Cold school

Your pals come over, pizzas are ordered, you head out for the evening, get four hours of sleep and face the inevitable hangover. The next morning, the only nourishment you can find without leaving home is the remains of that pizza, now as stiff as the box it came in. It’s the breakfast of champions—or at least it could be with the right pie, properly stored and reheated. To deduce the proper formula, we bought both a plain pie and a pepperoni one from five purveyors, wrapped a few slices of each in foil and plastic, and left another few in the box.

Each pizza went through its own narrative arc. Thin-crust pies from Lombardi’s (32 Spring St at Mott St, 212-941-7994) and Grimaldi’s (19 Old Fulton St between Front and Water Sts, 718-858-4300) aged about as well as a bottle of Thunderbird. These should be left unwrapped to retain their stiffness (which adds crispness during the reheating process). After three days in foil, the only way to make the Lombardi’s and Grimaldi’s slices palatable was to turn them into matzo brei: cut ’em up, fry ’em and add salt.

But Ray’s of Greenwich Village (465 Sixth Ave at 11th St, 212-243-2253) remained a marvel throughout the experiment. Its recipe has an abundance of cheese, which, when reheated, generates lots of oily grease—and that compensated for the evaporating sauce. Ray’s certainly beat the generic slice at Smiling Pizza (323 Seventh Ave at 9th St, Park Slope, Brooklyn; 718-788-2137), whose sauce and cheese nearly disappeared by Day Two, and whose crust had become as soggy and airy as Wonder Bread by Day Three.

Domino’s performed surprisingly well. (It seems the worse pizza is hot, the better it is cold.) After a few days in cardboard, the staleness gave the slice a crunchiness it lacked when fresh. Even the foil-wrapped version, after a week, revived like a champ when reheated in the oven at 500 degrees. It was a little soggy, yes, like pizza brioche, but was still endowed with the essential tastes that make pizza pizza—and not in the Little Caesars sense. One problem plagued the Domino’s: It had an uncanny knack for picking up virtually every flavor in the fridge.

Some final thoughts for would-be reheaters: The best way to warm a slice is to place it on a frying pan with a little olive oil and cook on medium heat; it makes the bottom crisp. If you’re reheating a whole pie, set the oven at 500 degrees and place the slices on foil or a cookie sheet. Never microwave—unless you want a pizza sponge.—Gersh Kuntzman