Local pizza makers are firing up delicious new flavours: Andrew Coppolino

For decades, pizza has been the go-to delivery meal.

Despite the pandemic, risings costs and supply-chain interruptions, Canadian pizza outlets saw an equal or increasein sales in 2020compared to 2019, according to the trade publication Pizza Magazine.

The majority of chain pizza outlets, mom-and-pop "slice-and-a-sodas" and 2-4-1 pizza joints can crank out thousands of pies daily on electric conveyor ovens, or in and out of deck ovens or bake or evenin fancy Italian-made, gas-fired rotating "bell" ovens.

But the pizza landscape is changing: upscale casual restaurants have refined pizza on their menus, including two new deep-dish Chicago-style pizzas from Crazy Canuck and Graffiti Market.

You can also find Neapolitan-style pizza at upscale casual restaurants such as Famoso Waterloo and La Cucina Kitchener.

Pizza subscriptions are even available: General Assembly delivers a box of par-baked frozen pizzas to your door like jelly-of-the-month.

'Agame of adapting'

Less prevalent, but popular, are woodfired pizzas: Buon Gusto Guelph, Chef D Kitchener, Piatto Cambridge and Guelph, City Caf Kitchener and Woodfired Caf and Bakecurry Kitchener, to name a few. They are trickier to cook with.

The technique, skill and equipment for woodfired pies require a more attention and craft, starting with the dough made in smaller batches and needing a certain "touch" and adjustment for temperature and humidity in the kitchen. They need close attention when in the oven.

"Our dough is a cross between a Neapolitan style and a New York style," according to Pete Tessaro of Those Pizza Guys in St. Jacobs. "It's thin crust and chars nicely in a wood oven with a bit of chew and a bit of crisp."

Those Pizza Guys started as a mobile pizza business in Guelph and over years of trial-and-error have continued to tweak their dough and control of the oven.

"It's been a game of adapting," says Tessaro. "It's a style of pizza where you have to be more attentive, from throwing the pizza in and letting the crust set to lifting it to the top of the oven for a quick broil with the rollover flame."

It only takes about two minutes to cook, so close attention and experience is needed. That char and dark-brown blistering is part of the Neapolitan style often surprising to customers unfamiliar with the result of the process.

The right tools

For baking, you need the proper oven before the dough is even made and the wood is chopped, according to Bread Heads pizzaiolo David O'Leary, one of area's woodfired pizza veterans with an almost scientific knowledge of pizza pyrotechnics.

"The size of your door opening and the size of your chimney determines how the fire will draft. You can have primo wood, but in a badly designed oven it's not going to combust properly," O'Leary says.

Then, there's the wood an element that conveyor and bell-oven pizza cooks don't have to contend with.

"I look for a seasoned hardwood. Once an oven gets over 400F., it's smokeless," explains O'Leary.

He notes that "smokey" pizza is a flaw. "If there is smoke coming off your wood, it should only be surface moisture. If you look at the chimney of a woodfired-oven, there should be no smoke coming out at all."

O'Leary says the "angels sing" when oven temperature hits 800F. But there are actually three temperatures gauged by a Laser temperature gun that pizza cooks consider: the temperature of the oven floor, the temperature radiating on to the pie and temperature of the rollover flame.

"When you're at 800F, that's when your pizzas are perfect," he says adding that maintaining the temperature isn't easy and requires skill in working the fire.

More than pepperoni

The wood and fire taken care of, the flavours are next. Pizza has been topped with pickles, pineapple, poutine and KFC chicken; Shawarma pizzas have popped up on many 2-4-1 menus, as have pizzas with butter chicken and other Indian flavours for toppings.

Middle Eastern restaurants may refer to their manaeesh as "Arabic pizzas" (which might include halloumi cheese and za'atar spice): pizza doughs, it would seem, are a blank slate for flavour.

Thompson Tran at Wooden Boat Food Company Kitchener has recently added a woodfired pizza oven for, among other flavours, pho pizza.

"The simple four ingredients for dough is the start," Tran says. "And then authenticity. I'm true to Vietnamese and southeast Asian flavours, and so we're introducing people to that. We're doing pho pizza with pork, hoisin and lime. All the different textures and flavours."

He anticipates pushing his woodfired pies even further but using ingredients that work with a two- to three-minute cooking time.

"We're going to go even more dramatic and change what people are familiar with," he says. "Good ingredients, good wood and perhaps Malaysian and Lao flavours."