Toronto Pizzerias and Screens.

Hi. I’m a pizza snob. I eat and make pizza. Nobody asked, but:

Toronto pizzerias are good, not great. I'm referring here to spots that cook NY or NY-inspired style pizza, not Detroit or Neapolitan.

The reason for goodness, not greatness, is screens. The majority of the top spots mentioned here lean on them, and their product suffers as a result. I can’t think of many places in Toronto that cook NY-style without screens. Pizza Nostra, for one. But that might be it for the “top” shops.

I get it. Screens simplify workflow and are easy to train people to use. This is why big chains use them. They’re easy. And launching pizzas from a peel is one of the more difficult pizza-making techniques to master, particularly when you’re launching a large pie of 18 inches or more in diameter. Screens are a workaround.

Unfortunately, they invariably lead to worse pizza. Without direct contact with the stone at launch, the pizzas will never develop the truly excellent texture you get baking directly on the stone.

Here’s a clumsy analogy:
If you're searing a steak, you're not going to put a piece of tinfoil between the beef and the pan. That’d be ridiculous.

But the best pizzerias in the city, and the ones most recommended by this sub – Maker, Blondie’s, Badiali, Mac’s, Fresca, gram's, Ono, Acute, Mark’s, etc. – are all effectively doing this by baking on the screen.

Yes, there are ways to mitigate the downside of screens, like placing the pizza on the stone briefly mid- or end-bake. But pizza cooked that way will never bake as well as pizza launched directly from peel to stone.

Where am I going with this? Who cares? I dunno. The consumer probably doesn’t care, overall. We aren’t a place with a long history of great pizzerias with a discerning, educated pizza public (really not trying to sound like an asshole here!). We just like to eat things cooked on bread. People really love the pizza we make here. That's great! But, like, the pizza would be way better if these shops got rid of the screens.

^[disclaimer: this post may have been inspired by a negative experience at a place that everybody here recommends that you've never tried, and you happened to be close by, and the line was short, and you genuinely think the shop makes great pizza, but then you get unlucky and your two slices look like this…]