic system so that we can support lots of the experiments with food, and so that restaurants can easily provide us with variety.
3) We should alter society so that we can provide ourselves with a group of scientists that we can trust and who will do research into food and nutrition so that we know when we are hurting our health and when we are helping ourselves.