the quest for zest

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Pizza Italiano, Part 2

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Making the sauce and choosing toppings.

In our last article, “Pizza Italiano, Part 1”, I took you through the steps of making a simple and authentic Italian-style pizza crust. This article gets down to the business of making a sauce and preparing a couple of our favorite toppings. The sauce contains only the essential ingredients, so it can easily be modified to suit a variety of tastes. The toppings for a roasted mushroom, or prosciutto and arugula pizza, are not only quick, but authentically Italian. Required kitchen gear for these recipes is just a food processor to make the sauce, a box grater for the cheese, and a large skillet for the roasted mushrooms.

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Pizza Italiano, Part 1

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Making the crust.

Pizza is one of those foods I, like almost everyone, have enjoyed my whole life. Growing up, Dad would make pizza from scratch a couple of times a month. I can still remember peering over the counter top and stealing a nibble of Italian sausage or shredded cheese before he would shoo me away with a wave of his spatula. Through high school, Pizza Hut was my favored greasy treat which subsequently ensured a constellation of pimples on my face for every yearbook photo. As I got older, I came to love deep-dish Chicago-style pizzas with their cornmeal crusts and chunky toppings held together with gooey layers of cheese.

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Playing with Fire

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A detailed look at how pizzaioli cook with a traditional wood fired pizza oven.

Cooking pizzas in the oven at 800 Degrees Wood Fired Pizza is not as easy as their pizzaioli make it look. There is much more to it then simply building a fire, tossing in a pizza, and taking it out when it’s done. Chef/owner Matt Rogers makes no bones about the learning curve. “Working in this oven — it’s an art,” he says. “You don’t just step up here and know how to do it.” It takes a lot of practice, more then a few ruined pizzas, and a great deal of skill to master a traditional wood fired oven.

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Tradition and Refinement at 800 Degrees

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Matt Rogers of 800 Degrees Wood Fired Pizza on the perfection of pizza.

I must confess that as we watched Matt Rogers, chef/co-owner of 800 Degrees Wood Fired Pizza, stoke the fire in his pizza oven, my mind began to wander. The smell of burning wood and rising dough conjured memories of the incredible pizzas we ate in Italy. It’s worth stating that because it illustrates Matt’s, and his crew’s, passion for their work. A passion that culminates in incredibly authentic reproductions of classic Neapolitan pizzas. In this interview, Matt tells us how 800 Degrees blends elements of a fine dining experience with traditional Neapolitan pizza making techniques to create new interpretations of the classics.

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