Slice Highlight: Slice on Broadway & Their Delicious Tomato Pie

Slice on Broadway is well documented for their craft and passion for pizza. Rico, the owner, routinely delivers a delicious pie. Whether he's playing around with artisan ingredients or serving up hundreds of slices to hungry Pirate fans, you can rely on Slice on Broadway's quality. When I saw they serving up sicilian pies at their PNC Park location I knew I had to stop down.

Sicilian Pizza is on the rise. I'm not sure if it's out of boredom, but I'm noticing more pizza makers experimenting with a dough that's ferments a bit longer and rises to the edge of a very deep pan. 

Rico is always tinkering around and his latest masterpiece is this Sicilian pizza that's only available on Fridays. 

Here's the Tomato Pie waiting to be plucked from it's habitat.This cross-section exposes every aspect of the pizza. The liquid parts of the crushed tomatoes have seeped into the browned crust, leaving behind a tomato laminate. On top of that is a healthy dose of parmesan cheese and oregano.

After one bite of this pizza you'll realize how flavorful a pizza can be without cheese. The sprinkle of parmesan offers a nice bite, but the crushed tomatoes mixed with oregano and savory crust fill your mouth with flavor.

Like any great sicilian, there's a nice crunch followed by a cushion of dough. Now, this isn't as soft in the middle of other sicilians I've had. It's actually quite hearty. It avoids tasting too much like a hunk of sourdough bread, which isn't easy to do.  As it turns out sourdough bread and sicilian dough are molecularly quite similar.

I'd highly recommend the tomato pie to anyone that wanders into Slice on Broadway on a Friday. The crushed tomatoes are flesh and flavorful, and there's just enough seasoning to bring out bold flavors. 

Kudos to Rico and his team for delivering a delicious and well-rounded sicilian pie. I look forward to making Slice a part of my Friday lunch ritual!

Pizza Taglio's Sicilian Pizza

Tony at Pizza Taglio is constantly testing out new things in his pizza kitchen. Some days he'll bring out a plate of cheeses from exotic locales, other days he's working on perfecting a calzone filled with ricotta and nutella. 

I was lucky enough to be hanging out in Tony's kitchen the night he made Sicilian pizza. The dough rose for two days and was cooked in a pan, giving it a crispy exterior and a soft interior. With a smile on his face he told me how bewildered pizza eaters are to find that the cheese goes underneath the sauce in a Sicilian pie. 

"Little do they know it's to prevent the cheese from burning." Genius. And look - it bubbles up to the top naturally.

You can watch a video of the pizza being made up above. It's a tiered process—as the pizza cooks you add more items on top of it. In total it took about 20 minutes to cook a single pie.

I couldn't keep my mits off it. It was crunchy and soft. The sauce was made a few hours before. The sauce contained a single anchovy. I don't know if it made a difference, perhaps because the total package was so delicious. I didn't have time to think about the effects a single fish could have on an amazing pizza. Thinking about it now...is it possible a single fish could impact the flavor of the pizza? Hmm...

I hope this becomes a staple of Pizza Taglio's menu. It's the perfect pizza to share with pals. As you work your way towards the center you find yourself in the midst of a pizza mess. Sauce and cheese gloop every which way. It's then that you drop your guard and simply enjoy the pizza. No need to worry about a mess or looking good for whomever. A deliciously sloppy pizza will warm your spirit and instill pizza confidence into your soul.