So, I’ll have to attach a menu from a pizza place, called “The Pizza Place”, I went to in the 1960s in Texas. I do this to firstly indicate how old I am, but not all that old, and then about what US (or Texas) people were asking for on their pizza and paying for it
Note the prices, and what a beer cost…
… and here’s me thinking how could anyone consider them optional? Surely anyone who doesn’t like Anchovies (capitalisation intended, they deserve it) will be “the first against the wall when the revolution comes” - just behind “the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation”
Imagine Worcestershire Sauce without Anchovies!
Re ham - we are in full agreement - one of the reasons I opt for bacon, but carefully sliced ham strips from a legitimate leg ham are ok too - bags of ham? no. On the very very […] very rare occasion I go for a shop pizza I always ask for bacon instead of ham, because my experience is that shop pizza uses bagged processed nominally-ham ham, and even then, bagged bacon …
Chicken? people seem to associate this with lashings of BBQ sauce, same as a meat lovers - home style avoids this confusion because one can choose, but yes, chicken is a variable … had some really good ones, and … not so …
Having just watched an SBS food channel program on the making of Worcestershire sauce, I would think that whoever invented that gloop could be ahead of the SCC against the wall. 
Our favourite topping is tomato base, herbs such as basil or coriander, garlic, some pepper, prosciutto, mushrooms, kalamata olives, bocconcini and sprinkled with a 4 cheese mix.
I love Anchovies- especially when slightly crispy on top of Cheese- tasty, mozzarella, and Parmesan. Underneath a layer of bbqed eggplant. Below that fresh spinach leaves on a rich tomato and fresh basil base.
If not making base I use the Greek pita flatbread with a little olive oil on bottom to ensure crisp and browned. 
Each to there own and I enjoy trying others favourite creations.
Much quicker for me to tell you that pineapple is an atrocity on a pizza, and so is chicken. And anchovies should be compulsory. 
Anchovies add to the ‘umami’ flavour (that flavour which is so hard to describe but which our taste buds just love).
Fortunately umami is also found in meats, tomatoes, mushrooms, aged cheese like Parmesan… so those who omit anchovies do not really miss out on flavour 
True but it is such a shame they are so salty as well.
Umami shumami.
Your fundamental base of a pizza, tomatoes and cheese, has far more of the glutamates that give the umami taste that any fishy thing you may wish to inflict on your pizza.
Hey don’t shoot the messenger,
it’s in most original traditional pizza recipes, I like them on my pizza but understand if you don’t: you save on ‘salty’ too 
Maybe. We do like umami (luscious-tasting substances that activate one set of sensors) ingredients on our pizza and many of the common ones like cured meats, mushrooms, tomato, cheese and fish have that flavour. However glutamates are not the only category of substance that has the flavour and the mild cheeses most often used are not so concentrated. So it looks like an open question to me unless somebody can find a summary of umami (not just glutamate) content of foods.
There haven’t been too many surprises posted on this thread including the polarity of views on employing pineapple and anchovies. Or was harmless controversy not the purpose?
Our choice of pizza topping is as individual as our finger prints. As long as we don’t impose it on others it is entirely non-debatable, except gregr dislike of anchovies 
Ok. I’d like to correct the record. I don’t hate anchovies. Added to a spaghetti sauce, or in a casserole, the saltiness can disperse and they can melt down into the sauce. And I do enjoy Worcestershire sauce. Always a bottle in my cupboard.
But on a pizza, the saltiness has nowhere to go. Little strips of concentrated salty. I have the same issue with salty olives that can overpower. May as well spread vegemite on your pizza if you want a hit of saltiness.
A few suggestions, if you’ll allow me.
Use fillets of anchovies in oil in the smaller tins (avoid those in large tins preserved in salt).
Place just a few, chopped little pieces far away from each other, on the base of the pizza after the tomato, don’t salt the tomatoes.
Use a fairly bland cheese like mozzarella which is lower in salt levels.
But then again, anchovies are not essentials like oil, tomato, cheese.
Melted cheese is essential to hold the topping together so that when we lift a slice to our mouth the ingredients don’t slide off.
Yes, pizza is a finger food!
Thin slices of ham as a base.
tomato and mozzarella of course
sliced olives, finely chopped anchovies,
Lots of Red onion
Maybe some thinly sliced mushrooms.
Occasionally an egg thrown on top.
Cooked in the sandwich press on a baking sheet or paper.
Quick, delicious and low(ish) carb.
AHHHHH. That explains something which has been puzzling me for months… that being the boring looking pizza as consumed by characters in American TV shows.
I like my pizza to be loaded. But no jalapeños please! Chicken, Camembert, onion, and really almost any veg.
I am pretty sure there is no relationship between the Europeans taking the tomato home from the new world in the 16th century and the amount of topping that some cooks use on their version of pizza today.
There are pizza shops (usually the more high-tone kind) that will tell you that the heavily loaded topping is not authentic and theirs with the artistic sparse arrangement is. As always “authentic” in the context of food is particular to time and place. I doubt that the purveyors of authentic pizza can trace it to a particular nona in a village in Campania, more likely to something they read on the internet.
For anybody who is interested and watches SBS on Demand , check out the documentary series Devoured . The first episode deals with an iconic Pizzeria in New York named L&B Spumoni Gardens & Pizzeria . One of the workers stole their secret sauce recipe and opened his own Pizzeria in opposition to them …
The mob ( local crime families ) got involved and the body count rose . Fact is often stranger than fiction .
What I meant was that tomato paste with a smattering of mozzarella is boring.
Tomatoes are one of the ‘essentials’ on a pizza. The standard of a good pizza house is that of using fresh tomatoes: those we know as ‘Roma’ tomatoes because of their fleshy pulp and low moisture content. Roughly chopped and spaced apart, they are the first ingredient to go on the lightly oiled base.
A Passata or an already made tomato sauce can be used but the first one is usually too liquid and tends to make the base soggy and the other loses its freshness when cooked twice.
