It's a question as old as Lombardi's: just what is it that makes New York City's pizza so special? For many New Yorkers, the answer is the water. But whether that's actually the magic ingredient behind the city's most iconic dish has been debated for decades.
New York City's tap water has long been considered some of the best in the world, and the State Department of Environmental Conservation even brags that the watershed produces "the Champagne of drinking water." With that title under its belt, it's no wonder that many point to the tap water as the key ingredient to New York City pizza's tasty crusts.
"Water is the one main ingredient that has a huge effect on the taste of the crust," said Paul Errigo, an entrepreneur from New Jersey.
Errigo's company makes a device called the New York WaterMaker, which he says can make any tap water mimic New York City's by adding in the right minerals and tweaking the pH balance. And there's a surprisingly large market for pizzerias around the world that are looking to make their slices as authentic as possible.
"There's a pizza franchise that ships water literally from New York City to Ghana," said Errigo.
But for others in the industry, like pizza historian and tour guide Scott Weiner, the laser-focus on water is far from the whole story. In fact, Weiner thinks putting all the emphasis on what comes out of the tap gives too much credit to the ingredients and not the pizzamakers themselves.
"If every pizza in New York was great, then maybe there could be some truth going on," said Weiner. "But I have to say, out of the 2,000-some-odd pizzerias that exist there, most of them are places that I wouldn't necessarily say are outstanding. And they're all using the same water."
New York City's water also isn't static. Weiner points out that what's in the water changes all the time, and there have been so many changes to the city's watershed over the last 50 years that it can't be the magic bullet to New York's pizza supremacy.
Yet, water does add something to the mix. Pizza dough is one of the simplest breads a baker can make, using only flour, water and yeast. According to Jansen Chan, director of the International Culinary Center's Pastry Department, that means whatever's in the water will have a stronger impact on the final product than something more complicated, like a cake or a muffin. However, there's an important part of the pizza-making process that he thinks gets overlooked time after time: where the dough is made.
The reason any bread rises is thanks to gases produced by the yeast as they feed on nutrients in the bread and in the air.
"Whether it be in the kitchen, or if it's by the ocean, all those things [and even] the air that we breathe, go into that dough," Chan said.
So really, what makes New York pizza great, is New York City itself.