Why you should never dip your pizza crusts, according to an Italian chef

'If a restaurant charges you for dipping sauce run, my friend. Run.'

A woodfire pizza by Martello Hall in London (Mariell Lind Hansen)

Pizza really is the perfect food: a soft, doughy flatbread which buckles in your hand under the weight of tangy tomato sauce, rich cheeses and a sprinkling of fresh basil. Which is why if you’re dipping your pizza crusts in sauce then something has gone horribly wrong.

Sure, we can pretend that we should all enjoy pizza however we want. And if you want to embarrass yourself by slathering crusts in garlic and herb sauce or, heaven forbid, ketchup then go head. But just know that you’re a philistine and probably eating a “pizza” so bad that an Italian wouldn’t feed it to their dog. And in that case, are we really talking about a real pizza at all anymore?

Because if we don’t stop this now, where will it end? Pizza has exploded in popularity across the world since the late nineteenth cenutry thanks to Italian migrants setting up stalls in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia and Saint Louis. In a handful of decades, dips became a way to up-sell pizzas, with Papa John’s being the first chain to make a sauce specifically for crusts in 1984, according to Eater. By 2001, Pizza Hut had unveiled a dip menu including BBQ, garlic sauce, ranch, blue cheese and nacho cheese for $1 a pop and copyrighted the phrase “Don’t Skip the Dip”. Adding insult to injury were those using a knife and fork - shudder - to chop their pizza into tiny bitesize segments rather than simply folding it and posting it into their mouths. This heretical behaviour culminated in a college student tweeting a photo of her dipping her pizza into milk before being forced to turn her account private due to the backlash.

​Still not convinced that dipping sauces are sacrilege? Just ask Silvia Baldini, Food Network's Chopped winner who has trained in Michelin-starred kitchens and is a native of Turin, Italy. “I absolutely do not dip pizza crust,” she tells The Independent emphatically.

“In fact I don’t even eat the crust. Most Italians know the crust is just a handle to hold the pizza slice, therefore we leave it behind, on the side of the plate, in a neat pile. It’s a great way to keep track of how many pizza slices one’s eats, like a badge of honor.”

“If the restaurant changes you extra for dipping sauce pots, run my friend. Run.”

A pizza that needs to be dipped suggests the toppings are badly curated and lacking a punch of flavour, or that the base is dry and hard.

“If we cook our pizza properly you don’t need [dipping sauce],” chimes Sarah Weir, behind the Martello Hall in Hackney, East London, which serves up wood-fired pizza. “Our dough is 48 hour fermented dough and cooked in our wood oven at 450C which gives a puffed, charred crust, which tastes amazing without anything. It's a typical Neapolitan crust, with bags of flavour.”

“Like many now popular tasty foods, the pizza has evolved from poorer origins,” adds Nick Crispini, the owner of Antico Italian restaurant in London. “Neapolitans added a few natural local ingredients - tomatoes, basil, olive oil - as toppings to enhance their staple bread, which the crust is fundamentally part of. If a pizza’s crust requires a dipping sauce, it’s simply not an authentic pizza.”

The lesson is that if something is not already on the pizza then it shouldn’t be there. And if you need to dip a pizza to make it edible, it should go in the bin and not your mouth. You deserve better.