Manic May had DSSC HQ bustling allday-erryyday and when your to-do list is fatter than an encyclopedia, nothing beats a slice of pizza (or eight. No, we lie, make that 12). Tough times call for pizza-TLC and having scoured #OurCity for the best of the all time classic – Margherita, we ran a blind taste test to see which slice wins.
Five margherita pizzas, five empty bellies, five differing palates, five blindfolds, and the first set of #DSSCBlindTasteTest gobblers were ready (we mean serious business, it’s pizza we’re talking about). When the hunger pangs strike, time is of utmost importance and we picked brands in the capital city that boast of expedited delivery of 30 minutes on the clock. The scoring spreadsheet followed a highly sophisticated algorithm with pivotal determinants like Crust:Sauce:Cheese ratio, crust, sauce, cheese, amount of drool caused in the first 30 seconds, temperature, speed to finish the pizza, and overall bite were taken into account. The same hot slices were served to 5 DSSC gobblers and with scores written under a cloche, we eliminated all prejudice to receive a result unbiased by all.
Rules for #DSSCBlindTasteTest:
- We chose brands that are widespread names in the city, and not gourmet artisanal pizzerias.
- All the brands in the #DSSCBlindTasteTest must shuffle around the same price bracket.
- None of the the gobblers were hinted/suggested/shown/told about the 5 pizza brands. Right from the planning to ordering to delivery stages, they were kept far removed.
Pizza 01 – Slice Of Italy
Faring high on the cheese:sauce:crust ratio, pizza 01 had everyone in its clutches and the generous amount of good ol’ cheese had the team beaming. However, the crust had the connoisseurs divided, garnering an average score on the dough-o-meter. Raking in an-above-average-mark of 7, this pizza ranks high on the hygee scale making it ideal for grabbing a bite post a late-night binge drinking sesh or a late night at work.
DSSC Score: 7/10
Yay: Cheesier than our love for Ryan Gosling!
Meh: Mr. Crusty (from Simpsons, hulllooo?) lived up better to the name than this.
Pizza 02 – Tossin
A solid crust (maybe a tad bit much) and the chewy texture of the dough did not rock the gobblers’ world. The non-existent sauce didn’t do this pie any favours and the team scored it nil for the crust:sauce ratio. Despite the dry mouthfeel, this pizza upped its game with generous amounts of gooey cheese – albeit commercial, processed cheese. The topping of tomato slices added a much needed burst of freshness rescuing pizza 02, which had nearly lost, to an average of 4.5 from the gobblers.
DSSC Score: 4.5/10
Yay: Cheese + Tomatoes, all we needed was basil and we’d have had a caprese salad.
Meh: Drier than the Sahara desert.
Pizza 03 – Dominos
Next in line was a throwback school favourite, a slice with a lot of memories attached to it. Whilst this cheesy circle of nostalgia boasted of a fluffy crust, it was sadly let down by unevenly distributed sauce. The bubbling cheese and the flavour of the sauce came together to create a mouthful that showed early promise and potential. However, with uneven baking and craters of just dough, pizza 03 scored a mid-scale average of 5 from the gobblers.
DSSC Score: 5/10
Yay: Everyone has lived off this pizza at some point of time in their lives. Everyone. Hence the nostalgia and brand-comfort levels are high with this name.
Meh: With nostalgia, comes expectation. What brings this once-household-staple down is the cliched trappings of mass production. It lacked the punch in sauce and relief in comforting memory.
Pizza 04 – Pizza Hut
This was a tricky tricky one and had the team split right in between. The hot pie boasted a crust more buttery than even a factory of butter. It also got an appreciative applause for the cheese:crust ratio, temperature and uniformly spread sauce and cheese. And there lies the conundrum – whilst half the team loved the pizza for the above reason, the remainder half disagreed for exactly those reasons! “This is buttery AF!” to “This is greasy AF”; “This is decadent” to “This isn’t a conventional margherita”, saw a fluctuating score over green & red and the tip settled in yellow with an average of 5.
DSSC Score: 5/10
Yay: Jennifer Garner would approve of the butter use (the over ambitious socialite from Butter movie, unless you live under a rock you’d know what we’re talking about).
Meh: Can too much butter be a problem? Mixed response, we’ll leave it to you to decide and let us know.
Pizza 05 – Instapizza
A refreshing change over the preceding slices, this margherita had the gobblers smiling with attention-to-detail of fresh basil for garnish. Scoring high on the sauce with tomatoes passata infused with herbs, the generous love via cheese got a standing ovation. The crust texture had the gobblers debating for longer than what crust debates last, however the crust:sauce:cheese ratio leaped it to a score of 7.5, thereby emerging a worthy winner of the first #DSSCBlindTasteTest!
DSSC Score: 7.5/10
Yay: Worthy of a Joey’s Special order (that means two. Always two).
Meh: Stevie’s nonna would improve the dough by fixing the yeast ratio and proofing time.
Image: Slice of Italy; Final Scores
With that the war came to an end, the sword (i.e, pizza cutter) was handed to the winner – Instapizza, and as we gorged the last of it to bits, #OurCity got it’s own #DSSCBlindTasteTest first awardee. Hup hup!
Featured Image Courtesy: threeapplesaday.wordpress.com
