I love pizza. It’s the ultimate comfort food. Warm bread, cheese, meat, more cheese. It’s also the ultimate sharing food. The only way to eat it is to cut it into pieces so you can give some to other people. This recipe comes from my favorite pizza restaurant in Philadelphia, Pizzeria Beddia.

Beddia started out as a two-table pizza joint in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. Now, if you’ve ever spent any time with me in Philadelphia, you know that I refuse, on principle, to go the hellhole that is Fishtown. Fishtown is where a lot of the young, upwardly mobile transplants move when they get to Philadelphia. It’s like a post-graduate staging ground for society’s future elite members, who move out to the mainline after they’ve saved enough Christmas bonus money to buy a house. Anyway, tucked away on a little side street in Fishtown, on the ground floor of a three-story row home, was Pizza Beddia. Beddia, as I said, had two tables, and two employees: Joe Beddia, who meticulously shapes, dresses, bakes, and delivers every pizza, and a friend of Joe’s who manages the kitchen.

When they opened, Beddia didn’t have a phone, and they only ever made as many pies as Joe could bake in one day (~40), so the only way to get a pizza was to wait on line, often for hours, before their 5:30pm opening. When you would put your order in, they would tell you a time to return to pick up thepies, also often for hours later. The one time I was able to get a pie in time, my friend arrived at 2:30pm, waited three hours until they opened, then waited 5 minutes to put his order in, after which he was told to come back at 8:45pm for the pies. It was the end of fall and cold outside, so we slipped into the Fishtown Tavern for a (lot of) beer, before returning to eat.

We arrived at the restaurant with some cheap red wine. Red, because, well, I’m Italian, and cheap because, well, I’m a Philadelphian. We stood at one of the tables, listening to the Grateful Dead and watching Joe Beddia make pizzas with the meticulousness of a surgeon. When the pizza came out of the kitchen (which was separated from the dining room by a short counter for ordering and paying), it had already been cooling for 5 minutes in the kitchen so it comes out at the perfect temperature. In that 5 minute cooling period, you can see Joe put freshly shaved parmesean, italian oregano, and a drizzle of olive oil on each pizza.

The original Pizza Beddia (left) and the new Pizza Beddia.

Everything about that pizza was perfect: my friends, the wine, the intimate space, the Grateful Dead, the dim lighting, the two types of mozzarela cheese, the cash register that looked like it was at the cutting edge of payment technology in 1996. Even though the whole process took about six hours while the eating took about six minutes, the whole thing felt worth it.

A few years ago, Beddia closed their doors to expand to a bigger location. They finally have a phone now, and way to make reservations online, and while they are pretty busy, it’s possible to get a last-minute table. I’m not sure if the pizza’s gotten worse since the expansion, as I’m sure lots of people say, but the pizza still tastes damn good to me.

Joe Beddia’s pizza restaurant is where I bought the cookbook that has this recipe. To make the mushroom pizza, you’ll need:

Tools

• A pizza stone (or substites)
• A pizza peel (or substitutes)
• A ladle

Ingredients:

• Flour
• Water
• Salt
• Yeast

Making the dough is a long process, but it’s worth it to slow down the fermentation process by putting the dough in the fridge overnight.

Quote from Beddia book about making the dough and turning your phone off.

I’ve always considered pizza my go-to meal when cooking with friends. Everyone loves it, and since you can put anything on it you can meet almost any dietary restriction (Yes, even for the gluten intolerant. Taylor makes a mean GF pizza crust). I think this is because I would never eat pizza as a kid unless we were with other people. Only very rarely did my dad make a pizza at home. We’d usually go to The Original NY Pizza restaurant in Holly Springs, NC with my aunt and uncle Dede and Stevie and my cousins Jared and Taylor. This place was a Friday night staple of my childhood, and the perfect post-practice feast.

Since then, I’ve made pizza for my friends for as long as I’ve had a kitchen. Below is a photo of my first pizza, in my college kitchen, with my four roommates. As you can see, we each had a section of the pizza to top (you will also see that I have since upgraded my booze). Looks pretty gross, right? I assure you, it was.

Luckily for my friends, my pizza making has improved a lot over the years. Now, Taylor and I invite our friends over for pies, and I geek out over the dough and my mise en place. I even have a Gradeful Dead playlist for the dough tossing.

Hope to see you over for a slice soon.