Pizza is one of those foods that elicits sharply emotional responses from diners, especially when you throw in the phrase “New York-style.” There are a handful of relatively new independent pizza spots around town that all feature a thin crust, and it’s their supporters and detractors out there in the blogosphere and message-board-land that are so quick to mention NYC. I thought that a native New Yorker who is also a master baker and chef would be the perfect person to drag along on my indie pizza crawl, someone who not only grew up eating slices in all of the boroughs of the Big Apple but who understands the chemistry of the crust.

Art Meyer and I decided that in a search for the perfect thin-crust pizza, a half-plain/half-Italian sausage pie was the ideal canvas to judge. All of these spots offer much more complicated and exotic combinations, but a basic pizza reveals the finer nuances of the crust, the sauce, and the cheese: the holy trinity of pizza perfection.

This article appears in November 14 • 2008.

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Mick Vann is a retired Austin chef who is a food writer and restaurant critic, cookbook author, restaurant consultant, and recipe developer. He moonlights as a University of Texas horticulturist with a propensity for ethnic eats and international food, particularly of the Asian persuasion, but he also knows his way around a plate of soul food or barbecue.