# A Pizza Legacy - Ham & Pineapple. What's Your Favorite? Where do you get it?



## OnlyMyOpinion (Sep 1, 2013)

Sam Panopoulos passed away in London, Ont at age 83. Sam is credited with inventing the ham & pineapple pizza at his Satellite Restaurant in Chaham in 1962. His family can take some comfort in the pizza legacy he leaves behind. 
http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-man-who-is-credited-with-creating-the-hawaiian-pizza-dies-in-london-1.3452570

I love ham & pineapple (often use lean capicola instead of ham though). My wife wouldn't touch it, even when I tell her that pineapple aids in your digestion. We make our own, usully Friday nite. We use nann bread though, tomato sauce (from our own tomatoes in season), fried onions and red peppers, mozzarella cheese, capicola and pineapple (on mine).
For years with the kids, we used to buy from Little Caesars. Don't think I could go back to it now.

I wonder if Sam went downhill after the president of Iceland's comments earlier this year?
*President of Iceland wants to ban pineapple on pizza*
_Gudni Th. Johannesson hates Hawaiian pizza so much that he'd ban pineapple on pizza if he was able to pass any law he'd like, according to local news channel Visir. Johannesson made the polarizing declaration during a recent school visit in Akureyri, Iceland's second biggest city. The president told the children he was "firmly opposed" to fruit on his pizza._
http://www.wellandtribune.ca/2017/02/21/president-of-iceland-wants-to-ban-pineapple-on-pizza

OMG, it occurs to me, I wonder if he has some sort of sea food on his pizza? :nightmare:

What's your favorite? Where do you buy it, or do you make it?


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## OnlyMyOpinion (Sep 1, 2013)

One of the best pizzas we ever had was at Pizza Pie in Radda in Chianti, Italy. But I admit the ambience and copious local wine may have influenced our judgment.


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## olivaw (Nov 21, 2010)

We make our own once per week too. We like the simple pizzas - marguerita, ham and tomato, pepperoni etc. We don't make Hawaiian (ham and pineapple) but we do eat it now and then. 

I haven't had pizza in Chianti or anything fanky-smancy like that. 
But I remember heading out with friends for Pizza in Montreal as a teen. Many good memories.


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## SMK (Dec 10, 2015)

A bit expensive but great! http://www.camarra.com/


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

If I buy pizza anywhere other than Italy my first choice is "Hawaiian" and second choice "Canadian". Is it ironic that "Hawaiian" pizza was actually invented in Canada while "Canadian" bacon is not what we'd consider bacon?

I spent a month in Hawaii last year and while they have adopted Hawaiian pizza for the tourists it was clearly not considered true Hawaiian cuisine such as poke, acai bowls or loco moco etc. I didn't know it was invented in Ontario

There isn't much choice for pizza where I live so I also learned to perfect my own. I can make dough from scratch but I usually buy it, local made sauce, local pepperoni, local ham, green peppers, mushrooms, and local cheese.

Motorbiking through Italy my staple meal was usually a calzone, although I had to learn to pronounce it properly or I would have starved. I think the traditional Italian pizzas are the best but I also like our American bastardizations.


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## Eder (Feb 16, 2011)

I love ham & pineapple although I substitute cooked bacon for the ham & only use real pineapple...not the canned stuff. So bacon & pineapple....ya!


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## Mukhang pera (Feb 26, 2016)

It's been awhile since we have had any store-bought pizza around our place. We like ham & pineapple (or, as suggested, lean capicola or some other substitute), but it's not always easy to find good fresh pineapple, suitable for the task. Canned always tastes canned. My wife grew up where it grew in the backyard, so she's a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to pineapple.

So she tends to make pizza with whatever is in season, or in our garden. She does not follow any particular recipe and it's never the same twice. She usually makes 2 at any given time, with each one different. She makes really good pizza dough, letting it rise twice (usually once overnight) before baking, and it comes out being the kind of crust you want to eat on its own. No pizza crusts thrown out around here! She also varies the dough formula, different flours, etc., for interesting variety. 




OnlyMyOpinion said:


> OMG, it occurs to me, I wonder if he has some sort of sea food on his pizza? :nightmare:
> 
> What's your favorite? Where do you buy it, or do you make it?


Given the above comment about seafood, perhaps I should not say this, but some of our best pizza here _is_ seafood pizza. We live on the ocean and salmon, prawns, crab, oysters, etc. are there for the taking year round. My wife likes to use the local seafood. Often, instead of baking it in the wood-fired cookstove, she bakes it, covered, on our barbecue. We do not use gas or charcoal, but local alder wood. It gives the seafood a mild, smoky flavour than cannot be had otherwise.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

Someday I'm going to motorbike to the west coast to sit on mukhang pera's doorstep until they offer some of their fresh seafood pizza smoked over local alder wood. Although I may have to find a means of water transportation because I vaguely recall they live on an extremely remote impossible to find island. I'll bring any alder wood and seafood I find along the way.


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## OnlyMyOpinion (Sep 1, 2013)

Mukhang pera said:


> ... Given the above comment about seafood...


I don't condemn it, just not my thing. Nice that you can vary toppings with the availability of fresh local.
_

...Someday I'm going to motorbike to the west coast to sit on mukhang pera's doorstep until they offer some of their fresh seafood pizza smoked over local alder wood..._
It does sound terrific!

I've tried some odd ones like sliced pear, feta and spinach. In a salad ok, on a pizza no thanks.

I nearly forgot the kalamata olives! Probably because I tend to eat them before they get to the pizza.


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## Mukhang pera (Feb 26, 2016)

m3s said:


> Someday I'm going to motorbike to the west coast to sit on mukhang pera's doorstep until they offer some of their fresh seafood pizza smoked over local alder wood. Although I may have to find a means of water transportation because I vaguely recall they live on an extremely remote impossible to find island. I'll bring any alder wood and seafood I find along the way.


You'd be welcome to show up sans alder & seafood. Plenty right here. As for water transportation, as well as making a rather fine pizza, my SO has her own boat and is a fair skipper (see photo). She might be talked into coming to fetch ya'!








But we _are_ remote. If we were closer to civilization, I might suggest to my wife that she start her own pizza business. I have not been to Italy, but to quite a few other countries and most states and provinces. I have not eaten pizza in all of my travels, but quite a few. Maybe it's bias, but I find my wife's products to be about as good as it gets.


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## aircon (Jun 10, 2017)

Ham and pineapple with a splash of Tabacso!


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## twa2w (Mar 5, 2016)

Isn't the president of Iceland married to a Canadian?

On a NSFW note, pineapple is reputed to make certain bodily secretions taste much better.


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

Mukhang pera said:


> But we _are_ remote. If we were closer to civilization, I might suggest to my wife that she start her own pizza business ... Maybe it's bias, but I find my wife's products to be about as good as it gets.




a wild thought. How about flying out frozen or fresh product twice a week on the oyster runs?

it would be another island industry
if the market can't come to you, then take the product to the market

there's a chef specializing in la gastronomie forestière who sells everthing frozen at montreal's big jean talon farmers' market. Fiddleheads, all kinds of edible mushrooms, nettle soups, wild asparagus quiche with wild garlic, sea weeds from the gaspésie. Prices are high. Flavours are out of this world. Sales are brisk.

wild, very wild .each:


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## Eder (Feb 16, 2011)

Mukhang pera said:


> . We live on the ocean and salmon, prawns, crab, oysters, etc. are there for the taking year round. My wife likes to use the local seafood. /QUOTE]
> 
> The areas in the Broken Group were all posted red tide ...we figured the oysters were safe by touching the flesh to our tongue and see if any numbness resulted. Not sure its the best method but Parks seems to permanently post red tide warnings everywhere these days rather than actually testing the waters before posting.
> I did not put the oysters on pizza though...heated on the bbq till opened...shot of Tabasco,Worcester...down the gullet.


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## Mukhang pera (Feb 26, 2016)

Eder said:


> The areas in the Broken Group were all posted red tide ...we figured the oysters were safe by touching the flesh to our tongue and see if any numbness resulted. Not sure its the best method but Parks seems to permanently post red tide warnings everywhere these days rather than actually testing the waters before posting.
> I did not put the oysters on pizza though...heated on the bbq till opened...shot of Tabasco,Worcester...down the gullet.


Yes, our area is also posted and has been for a few weeks or so. My wife works part-time for a local aquaculture outfit and part of their operation is in a posted area. They are not shipping bivalves from there at present, but they do some of their own testing and very often when Fisheries closes an area, the company tests show no problem. 

There is no doubt these days that Fisheries tends to "over post" as you suggest. I accept that they cannot test every possible locale and they have to take a somewhat broad brush approach. That is also no doubt due to the modern attitude of the masses, who wish to take no responsibility for themselves. If someone eats a wild clam or oyster and develops PSP, they'll be hollering that big government did not warn them and so the taxpayers must pay millions in compensation for a tummy ache.


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## steve41 (Apr 18, 2009)

I am right on the water, next to an oyster lease. When I first moved here, I would have fresh oysters three times a week. It is not on my agenda now.... you get tired of them after a while. Clams too.


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## Mukhang pera (Feb 26, 2016)

steve41 said:


> I am right on the water, next to an oyster lease. When I first moved here, I would have fresh oysters three times a week. It is not on my agenda now.... you get tired of them after a while. Clams too.


Well, one can tire of just about anything, some things more readily than others. We probably eat fewer clams than any of the other local shellfish. We now tend to use them only for the occasional chowder. Oysters and mussels we tend to use more, but in part because they lend themselves to a greater variety of modes of preparation. Probably our favourite though would be the local scallops, even though we don't do anything fancier with them most of the time than slip a few on the barbie when grilling steak, or salmon, or just about anything.


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## Koogie (Dec 15, 2014)

Most people are disgusted by it but where I grew up, we often put yellow mustard on the pizza crust instead of tomato sauce. When cooked, yellow mustard goes brown and creamy. Good with meat toppings, onion and strong cheeses.

I have always held that the measure of any good pizza place was in their pizza margherita. There is no hiding when the ingredients are so few. Perfect crust, perfect sauce, fresh mozza and fresh basil. When done right is sublime. When done wrong is terrible. Most places do it wrong (cheap out)...


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## jdc (Feb 1, 2016)

If you want good pizza, make it yourself. Get yourself a Baking Steel http://www.bakingsteel.com/ and use Jim Lahey's no-knead pizza dough recipie (google it), and broil it in your oven. With a little practice, you'll be making pizza that is every bit as good as an Italian wood oven.

Edit: PS: The 72 hour dough recipe on the baking steel site is actually the way that I make Jim Lahey's dough. It does get much better after some time in the refrigerator. 

http://www.bakingsteel.com/blog/72-hour-pizza-dough


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## Ihatetaxes (May 5, 2010)

jdc said:


> If you want good pizza, make it yourself. Get yourself a Baking Steel http://www.bakingsteel.com/ and use Jim Lahey's no-knead pizza dough recipie (google it), and broil it in your oven. With a little practice, you'll be making pizza that is every bit as good as an Italian wood oven.
> 
> Edit: PS: The 72 hour dough recipe on the baking steel site is actually the way that I make Jim Lahey's dough. It does get much better after some time in the refrigerator.
> 
> http://www.bakingsteel.com/blog/72-hour-pizza-dough


You beat me too it. Was about to comment if you want a good homemade pizza this weekend, make the dough on Thursday and throw it in an oiled Tupperware in the fridge for a few days. There isn't a decent pizza place on the planet that uses dough made the same day. I sometimes go 5-7 days for a nice fermented dough. Great crust, good chew, etc. and easy to work.

Best pizzas I make are on my charcoal BBQ using a pizza stone and a kettle pizza conversion... https://www.kettlepizza.com/

Can easily see 700+ degrees with a few chunks of hardwood on top of the charcoal. Pizza cooks in under 3 minutes.

In the winter I use a large heavy dark coloured rectangle pan on the very bottom of the oven set at 500. Very good results but 21-23 minutes cook time.


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## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

I have been getting hungry reading the posts. 

Having been to Italy, and was so excited to have the pizza, I was sadly disappointed as we went to this little cafe on a side street where I am sure there were three generations cooking. We ordered a couple of pizzas, and had a soggy fall apart pizza, with some strange toppings. Determined that I must have ordered wrong we tried again , and it wasn't very good. The next day, thinking it was just a bad luck in restaurants, we found a different little cafe in a a city city. Again, different but it was not very good. I don't know what was wrong that time, but I am determined to have a good pizza from Italy. That's on my bucket list when the kids are a little older.

Our most memorable Aka good pizza is Rays in NYC, not Rays Original, Famous Rays, or Rays Famous, but just Ray's We look bed the large pieces that you could just fold in half like a sandwich, with the right amount of sauce, and cheese that has enough 'stringy goo'. I wonder if they are still there. 

We generally make our own pizzas, I am still trying to get a good thin crust. I do double Rise, but my crust just isn't roght. For toppings, like MP wife, pizzas are seldomly the same. BBQ Chicken pizza, Thai with peanut sauce, pesto with chicken, a became sauce with seafood (I love a good seafood pizza). We use up whatever is around, left over sauces from dinner. Butter chicken pizza is amazing and a favourite. We like back bacon and pineapple too, but seldom make it because there are just too many choices. 

I would love to BBQ the pizza too, my friend insists on smoking it first then finishing on the grill.


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## BeautifulAngel (Jun 30, 2017)

I love ham, sausage, and extra cheese! I love getting it from Pizza Hut and getting the stuffed crust. YUM!!


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