Una Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco is still my favorite pizza, I just can’t access it as much as I could back when it was in NYC. In the picture is a fantastic pizza they call the Apollonia. Available only on Saturdays, this delicious pie includes some fresh egg mixed in with the buffalo mozzarella, lots of garlic, and salty, crispy bites of salami.

This is the first of four quick posts from a recent trip to SF.

Fig and prosciutto pizza fresh out of the oven. My inspiration for this came from a similar pizza from Rubirosa (my favorite pizza spot) and it was recently discussed over at Serious Eats. This is such a delicious pizza and it’s much easier to make at home than you might think. I used the cast iron skillet method—first put the dough onto a super hot cast iron skillet on the stove top, then add the ingredients, then finish under the broiler in a hot oven. The trick here is to add the prosciutto immediately after removing the skillet from the oven (as pictured here, the pie is still in the pan) so that it heats up but doesn’t really cook. Delicious!

A couple of small home-made pizzas, made cast iron skillet style. Another wonderful part of the arrival of fall is that it’s finally cool enough to blast the oven at full blast for a few hours to properly make pizza. Plus, the greenmarkets still have plenty of great cherry tomatoes and basil.

The amazing Fresca pizza from Rubirosa. I can’t say enough good things about Rubirosa… My favorite pizza in the city right now. The classic cheese pizza is still my favorite, but this was a really, really good fresca with their delicious tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, and basil. I bring all out of town visitors looking for NY pizza here, and this week’s visitor from Connecticut, a Frank Pepe devotee, was quickly converted.

Sausage, broccoli rabe, and fresh mozzarella pizza at Rubirosa on Mulberry by Prince in NYC. Rubirosa is my favorite pizza by the slice in the city—and also some of my favorite NY style pizza over all. Normally, I don’t stray from the basic cheese slice, but a friend was in town and wanted this concoction. Luckily, it was delicious. So were the mozzarella sticks in the background, actually. I highly recommend Rubirosa for any and all of the above. Looks like Serious Eats does too.

Pizza Port Carlsbad. Port Brewing is one of my favorite breweries, and when I lived in San Diego I would visit their Carlsbad pizza joint/ brewery quite regularly. The pizzas are interesting and good enough, but the array of excellent beer on tap and overall fun atmosphere makes the place a winner. I highly recommend going, getting some pizza, and trying any of their IPAs, although I doubt there’s a bad beer in their lineup.

Basic pizza at home. I’ve seen the pizza dough at Whole Foods, and I’ve read of people’s love for it. But, I enjoy making my own dough and do a pretty good job with it, so I had never given a try. Last night, I suddenly really wanted a pizza, but I don’t live close enough to any pizza joint I trust, I didn’t have a lot of time, and even if I did, my craving hit too late to make a proper dough. So, I swung through Whole Foods on my way home and bought $4 worth of dough and some mozzarella.  I let the dough rise at room temperature for two hours, then went about making pies using the cast iron skillet method with left over marinara from weekend cooking and mozzarella.

The dough was actually pretty good and very easy to work with. It wasn’t quite as flavorful as a good 2-3-day old home made dough, but that’s not surprising. My only other complaint is that in the amount of time it took to cook the dough through and get good bubbling and char, there was a lot more overall browning than say with these two pies. Maybe there’s more sugar in their recipe than I’m used to. Regardless, I can definitely recommend this if you don’t have time or don’t feel like making your own dough.

Finally made it to the San Francisco reincarnation of Una Pizza Napoletana. It was too dark to get a picture of the perfect Filetti pizza to see how it compared to mine, so you’ll just take to take my word for it that it’s a bit better. OK, a lot better. Still my favorite pizza anywhere.

Another crappy picture of really good home pizza. Same as last week’s Filetti, but with prosciutto. I love adding little folds of good prosciutto to this style of pizza, although it doesn’t look very nice.

I’m having a hard time not making pizza these days. It’s finally cooled off enough that I don’t mind blasting the oven, the NFL has started, and the fresh cherry tomatoes are so good this time of year. Homemade pizza like this can’t be that bad for you, right?