Style Weekly
A Question of Tomatoes
In Joseph W. Cates's review of Pie (“A Slice of OK,” Food & Drink, Feb. 24), he is decidedly wrong to find grounds for excommunication from the Church of Pizza because it uses crushed tomatoes rather than sauce on pizzas.
This is a well-recognized practice in certain Boston neighborhoods with impeccable Italian credentials. A typical pizza, often rectangular rather than round, would begin with a base of dough, topped with a layer of canned crushed or ground tomatoes sprinkled with olive oil, dried herbs, dried red pepper flakes and a generous scattering of chopped fresh garlic. The top layer would be a light cheese layer, sometimes partly grated parmesan, sometimes mostly grated parmesan, if I recall correctly. The effect is a very peasantlike and rustic tomato-bread combination.
Marshall Keys
Richmond
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