KAYTE YOUNG: From WFIU in Bloomington, Indiana. I'm Kayte Young and this is Earth Eats.

PETE GIORDANO: Double zero refers to the fineness of the grind. So it's super fine because of that designation, which also helps make it be as smooth and glutenous as possible in the final dough. I buy it in these 55 lb bags through, like, a restaurant store and I just get it shipped to me.

KAYTE YOUNG: This week on the show we go all in with a pizza making fanatic. Toby Foster talks with Pete Giordano about what it takes to make the perfect Neapolitan-style pizza at home. But first we talk with the authors of "Everybody Eats," a book about food justice interventions in Greensboro, North Carolina. That's all just ahead. Stay with us.

KAYTE YOUNG: Kayte Young here. This is Earth Eats. Confronted with a glaring social problem like, say, food insecurity in a community, the impulse to act, to try to do something about it, comes naturally. Particularly to those in the social service sector. But well meaning plans don't always have the outcomes we hope for, especially if those plans don't involve those most affected by the issue. A new book from University of California Press focuses on food justice conversations and interventions in the city of Greensboro, North Carolina. Josephine McRobbie spoke with the authors about what they learned in their research and what questions remain to be answered. Dr. Niesha Douglas and Dr. Marianne LeGreco are the authors of "Everybody Eats: Communication And The Paths To Food Justice." The book is focused on food insecurity and food access programs in Greensboro, North Carolina.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Between the years of 2009 and 2019, Greensboro was named on the Food Action And Research Center's list of major US cities experiencing food hardship. It topped the list in 2015. When the two professors met, momentum was already growing to address issues of food disparities in the area. Some activities were centered around the historically black neighborhood of Warnersville. Here's Dr. Niesha Douglas.

1. NIESHA DOUGLAS: During this time there was a feasibility study done by Mark Smith, who's an epidemiologist at Guilford County Health Department. And so, they were doing this study around key areas in Greensboro and they did it in zip codes. And so, one of the zip codes was the Warnersville area where they identified people who were having issues with high blood pressure, diabetes and just some of these preventable diseases.
2. MARIANNE LEGRECO: So, one of the things that Mark noticed was that the Warnersville neighborhood, they have the highest rates of poverty, but then also the highest rates of chronic health problems. And so he was really interested in working more closely with people who lived in that neighborhood, to figure out where some of these problems and disparities and barriers might be coming from, and then what the people in the neighborhoods were really interested in focusing on as a way to address them.
3. NIESHA DOUGLAS: And one of the issues was food and the access to food and how many grocery stores are within a one mile radius, and can people get to the grocery stores, and how do they get to the grocery stores, and what are they eating or what are they picking up and do they have enough money, you know? And also during that time, you know, community gardens were starting to pick up a little bit more steam, where people were wanting to grow their own food. Not because they were hungry, but because of health reasons, right? They wanted to go back to gardening in a way that would save them money, but also would benefit them health-wise.
4. MARIANNE LEGRECO: And he invited us to become part of the conversations that were going on in Warnersville. Not long after that is when we started making news with the FRAC headlines. With the Food Research And Action Center. We were really well positioned, I think, as community groups to keep those conversations going, and we had already started to speak with folks in the neighborhood who had identified things like urban gardens and community farms, mobile farmer's markets, community stores, better walking paths, as things that they wanted to see in their neighborhoods. And, honestly, that's how Niesha and I met, was that we had started to work on implementing some of the farmers' markets and mobile farmers' markets ideas and Niesha lived in the neighborhood. She'd been invited to become a part of some of the interventions themselves and then, that's how she and I met and started to talk.
5. MARIANNE LEGRECO: Niesha was working on her PhD at University of North Carolina at Charlotte and I was working as, at that time, an assistant professor, but then eventually associate professor at UNC Greensboro.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Everybody Eats contains case studies of programming in Greensboro from 2009 to 2019, that aim to address food hardship and access. The professors look at the successes and failures of these interventions through the lens of communication studies.

1. MARIANNE LEGRECO: People often underestimate the role that communication plays in the community engagement, in the mobilizing of the resources, in the sustaining of the conversations. There were a couple of times when newcomers to the partnerships and the relationships would be facilitating conversations and they would introduce me and they would say, "Oh, and this Marianne. She's a communication professor at UNCG. She manages our social media." And I would say, "Wait, wait! There's a little bit more to it than that. How are you going to handle some of those tensions? How are you going to prioritize certain needs over others?"
2. NIESHA DOUGLAS: Particularly in Warnersville, there was sort of a reoccurring theme where people would come into the Warnersville neighborhood and say, "Oh, you guys need this and so this what we're going to do." And the after it didn't work, they would leave. There's a residual effect that happens when people come in and try to create something and it doesn't work. So, because I was from the neighborhood and I understood the culture of the neighborhood, I knew a little bit more. I knew what would work and what wouldn't work, because we'd seen it before. The residents would be very leery of having anybody come in and try to create something when they weren't involved in the process and they are very active within the neighborhood and they want to be involved. They want to preserve, number one, the history of the neighborhood and the integrity of the people that live in the neighborhood. But they also do want to see change, but they want to see change on their own terms.
3. NIESHA DOUGLAS: So, throughout the book, it's really conversations that Marianne and I had, just trying to, just kind of work through what we were experiencing. So, I remember when I heard the words "Food Desert" I was, like, "Desert?" Desert means desolate. Like no life. You know, it means dry. You know, when I think of a desert, that's what I think of. I think of the Sahara Desert. Like just sand and hot and no life.
4. MARIANNE LEGRECO: So, Food Desert was a USDA term that was used to delineate neighborhoods that a certain number of the population live below the poverty line and a certain number of the population was at least a mile away from a grocery store. And then a food swamp got used as an extension of that metaphor, to talk about neighborhoods that had high concentrations of low quality food. And the USDA has moved away from some of that terminology.
5. NIESHA DOUGLAS: You know, when they come up with these terms, to me, it seems like there's a lot of racial undertones associated with it, because a lot of people connect poverty with black and brown communities, right? They say okay, you know, they use some of these key terms like "low income," "property," "desert," "swamp" to make it seem like, you know, these people are suffering. If you're relating swamps to a specific area, you know, that area, a lot of people do not want to come to, right? I always had a problem with how people would label, you know, certain neighborhoods, because I just feel like there was a misrepresentation, or they're trying to take away from what their neighborhood is really like. For example, Warnersville was like a thriving community.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: At the end if the Civil War, a quaker, educator, lawyer and minister named Yardley Warner purchased land in Southeast Greensboro. The area now known as Warnersville. He bought 35½ acres, and then sold parcels to formerly enslaved people at low cost.

1. NIESHA DOUGLAS: So they started developing and building themselves, and so it became a really thriving community back in th 1920s and the 1930s. The community where my grandmother grew up in, she would always say, you know, "Oh, we had this, we had movie theaters, we had beauty shops and everything was black on and everybody, you know, was doing their thing, and everybody loved it." Until, you know, re-zoning came in and they started breaking up people.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: The Warnersville community garden required several years of planning by multiple stakeholder groups to open and, more importantly, to thrive. It currently operates with a paid farm manager and as an urban teaching farm. Understanding the neighborhood was key to breaking ground.

1. NIESHA DOUGLAS: I will give an example of my grandmother. My grandmother purchased her house in Warnersville in 1960 and so, during that time people had their own gardens. Like, she grew tomatoes and cucumbers in the backyard. But they also were growing food for themselves. Now, there's actually, like, a connection between me growing my food myself and then me actually growing food for other people. I honestly feel like there's something genetically or something within our DNA that triggers, you know, times in which, you know, we were working for free. We were working in yards for free, we were working in fields for free. So there's, like, a connection to slavery and I remember having a conversation with one of the people in the neighborhood and they was, like, "No, we're over gardening, we're over that. We've moved on from that." And I'm, like, "Hm!"
2. NIESHA DOUGLAS: I see that there's actually a negative connotation when it comes to growing food for other people. And not just other people, but people that don't look like me, right? And so, you know, they kind of shied away from that. They didn't want to be involved. And plus, you know, a lot of the residents were older and they could no longer be in the yard or be in the garden, you know, pulling weeds or harvesting or watering because it was hot. And so, that played a role too. They were still kind of, like, hesitant to want to be open to the idea of new program or a community garden or urban farm. You know, that's one of the things, if you were to speak with some of the community members, you would have learned the historical reference to why they are questioning whether or not programs need to be placed within the Warnersville neighborhood, because of things like that.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Another case study looks at a series of pop-up and mobile farmers' markets in Warnersville and other neighborhoods in Greensboro.

1. MARIANNE LEGRECO: It's really using a food truck model, in some ways, to make a location mobile, so that you are getting the resource, the intervention, the food to the people where they are. And it was something that I think was particularly needed because we face a lot of financial constraints in Greensboro and Guilford County when it comes to starting up new food retail and business spaces. And we cover a little bit of that in the Downtown Greensboro food truck pilot project intervention. We were able to get some policies changed, that then made it possible for us to do things like mobile farmers' markets and take food trucks onto institutional spaces. And so, we were able to test out ideas like is it easier to catch people where they live and try to do a mobile or a pop-up farmers' market or is it easier to catch people where they frequently go?
2. MARIANNE LEGRECO: So, for example, we had tested out some ideas at Cone Health Facilities, which is one of our major health care providers in Greensboro. So, we were able to pop up the mobile oasis farmers' market there, in one of their parking lots.
3. NIESHA DOUGLAS: But we also set up shop at social services, where a lot of people would go to apply for food stamps, or WIC, or whatever social service was needed and so that was another site that we felt would be very productive if we were to go to where people actually were able to get services for their families and then they can also come and get a peach or apple or some groceries using their EBT card.
4. MARIANNE LEGRECO: And we learned the need for the SNAP EBT and WIC through our initial pop-ups. That was the first big piece of feedback that we got from folks, was that it's great that you all have this, but if you're going to do it long term, you're going to need to be able to accept SNAP EBT. And it also has created a space where then people realized that if you can incentivize people to use SNAP EBT at farmers' markets, it's also good for the farmers and for the local vendors as well because those funds are staying in the community.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: The book also examines downtown food truck legislation, an immigrant-owned restaurant tour called Ethnosh, as well as an incubator kitchen.

1. MARIANNE LEGRECO: Addressing food insecurity is not only about addressing food access. It's about addressing intersections between access and poverty and so, some of those programs help to address the poverty side of things, by allowing people more, I guess, less financially risky entry points into food markets, like through the food trucks. It also encouraged people to buy food and support local restaurants through programs like Ethnosh, and to support restaurants that are owned by immigrants and first generation folks who are serving the food from the cuisines, from the background and culture that they come from. But then also creating some of those lower cost entry points, like through our kitchen incubator programs, so that people could test out whether or not they wanted to start up a food business without having to take on such huge financial risks as opening up their own kitchen, to decide whether or not then they could sell their jams and jellies and sauces and things of that nature.
2. MARIANNE LEGRECO: But even more so, I think it's about changing the culture of the way that we talk about food. That when we are willing to test out some of these ideas, we're continuing to center food as something that's important to our communities and our cultures. Honestly, I think the way that the intervention shaped the bigger picture conversations around food is the single biggest impact that all of those interventions combined had. Because, if you look today, some of them are very different than when they started out. Some of them have completely different partnerships, some of them have morphed into something different, some of them are on hiatus, some of them have ended completely. At the same time, everyone across the board in Greensboro and Guilford County will acknowledge that we now speak differently about food and food security than we did ten years ago.
3. MARIANNE LEGRECO: We know a lot more about how food systems work, we know a lot more about how all of the different pieces fit together and I think, most importantly, we know more about how to work in partnership to create some of the networks that are needed to make sure that people have access to food. For me, this really came into sharp relief during the pandemic. Small businesses are closing, kids can't get food at school. How do we make sure that we're still using these relationships that we've built over the last ten years? We were able to engage the community so quickly that within a week we were able to move onto some of the mobilizing resources stages of it. We were able to do things like implement advanced ordering and drive through pickup systems at two of our farmers' markets. So they never even had to close down during the lock downs around Covid.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Since topping the FRAC food hardship list in 2015, Greensboro fell to number 14 in the most recent study year. But the process of writing a book about some of these food justice strategies has brought up more questions than answers. Dr. Douglas wants to see a broader conversation moving forward.

7. NIESHA DOUGLAS: The more we thought about it, you know, we were, like, well is it really a food issue more than it is a poverty issue? You know, should we not address the fact that people are still making $7.25 cents an hour and still are paying $800 plus a month in rent, or still cannot afford childcare? You know, could we really say that food is the issue if we don't address those problems first? And then when people make more money or people have more residual income, that they do spend more money on good food. They want to make healthier choices. But I think these questions, it's something that we, as a collective, as a community could, you know, just really have, you know, deep and meaningful conversations about because any time we bring up poverty, nobody wants to talk about it.
8. NIESHA DOUGLAS: Nobody wants to talk about raising the minimum wage. Nobody wants to talk about income based housing. Nobody wants to talk about affordable health care. You can't put a Band Aid on a gunshot wound, because that's not the type of treatment or the type of medication that you need to treat that type of problem. Those are the type of conversations that I'm willing to lead, I'm willing to be a part of. I would like to see other things that happen surrounding the conversation of food.

JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Everybody Eats: Communication And The Paths To Food Justice is available now through University of California Press. For WFIU's Earth Eats, I'm Josephine McRobbie.

KAYTE YOUNG: Find more about the book and about the history of the Warnersville neighborhood at Eartheats.org. After a short break, producer Toby Foster takes us on a journey towards the perfect pizza. Stay with us.

TOBY FOSTER: One thing that I've really appreciated about my time working at Earth Eats so far is that I frequently get the chance to talk to someone who's really passionate about something. I love talking to someone who really wants to get into the nerdy details of a specific thing, even if it doesn't have anything to do with food. But it's even better when it does. For Pete Giordano, that thing is pizza. Ever since about the summer of 2020, all of my friends have been raving about Pete's pizza. It's something that he's been interested in for a while, but having just bought one of those gas powered outdoor pizza ovens, he really doubled down on during the pandemic. Pete and his wife Leslie also used this as a way to stay connected with others during that first pandemic summer, when they bought a stack of pizza boxes, so that they could bring them around to friends.

TOBY FOSTER: He started ordering his flour in 55 lb bags and managed to take a trip to Italy last year that, as far as I can tell, was basically just a challenge to see how many different types of pizza he could try. Pete and I have had mutual friends for a while now, and met briefly a few times, but I've never had the chance to try his handiwork. I decided to use my radio platform as an excuse to invite myself, my partner Ryan, and our friend Megan over for a little dinner party at Pete and Leslie's really lovely house bring Bryan Park. You'll hear them chiming in from time to time and a little bit in the background too. Pete was nice enough to make us six different pizzas, answer all my pizza questions and tell me about what he's learned and what the future might hold. After some snacks and some small talk, he took me into the kitchen and opened up a proofing box to show me six absolutely perfect looking balls of pizza dough.

PETE GIORDANO: Alright. So, the only ingredients in this dough: flour, water, salt and yeast. And the yeast is naturally occurring, so this is sour dough fermentation or natural fermentation. So really, the only ingredients that you have to buy at a store are flour and salt. And I keep the starter and keep that fed and then I use it to make this dough. Sometimes, like, once every two weeks.

TOBY FOSTER: So where does the starter live?

PETE GIORDANO: The starter lives in my fridge in a little contained and you can see it's practically ready to overflow, because it's all active from being fed today. And then I can basically just leave it in there for even more than a month. I've never had to leave it longer than that, because I always pizza again. But then I can just revive it whenever I want by feeding it again. It might overflow.

TOBY FOSTER: It might.

PETE GIORDANO: We'll see about that. I use Caputo double zero flour from Naples. It's a classic pizzeria flour in Naples. Generally for Neapolitan-style pizza that's cooked at a super high temperature, you want to use a different style of flour than, like, American bread flour because they react differently to the heat. So, this is the flour that has very little processing and very high heat tolerance and it's perfect for that super hot oven setting.

TOBY FOSTER: And that's what the double zero means?

PETE GIORDANO: Double zero refers to the fineness of the grind. So, it's super fine, because of that designation, which also helps make it be as smooth and glutenous as possible in the final dough.

TOBY FOSTER: So, is that hard to find in Bloomington?

PETE GIORDANO: I buy it in these 55 lb bags through, like, a restaurant store and I just get it shipped to me. Buying it in tiny bags, like, by weight, it's super expensive compared to giant bags, so.

TOBY FOSTER: Well, the doughs look very nice.

PETE GIORDANO: Yes.

TOBY FOSTER: So when did you start these?

PETE GIORDANO: Last night is when I started prepping the starter that ultimately went into these. This final dough has risen for about nine hours, which is kind of the classic for Neapolitan pizza because, in old school pizzerias in Naples, they didn't have refrigeration so there was no, like, super long fermented dough that's kept in the fridge. It was always just however long it kind of naturally ferments. It takes, like, eight plus hours and then it's ready to go.

TOBY FOSTER: So, these have been here for about nine hours and now what's our next step going to be?

PETE GIORDANO: So, now we're going to stretch it out and get ready to put on our peel. Alright, so we're going to use semolina flour out for the actual sheet pan. It's kind of just like little ball bearings, this coarse flour for the dough. It makes a great outer layer for the pizza to protect it from your hands and slide around on the peel. But it's not in the actual dough. The dough is just all double zero flour.

TOBY FOSTER: Got it.

PETE GIORDANO: Alright. Now, I'm just rotating it and stretching it out and letting the weight of the dough most stretch itself. In the colder months, it's a little stiffer, so it will probably take a little bit to get it perfectly stretched out.

TOBY FOSTER: So this is like mostly a pandemic hobby or did it start before that?

PETE GIORDANO: This hobby, for me, started a long time ago. Probably about 15 years ago when I was in my early 20s, living with my best friend as a roommate, and we started making pizza, just in the most, like, humble, like, Mom '80s way with his Mom's sauce recipe and making it in a sheet pan. But over the years I got more into gourmet food in general in my life and just had a lot more experiences with pizza, and I gradually got more and more serious about it and a really big game changer for me was when they invented these at home propane powered pizza ovens that can get up to 900°. It's a big change to not have to use a wood fired brick oven to make pizza like this. So, that kind of made it possible for me to start doing full on Neapolitan-style pizza.

TOBY FOSTER: And when did you get that?

PETE GIORDANO: I think I got that about three or four years ago. Maybe, like, 2019. Yes, definitely pandemic was a good time for me to practice making pizza as much as possible. Alright, we've got this all stretched out now, so this first one's going to be super simple. Just pizza marinara. In Italy, people typically just use tomatoes and salt, but I like a little bit of oregano and red pepper and garlic in here.

TOBY FOSTER: Is it a cooked sauce or just blended?

PETE GIORDANO: It is just straight out of the can. San Marzano tomatoes that have been very lightly processed to kind of smooth them out a little bit. We got this oregano in Italy from a little shop in Amalfi, so authentic oregano in the case too. I've got a little dried twig of it here and I'm just going to kind of crinkle it above the pizza. What do you think about the smell of that oregano? Very floral smelling. Different variety of oregano is gound in Southern Italy.

TOBY FOSTER: Despite being, as Pete said, just a little dry twig, the oregano is still very fragrant and the simplicity of this pizza really lets it stand out. The only topping left to add is garlic that has been sliced and soaking in olive oil.

PETE GIORDANO: Got a bunch of sliced garlic here from Rose Hill Farm Stop in Bloomington.

TOBY FOSTER: Chopped up and you've got it in some olive oil?

PETE GIORDANO: Yes. Just in a little olive oil here to keep it from burning and to infuse that oil.

TOBY FOSTER: Oh, okay.

PETE GIORDANO: Alright, my friend. This is pretty much good to go. A little olive oil to finish it off. I always salt everything at every stage. This is ready to go in the oven.

TOBY FOSTER: So, we're going to take this outside?

PETE GIORDANO: Let's take it outside.

TOBY FOSTER: Alright.

PETE GIORDANO: Here we are at the oven. Let's go ahead and turn the heat down a little bit, so we can slide the pizza in. This is 900° in the ambient air and this pizza is going to cook in less than two minutes because it's so hot.

TOBY FOSTER: I'm excited to see one of these in real life.

PETE GIORDANO: Yes.

TOBY FOSTER: I've seen ads for them and stuff, but.

PETE GIORDANO: They really live up to the hype, I have to say. I always have a knife out here and there's always one bubble that comes up that I have to pop with the knife. So, I just sit and wait for it.

TOBY FOSTER: So are you going to turn it halfway through or just leave it?

PETE GIORDANO: If we do it perfectly, we'll be able to turn it two times and get it all evenly cooked. Alright, look at that first crust.

TOBY FOSTER: Oh yes.

PETE GIORDANO: Got the signature leopard spots. I definitely don't mind if it's a little dark, but this is pretty perfect with the dark spots and the light crust.

TOBY FOSTER: Yes, that looks great. It's a fine line.

PETE GIORDANO: I didn't even know how many pizzas I had to attempt before I successfully made even one pizza in this oven. Every single one of them I was, like, smashing onto the front of it and, like, getting it stuck on parts of the oven and dropping them everywhere. When I started, I was making the dough way too wet, because I was making it using the same recipes that I used in a home oven and it was total chaos, resulting in dough all over the oven. The good thing is the oven gets so hot that it literally vaporizes anything that you, like, spill all over it. Alright, we're almost done. Going to heat up our tray.

TOBY FOSTER: Heat up the tray to not cool down the pizza too fast?

PETE GIORDANO: Yes, exactly. Alright, this is done. Look at that baby steaming away.

TOBY FOSTER: Yes, it looks amazing.

PETE GIORDANO: Alright, let's go in and taste it. Alright, let's cut it. We should hear a beautiful crunch is this is cooked correctly. There we go.

TOBY FOSTER: Is that the crunch you were looking for?

PETE GIORDANO: That's right. That sounded perfect. I've got to say, I'm not just saying this for your radio story, but I'm very, very happy with how these pizzas came out.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Okay. So, we have six pizzas, so we have to eat six slices. Okay.

PETE GIORDANO: After this first slice, I will allow subdivisions, so you can pace yourself.

TOBY FOSTER: It's true that there's not much better for a friendship than sharing a good meal together and this pizza really is something special. I'll admit I haven't been to Italy, but I've eaten my share of Naples-style pizza and Pete's stands up to any of them. The crust is flavorful and just dark enough, the tomatoes are bright and the oregano and garlic are given enough space to really come through. I would eat more, but there's still a lot of pizza yet to come. After a short break, I'll ask Pete about the San Marzano tomatoes he mentioned and he'll walk us through the steps of a few more pizzas, or five. Stick around.

TOBY FOSTER: Welcome back and thanks for listening to Earth Eats. I'm Toby Foster and I'm talking with Pete Giordano about making pizza at home. Pete uses a gas powered pizza oven that he sets up outside. We talked about the special double zero flour that he orders and the oregano he brought back from Italy, but I was curious about the type of tomatoes Pete uses. I've seen plenty of San Marzano-style tomatoes in the grocery store, but I was pretty sure this was something different.

PETE GIORDANO: San Marzano is a region and you can get DOP certified tomatoes, which the Italian government regulates them. Those are guaranteed to be from that region, but also, moreover, they're guaranteed to be canned and handled according to very strict regulations that make it as good as possible.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you get those locally?

PETE GIORDANO: Yes. They've got a bunch of brands of San Marzano tomatoes at Little Italy, which is amazing, because it's hard to find even one brand San Marzano tomatoes and they have, like, four or five at a time there.

RYAN: And there's lots of trickers out there, similar sort of style.

TOBY FOSTER: I was going to say, it's easy to find.

PETE GIORDANO: Yes. Oh my God, there's so many fake outs. There are these ones that, like, used to be very popular, that used to say "San Marzano" and they changed them so that they say "S M" and, you know, no doubt they're not from San Marzano anymore. That's why you've got to get the DOP certified. Get those bureaucrats in there to make sure everything is above water.

LESLIE: Oh, I think you can taste a little bit of the saltiness in the dough. That's always my favorite part about your pizzas.

PETE GIORDANO: I never hold back on the salt, you know what I mean? Salt is in both of my mantras. Flour, water, salt, yeast and salt, fat, acid, heat.

TOBY FOSTER: Once the first pizza is mostly gone, Pete takes me to the kitchen for pizza number two.

PETE GIORDANO: Time for Pizza Margarita. This is the classic. Alright, so we've gotten tomato sauce, then we've got the two traditional hard cheeses for pizza. Parmigiano Reggiano and Pecorino Romano. I like a blend of both of them. Put that on the bottom, so that it doesn't burn in the oven, beneath the mozzarella here.

TOBY FOSTER: I got you.

PETE GIORDANO: Alright, here's our mozzarella. Now, I know this is not fresh mozzarella in this case, because that fresh mozzarella at Kroger has been getting super expensive, so I've got some Galbani whole milk mozzarella here, which is maybe a little bit more what you would use for, like, New York style pizza. But I think this is the best value in Bloomington right now.

TOBY FOSTER: Crumbled, not shredded?

PETE GIORDANO: Yes. I like to crumble it like this in the food processor, because I kind of just, I like an even distribution and also it's very easy to do it in the food processor. And then we can do the basil. Some people like to just throw the basil leaves all over the place and see what happens, but I like to obsessively lay them out so that there's a perfect distribution on each slice. So, I'm ripping them up a little bit and then placing them perfectly here.

TOBY FOSTER: I like that you're generous with the basil as well.

PETE GIORDANO: Oh my God, people often put so little basil on.

TOBY FOSTER: What's the point?

PETE GIORDANO: I agree. Alright. We're ready to fire this one now.

TOBY FOSTER: Alright.

PETE GIORDANO: Slide in our first pizza with cheese here.

TOBY FOSTER: While the Margarita pizza was in the oven, I asked Pete about his trip to Italy last year. Judging from his Instagram photos, I think he might have eaten more pizza on that trip than I usually eat in an entire year.

PETE GIORDANO: That was a life-changing trip that I personally hadn't had the chance to go abroad since I was in college, which is, like, more than 15 years ago. So it was a big deal for us to get to go to Italy and we went to Rome and Naples and to Salerno and the Amalfi Coast, but it was a real pizza pilgrimage in Naples, especially where I got to go to some of the pizzerias that I've been seeing in videos and reading articles about for years and getting to eat at all those places myself was amazing. I even got to meet one of my idols in Italy, Enzo Coccia from La Notizia. A famous pizza maker, and he picked our pizzas for us at his restaurant and chatted with me, so that was a really special experience.

TOBY FOSTER: He just happened to be there or did you write to him ahead of time?

PETE GIORDANO: Well, we got there right as it opened, because I was worried we wouldn't be able to get a table at this legendary pizzeria. They opened at, like, seven and there were, like, no Italian people there yet. It was clearly too early for dinner, like, for an Italian person. So, it was surprisingly empty right at opening and he was there, like, meeting with the staff and after he finished his staff meeting I approached him and he was super chill and generous about me coming up and wanting to talk with him. I told him that I went to Italy to eat at his restaurant and that was pretty true, so he was very nice about it.

TOBY FOSTER: Was that the best pizza you had on the trip?

PETE GIORDANO: All of, like, the legendary places we went to really lived up to the hype and were just the highest possibly standard of quality with minor differences in, like, style between them, so I can't really pick one. Look at that Margarita.

TOBY FOSTER: That looks very good.

PETE GIORDANO: Oh my God man, it looks super good.

MEGAN: Are you sure it's okay if we cut them in half, so smaller slices.

PETE GIORDANO: Yes. Let me do this.

MEGAN: We have six pizzas to eat.

PETE GIORDANO: Yes.

LESLIE: We did learn that pretty quick, to cut them in half, because when he first started making them we were just, like, a whole piece, a whole piece. And then you get to the third one you're just like, oh my God.

TOBY FOSTER: The Margarita Pizza is another winner. The crumbled mozzarella did make it more of a New York style pizza, which I think I actually prefer, and the hot oven melted it in just the right way where a moment longer would have caused it to start to burn, but instead there's just a tiny bit of browning on top. I asked Leslie if she had any favorite pizzas from their trip.

LESLIE: They were all so good, but the very last one we had was in Salerno and it was yellow tomatoes, basil, lemon and ricotta. The lemon and the tomatoes were so amazing and it was the last pizza and then we left.

PETE GIORDANO: That was at Rodolfo Sorbillo's in Salerno and I think my favorite pizza was at his uncle's pizzeria, Gino Sorbillo's in Naples. So, that was the family, the Sorbillos.

TOBY FOSTER: I guess this is what I mean about talking to someone who really wants to nerd out on the details of a particular obsession. It's so rare to find something that you like so much that you want to know which pizzeria owner is related to which other pizzeria owners. There's a joy to it that can be really infectious if you let it. Pete also printed out a menu for the evening, which I found to be really charming. Next up is another simple pie with potatoes and rosemary.

PETE GIORDANO: Alright, so here's a topping that not many Americans are familiar with. A pizza with nothing but potatoes and olive oil and rosemary. This is a signature pizza topping in Rome. Pizza Con Patate. And we're going to do a version of it here.

TOBY FOSTER: So, it looks like you've got gold potatoes. Did you use a mandolin or a food processor?

PETE GIORDANO: Yes, I used the mandolin to slice these Yukon Gold potatoes and I've got them all coated in olive oil. They're super thin. I'm just going to lay them all over the surface of the dough here. A lot of people think this pizza is going to be weird, because it's just putting a starch on another starch, believe it or not, the texture, like the potatoes kind of crisp and curl up a little bit and the flavor of the olive oil, the salt and the potato is enough to carry it.

TOBY FOSTER: You salted them already or is that after?

PETE GIORDANO: I have not salted these yet, because it might leech a lot of water out of them and I just want to leave them intact here.

TOBY FOSTER: So, you've got the whole thing covered in basically a single layer with them overlapping maybe just a tiny bit.

PETE GIORDANO: Yes. And I've put a few more on, just because there's a few more potatoes and I don't want to waste them. But it's pretty much ready to go here. The last thing, which is crucial, is to put some kind of fresh herb on this that complements potatoes and the classic is rosemary, but you can also use thyme. You've got heavy rosemary, just like a heavy basil. Alright, lots of Maldon sea salt. A little black pepper, why not? It's very much out of black pepper. It's fine.

TOBY FOSTER: Just really just a little.

PETE GIORDANO: Why not? Or, you know, why at all really? Alright, what do you think man? Ready to go?

TOBY FOSTER: I think it looks great. I'm really impressed by how much you can stretch it with all the stuff on it. It really holds up.

PETE GIORDANO: Yes, because when it's weighed down, that really helps actually stretch it out that last bit.

PETE GIORDANO: Push a little bit of that ash off of the plate here. Probably don't have to worry about bubbles forming on this one, because it's got heavy potatoes weighing it down.

TOBY FOSTER: Was this something that you've made before your trip to Italy or did you learn about this there?

PETE GIORDANO: I read about this type of pizza, so I was familiar with it. It made a big difference being able to see what I was reading about though.

TOBY FOSTER: Do you have any pizza book recommendations? There's been a couple kind of recently that have come out that are, like, expansive.

PETE GIORDANO: Oh yes. Well, there's one book that I feel quite strongly about, because it really helps me understand, not just, like, the recipes, but the fundamentals of, like, why the recipes were the way that they are and that's helped me get further with my pizza making in the long run. That book is "The Elements Of Pizza" by Ken Forkish. The recipes are intended for a normal home oven, rather than one of these super hot ovens. But, even still, I mean, it was really just learning the fundamentals from that book that made it possible to make these pizzas too.

TOBY FOSTER: Do you have any tips for making a pizza in a home oven?

PETE GIORDANO: I think using a pizza steel helps. That's a nice accessory to have something really hot to cook on.

TOBY FOSTER: Is that the same as a pizza stone?

PETE GIORDANO: It's the same concept and it looks similar, but it's stronger, sturdier and it gets hotter and it distributes the heat more evenly, so it's like a pizza stone, but it works a little better. I think the most important thing though to making pizza at home is probably just the method and the recipes and to that point that book, "The Elements Of Pizza" is perfect. The big difference between pizza made in a home oven and pizza made in this kind of oven is going to be the hydration level, because the longer something cooks in an oven, even at a lower temperature, the more evaporation there's going to be. So, you need a lot more water to start in a pizza that cooks for ten minutes. Pizza that cooks for two minutes needs very little water in it, because there's not much chance for evaporation. That was what really doomed my first, like, 20 pizzas in this oven was them being so wet. But now I understand that really well, because I had all those learning experiences.

TOBY FOSTER: Even though the pizza has only been cooking for about a minute, the potatoes are starting to curl up on the edges and brown a little bit. Almost as if we're watching a time lapse video of them turning into potato chips.

PETE GIORDANO: You wouldn't think necessarily that it's possible to cook a potato in two minutes and have it be done, but they're so thin and the oven is so hot that they truly are going to be perfectly cooked. Yes.

TOBY FOSTER: It looks great. Just a little bit of browning on some of the parts, but yes, it smells so good.

TOBY FOSTER: We all sit down to enjoy and then it's time for pizza number four.

PETE GIORDANO: This is my wife and I's favorite white pizza. A pizza with ricotta and no red sauce. So, I'm putting some ricotta on the dough now first and I've seasoned this ricotta with a little bit of lemon juice and salt and pepper and then we're going to top this with a little more cheese, some kale that also has olive oil and lemon juice on it and some pickled red onions.

PETE GIORDANO: This is like your signature pie?

PETE GIORDANO: This is more of a signature pie, yes. We call this one the Sesame Street because I forgot to say it also has sesame seeds on it.

TOBY FOSTER: Oh, okay.

PETE GIORDANO: Alright. So, we'll hit it with a little bit of the hard cheese for a little salt. Put a little mozzarella on there. It kind of blends in with the ricotta. Alright, so I've got the red onions here. I just cut this red onion up and poured boiling half vinegar and half water over it with a generous pinch of sugar and salt.

TOBY FOSTER: Nice.

PETE GIORDANO: That's it. It's ready to go in a couple of hours. Squeezing all the juice out of these pickled onions, so they don't make the pizza soggy. Look at that color. They're so bright.

TOBY FOSTER: What kind of vinegar did you use?

PETE GIORDANO: This is just your, like, Menards floor stripping vinegar.

TOBY FOSTER: Nice.

PETE GIORDANO: This is white distilled vinegar. Just for kind of a neutral vinegar flavor here though. Plus it's dirt cheap, so it's good for pickling.

TOBY FOSTER: They are a very nice color.

PETE GIORDANO: It's going to look like a lot of kale, but it all shrinks down and shrivels up, so just dump this dressed kale all over it. Every element we try to make flavorful before and after.

TOBY FOSTER: It looks good.

PETE GIORDANO: Alright. Oh wow, listen to that kale popping. It's all the water in the vegetables. It's just evaporating and bursting there. Another thing that I, like, ruined a lot of pizzas at first was trying to put them in because, I don't know, I guess I just wasn't doing it smooth and confidently enough with the peel.

TOBY FOSTER: It seems like you have to not be afraid.

PETE GIORDANO: Yes. You've just got to stick it in there.

TOBY FOSTER: While the Sesame Street cooks, I ask Pete if he has any interest in moving this from a home obsession to a pop-up or a food truck someday.

PETE GIORDANO: I have thought about that. I'm not too sure yet, when and where that might happen. But it's something that I'm kind of workshopping now. It's a scary thing to make a living from food, as I'm sure you can relate to my friend, you know?

TOBY FOSTER: Yes, a big jump for sure to go from just doing it for fun and friends.

PETE GIORDANO: Yes. But I could see something in-between with the pop-ups. It doesn't have to be my whole professional life, but it could be more than just the home. Alright, look at that. The kale's perfect now. It's kind of burnt. A little burnt but still perfect.

TOBY FOSTER: I do hope that Pete is able to turn his pizzas into a business someday. At least to some extent. As he kind of alluded to, I used to own a restaurant, so I know that it can be extremely challenging, but also extremely rewarding. Although it's true that the kale is a little bit burnt, the combination is another success, with the earthiness of the kale balancing against the lemon and the pickled red onions adding some extra acidity that I think a white pie sometimes lacks. At this point though, I'm also starting to worry how I will manage to eat any more pizza.

PETE GIORDANO: Here's one of my favorite pizzas. I call this one Double Dracula, because it has garlic on it in two ways. I've got roasted garlic that I roasted in advance and that's, like, soft and smooshy. I'll just kind of smear some of that in different spots. But then I've also got slices of garlic, fresh garlic in olive oil, and I'll sprinkle those on the top and they'll cook in the oven. So, we'll have the two types of garlic and then I'll also put hot honey on it at the end, which is honey that's infused with chili peppers. Other than that, it's a normal tomato and cheese pizza. Here's our roasted garlic. This is always hard to distribute evenly because it's really soft. I'm just going to break it into little pieces and drop them wherever. Now let's get the second kind of garlic in there, sliced garlic. It's going to be really garlicky. I've got a lot of this left, so it's all that.

TOBY FOSTER: I'm a fan.

PETE GIORDANO: We've got all this olive oil that's got garlic flavor all over it. Look at that. Oh yes.

TOBY FOSTER: Beautiful.

PETE GIORDANO: Alright, let's do it. There you go. Let's pop that bubble. It's getting big. And if you let the bubble get too big and it bursts on its own, then you might have a hole in the bottom where the crust is and that's a big pain in the butt. This one might have a little hole in it, but I think it's holding together well enough to be fine.

TOBY FOSTER: And then we're going to put the honey on at the end?

PETE GIORDANO: Yes. Put the honey on at the end, because it's sensitive to the heat and would get obliterated in there. Just one more second. Alright.

PETE GIORDANO: So, it has the honey on it. This is the Double Dracula. Two kinds of garlic, roast and sliced, and they're hot.

TOBY FOSTER: Somehow I missed that this pizza is named the Double Dracula because of the garlic and Dracula being a vampire until a few weeks later. Although, wouldn't Dracula not want to eat this pizza? Anyway, it tastes great whatever it's called. The last pizza of the night was listed as a mystery box on the menu and was sort of an amalgamation of all the other pizzas.

PETE GIORDANO: This might be the first bad pizza.

TOBY FOSTER: I also later learned that there's always six pizzas because, for some reason, when Pete tries to make any other number of pizzas, the dough doesn't turn out right. I'm not sure why. He sent it home with us because we were all too full to eat anymore and it was great the next day. When I came over to record Pete making pizzas, my friends gave me a little bit of a hard time about it. What's the story they asked? Local man likes pizza? Which, I mean, yes, but there's also something special about someone putting so much time and care and energy into learning how to make something really well and then sharing that with others. A lot has changed about how we eat over the last few years. Some people got used to just getting food delivered to their door each day, some of us got used to the experience of going to the grocery store and seeing a certain shelf just completely empty for some reason.

TOBY FOSTER: We've waited for our food to arrive at woefully understaffed restaurants and heard restaurant owners complain, with varying degrees of sincerity, that no-one wants to work when, in fact, people just don't want to work in certain conditions that were overdue for a change. And a lot of us went a long time without attending a dinner party, which is one of my favorite things to do. So, it's not something that I take for granted anymore. And I feel lucky to have been able to share such great food with such great friends. And I also happened to learn quite a bit about pizza.

PETE GIORDANO: Alright, mystery box pizza, not a huge deal. It's similar to that other one, but it's got tomato sauce. So, have some if you care for it. There we go.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm going to eat it.

TOBY FOSTER: Yes, thanks again for making us so much pizza.

PETE GIORDANO: My pleasure. This is so fun. Thank you guys.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm always down to eat your pizza.

KAYTE YOUNG: That's it for our show this week. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

DANIELLA RICHARDSON: Earth Eats is produced and edited by Kayte Young, with help from Eobon Binder, Alex Chambers, Mark Chilla, Toby Foster, Abraham Hill, Samantha Schemenaur, Payton Whaley, Harvest Public Media and me, Daniella Richardson.

KAYTE YOUNG: Special thanks this week to Pete Giordano, Leslie Nagle, Brian Woods and Megan McDonald.

DANIELLA RICHARDSON: Our theme music is composed by Erin Toby and performed by Erin and Matt Toby. Additional music on the show comes to us from the artists at Universal Production Music. Our Executive Producer is John Bailey.