I’ve been writing a monthly column called “Man on the Street” for Pizza Today Magazine since 2011. Here’s a piece I wrote for the July issue about how New York City is losing its historic coal ovens. Pizza didn’t become completely entwined in NYC culture until after WWII when gas ovens made pizza by-the-slice common. In the early 20th century, the city’s bakeries and pizzerias ran on anthracite coal. The earliest of these ovens were quite large, often added to the back yards of buildings. These coal ovens have become more rare as bakeries and pizzerias go out of business or lose their leases. It’s an important piece of NYC’s pizza history that’s slipping away.
Check out the column in Pizza Today Magazine, which is available online for free.
