NOT long ago, toppings for pizza were becoming unbearably fancy — hoisin-slathered duck, or fontina and truffles — or just ridiculous (you’ve seen the ones with pasta?). Pizza threatened to become something other than pizza. Fortunately, that trend has reversed.

Nevertheless, it is still fun to innovate, or to adopt a pizza tradition you were not familiar with. My friend Ed Schneider, a sometime food writer and brilliant home cook, called me recently with a suggestion that sounded so good I tried it immediately: pan-fried pizza.

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Turns out, perhaps not surprisingly, that pizza fritta probably originated in Naples; you can also find it in Scotland, sometimes stuffed with chips, but enough said about that.

The principles and ingredients are classic, the technique and results strikingly different from what pizza lovers have come to expect.