Andrew Bellucci, Pizza Visionary With a Troubled Past, Dies at 59
His obsession with recreating the original New York pizza helped revive a classic and inspire a generation of chefs. But his ambitions led to conflicts and, once, prison.https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/dining/andrew-bellucci-dead.html
https://archive.is/IN1LC
Andrew Bellucci, who in the 1990s became one of the first chefs in New York City to achieve fame for pizza, then lost his job and reputation when an old crime caught up with him, only to return more than two decades later to a city full of pizzaioli inspired by his artisanal, traditionalist approach, died on Wednesday in Queens. He was 59. He collapsed from heart failure while working at his restaurant, Andrew Bellucci’s Pizzeria, in Astoria, said Matthew Katakis, his business partner. He was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later.
Mr. Bellucci’s pizzas first won attention when he worked at Lombardi’s, a revival of a venerable coal-fired pizzeria on Spring Street in Little Italy. Nancy Silverton, Todd English and other chefs came to to taste his pizza, which was a far cry from the foldable, gold-and-orange and mostly interchangeable slices sold across the city. Ms. Silverton was especially impressed by a pie topped with fresh clams, garlic, oregano and olive oil.
“The glory is the crust: light, thin, crisp yet elastic, blackened and blistered and full of the smoky flavor that comes from the coal oven,” Eric Asimov wrote in a review in The New York Times in 1995. New York pizza had long been celebrated, but its origins were obscure, its techniques little understood and its makers unknown to all but a few regulars. Mr. Bellucci saw things differently.
He had learned the craft of pizza in the East Village, baking pies at Two Boots and then Three of Cups, now closed. But he learned the lore of pizza at the public library, where he spent his off hours poring over old phone books, newspapers and advertisements. Mr. Bellucci’s reading convinced him that the first pizza in the United States had been baked in a coal-fired oven on Spring Street by Gennaro Lombardi, an immigrant from Naples. Transfixed, he began nosing around Little Italy until, on Spring Street, he located a vacant bakery with a coal-burning oven. He kept searching until he found Mr. Lombardi’s grandson, also named Gennaro, and persuaded him to put the family name on a pizzeria with the oven he had found. Mr. Bellucci would make the pies.
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related:
A Life-Changing Clam Pizza
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/dining/nyc-pizza-guide-best-clam-pie.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Here is an illustration explaining how it works. This has been the case since prehistory. You can see this type oven in pompeii, for example. The fire is at the back of the oven. It draws room air IN at the oven opening and OUT the vent/chimney.
I use oil under the crust, with black pepper. I don't know if I've ever used only mozzarella. Would seem very stretchy to me. EVOO on top of the crust is to prevent soggy crust from tomato sauce.
I do plants, but the weather ruined the herb garden. Rosemary died, garlic chives wilting (in June!), regular chives all but dead after 30 years and many efforts at revival. 
You live in Chicago, don't you? I'm stopping by your house. That sounds like a tasty pizza. 
I go to Pequods when I can for their butter crust.
