Hot and cold

I’ve just polished off a cold slice of Godfather-with-extra-cheese pizza for breakfast (and I didn’t even have a wine last night!).

I’m not prepared to get into a discussion about whether liking Domino’s is lame or not (there are worse brands). However, I am eager to defend my position on preferred pizza temperature.

Don’t get me wrong – hot, freshly cooked pizza when you are ravenous rocks. However, micro-zapped morning-after pizza tastes like wet cardboard, however luscious the topping, especially if you have the hangover from hell.

One person in my household thinks cold pizza is disgusting. That person is wrong. Serendipitously, it turns out that there is actually science behind cold pizza’s deliciousness.

A Scottish chemistry lecturer, Dr Maureen Cooper, from Stirling University, says cold morning-after pizza tastes so good because of the watery properties of the tomato puree.

A traditional pizza base has fibres that trap water, preventing it from seeping through to the cooked dough and making it soggy. Given that fat and water do not mix, the melted cheese topping then sits nicely above the puree.

‘Because the fat does not go through to the base, the pizza itself tastes so much better,’ Maureen says.

So there you have it, floating fat is the secret to the deliciosity of cold pizza (I'm glad I ate before I discovered that.)

Image: Suat Eman