Across the five boroughs of NYC, it’s essentially a city bylaw that every neighborhood has to have at least one slice joint to supply area residents with pizza, whether they require it for breakfast, brunch or a late-night snack. On the Lower East Side, there are many such slice joints, but only one of them is the Slice Joint.
Co-owned by Roberta’s alum Rachael Marie, Slice Joint only uses fresh, seasonal and high-quality ingredients to make New York- and grandma-style pies that can be finished off with toppings like Calabrian chile peppers, pepperoncinis and anchovies.
Marie, who is also the executive chef of the establishment, grew up in the Midwest and has fond memories of her mom making pizzas at home when she was a kid, as well as going to chains East Coasters have never heard of like Paul Revere’s Pizza or Breadeaux. She also has fond memories of her four years at Roberta’s, and a creation she came up with while working there: the pizza sandwich.
“Working in pizza kitchens does have limitations as far as what to make for family meal,” Marie tells InsideHook. “One of the ways I’ve found to use pizza ingredients is to make pizza sandwiches. You take a pizza dough and instead of stretching it out, you lightly press it and put a little oil on the top. Bake until it’s cooked all the way through. This will create an individual dough that you can stuff with whatever your heart desires. It reminds me of a meatball sandwich. Warm melted mozzarella and tomato sauce are amazing. Adding pepperoni, sausage and peppers turns it into my style of sandwich.”
Relatively easy to make as long as you have dough and an oven, Marie’s pizza sandwiches also contain ingredients like speck, egg and jalapeños, but are very open to improvisation.
One area where there is no wiggle-room? The dough.
“If your dough is good, you’ve done 80 percent of the work,” Marie says. “It’s the basis for every pizza and should be easy to work with, flavorful, and appropriately salty. The dough should be crispy, but not too much chew.”
Marie, who eats pizza at least once a week and unabashedly dips her crust in ranch dressing when she does, was kind enough to share two of her favorite pizza sandwich recipes (see below) and also offer a brief word of advice for making ’em: go easy on the cheese.
“I know that sounds crazy,” she says. “But it needs to be in balance with the dough and the sauce. If you use too much cheese it drowns out everything else. It becomes almost like a thick rubbery sheet.”
Speck, Egg and Cheese Pizza Sandwich
- Use one pizza dough. Lightly press out the gas and do not stretch
- Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes until the temperature reaches 200 degrees in the center
- Let cool and slice open like a hamburger bun
- While bread is cooling, fry one egg
- Apply ranch to either side of pizza bun
- Add speck and jalapeños on the bottom side of the bun
- Add cooked egg to sandwich and assemble
Classic Pizza Sammy
- Repeat steps 1-3 as listed above
- Assemble with tomato sauce on either side of bread
- Add toppings (sausage, pepperoni, pepperoncini) to the bottom half of the sammy and mozzarella on the top side of the sandwich
- Put the assembled sandwich in the oven until the mozzarella is melted
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