Salute For Pizza -- Fresh Sauce, Perfect Crust And Not A Lot Of Junk

Best pizza. Salute in Citta, 606

Stewart St. in the Vance Hotel,

Seattle. 728-1611.

Pizza is associated more often with piggery than passion.

The all-American best - the kind we eat with the kids after work - ooze gooey cheese bearing blobs of lunch meat and salad makings. A testament to our taste for self-destruction by fat.

An alternative is California pizza: Small rounds of dough that someone has confused with a canape and smeared with something like confit de canard (the one I had was, basically, duck jam) or melted havarti and crab. No piggery here, but no matter how appealing the results, a certain self-consciousness means no passion either.

No, if one is going to become passionate over pizza - in both senses of the phrase, I suppose - it had best be Italian, and classic Italian, at that.

Not that there are clear-cut rules about pizza. The choice of a best pizza is highly subjective at best and depends on the biases of the taster. Mine are for sauce, crust and appearance.

It seems silly to have to say that if a pizza uses tomato sauce at all, it should taste like fresh tomatoes. Canned sauces or those made from paste do not have the clear, sweet bite of a tomato fresh from the vine. They taste like a close cousin to ketchup, which most of us older than 9 no longer eat plain on bread.

Which brings us to the crust. At least one theory of the origin of pizzas - and there are many - claims that they originated in Naples as a way to use leftover bread dough. (Another that I like better says the first one with tomato sauce was created in Naples in honor of Queen Margherita, with whom the chef was in love. Hence the Pizza Margherita with tomato, mozzarella and basil.)

There also is apparently some debate among food buffs about the nature of the perfect pizza crust, but I use the bread-dough theory of origin to justify what seems to me to taste best: A thin base that is essentially fine, homemade bread - meaning it has a tender crust and an interior with a uniform

texture that has both substance and air. It should never, ever, be tough or crisp clear through.

And then there's appearance. Perfectly wonderful-tasting pizzas often have their ingredients randomly strewn over them by a harried pizza chef or melted together into a blur of beige cheese. My bias is to harmony and simplicity: fewer ingredients placed with an awareness of color and shape, and not obscured by cheese.

When a pizza has all these, the result is a meal that is a pleasure to look at as well as to eat. And it

happens, I have learned, that the three are most often found in classic Italian pizzas, with my personal favorite the Quattro Stagioni at Seattle's Salute in Citta downtown, the newest branch of the original Salute! on Northeast 55th Street. Both restaurants, plus a deli and the more formal La Dolce Vita, are owned by Raffaele Calise and Stefano Williams.

The pizza is small - a good size for one person at lunch - lightly coated with a fresh tomato sauce, then divided into four sections (the stagioni) each of which has either mushrooms, artichoke hearts, anchovies or mozzarella. Because they are separate, not heaped together, their tastes remain distinct. With a fresh green basil leaf in the center of the red sauce, the effect of the whole is almost painterly - vastly more beautiful than, say, Domino's on the doorstep at 6:45.

``The true pizza,'' says Calise, ``is made with sauce from fresh tomato or a good quality canned tomato. It has not too much garbage on it - the more simple, the better - and a lot of olive oil.''

In the tiny Salute in Citta kitchen, he pulls out a bowl of sauce to examine: ``You see? Seeds! You don't get those in paste. This we make fresh every day.''

Then he pulls out the chopped garlic - fresh - and the small bunch of fresh basil. That particular day's leaves come from his garden, he says, but in winter they come from Hawaii. ``You can't have pizza without basil,'' Calise says. ``No problem; we get it.''

This is all fine, but what makes Salute's pizzas special are their crusts. I've found none exactly like them, and Calise is not about to explain how he does it for the benefit of Washington's largest newspaper - only that he uses ``a special fresh yeast, a special kind of flour and a special recipe depending on the weather.

``Pizza,'' he says, ``is like the body: It needs different things in different seasons.''

And, finally, when the dough has risen, he keeps it chilled in a wooden box; the box keeps out air that would form a crust on the dough and toughen the bread.

He does not have a special brick oven, although he would like one. It's a question of capital: A brick oven, he says, would cost $20,000 or $30,000 or more, which he can't invest right now. But he has less tangible tools.

Calise says his father and grandfather were bakers in Italy, where he grew up: ``We had no electricity, and when I was little - really little, like 2 or 3 years old - I would get up in the night and go

out among the big stacks of wood they used and watch them baking. And then my father would make a special little bed for me there, and I'd fall asleep watching them bake.

``I am very particular. If not, it would be like throwing dirt on my father's grave.''

The result of all of this care is a wonderfully simple pizza that costs between $5.50 for Pizza Al Pomodoro e Basilco (tomato, fresh basil and nothing else) to $7.50 for Pizza Con La Salsiccia (tomato, mozzarella and Italian sausage). The Quattro Stagioni is $7.

Calise's pizzas are available at the original Salute! and at the deli on 35th Avenue Northeast, but I recommend the newest outpost. For one thing, you can get in.

As for runners-up, when most people recommend pizza, they're talking about the cheese-laden American type. DaVinci's Flying Pizzas in Kirkland is worth a try, as is the Eastside's Tony Maroni chain, if you aren't looking for atmosphere. But the most interesting I found was the special at Theo's Pizza and Pasta in Montlake Terrace, spanakopizza with feta, mozzarella, Parmesan and spinach at $11.95 for a medium.

Of course, you will have your own favorites, about which you are quite passionate. That's what letters to the editor are for.

CYNDI MEAGHER IS ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR OF THE SEATTLE TIMES.