This is Why I've Started a Brick Collection: Brick Oven Pizza

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your bricks. I come to create pizzas, then bury them in my stomach. ” Mark Antony in Julius Caesar after discovering the magic of Brick Oven Pizzas.

If you’re wondering if you want a brick oven in your backyard, just ask yourself this question: Do you want a magical portal that can deliver you perfectly cooked food that will ignite your tastebuds and renew your vigor for life?  

Christa, my pizza partner, has a father who had a brick oven built in his backyard. If I wasn’t the luckiest person in the world before, I certainly am now. A few weeks ago we went over to break in the oven by filling it with delicious dough, cheese, and sauce. And hey, I documented it!

Here’s the peel, or the pizza docking station as astronauts refer to it. Once the dough was nice and stretched out, it was placed onto the peel, which was sprinkled with cornmeal. Then we put on tomato sauce, a few pieces of fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, and a drizzle of olive oil.

Now to blast off that peel into the brick oven orbit!

Here we are offering up our meager combination of dough, cheese, sauce, and basil to the pizza gods. The few logs in the oven summoned flames to heat the space a mere 900 degrees fahrenheit. The 8-inch disc of dough begins to bubble as it entered the brick atmosphere. 

You’d think this would be the time to drink a few Peroni’s and toss some Bocci balls, but no, not for a vigilant pizza maker. The pizza needs to be rotated on a regular basis so that every side of the pizza meets to flames face-to-face. A failure to rotate evenly results in a pizza that resembles a yin-yang.

After a few minutes in the oven, what do you get?

Pizza as if it grew from the soils of Italy itself. A perfectly balanced pizza that has a crunchy exoskeleton and a comfortable interior.  

The genius of this pizza is the simplicity. Biting into a pizza without having to compete with a bevy of flavors bouncing from tastebud to tastebud like a pollinating bee creates a pizza that excels in a few great flavors instead of being merely adequate. 

With the winter season approaching, I’m not sure how often I’ll get to interact with this brick oven pizza. In the mean time, I’ll spend my down time (time not eating pizza) collecting bricks and building a brick oven in my home. 

Many thanks to Mr.Cardone for providing me with an outstanding pizza experience!

Pizza as a Vegetable? What this Means for Schools

Did you hear the news? Pizza may soon be considered a vegetable in school lunches. Well, not pizza as a whole, but the tomato paste that rest upon that overly buttered crust. I’ve been campaigning pizza as a generally healthy food for some time, so I’m kind of on board with this. On the other hand, this classification does let food programs fall asleep at the wheel when it comes to meal planning. Intrigued by how this decision might impact cafeteria, I spoke with George Zappas, director of food services at North Hills High School, for some perspective.

“This ruling doesn’t affect us one bit,” George said to me. “I’ve always made sure that the kids get at least a half cup of fruits and vegetables at lunch. In fact, this year we started to let kids have all the vegetables they want. The only thing we limit them on is juice.”

This ruling would let schools count pizza as a serving of vegetable (two tablespoons to be exact), which means that could replace two tablespoons worth of broccoli, carrots, or asparagus. In the end it’s only hurting kids by giving schools a chance to serve them two tablespoons less of actually vegetables. 

Apparently, this ruling stems from a series of problems, one being the over regulation and restriction on student’s diets. “How can you tell a kid they can’t eat peas and potatoes in one week?” George asked me. I don’t know, I’d never tell a kid that. I’d tell them they could be the ruler of lima beans and peas if they wanted to!

Schools don’t have a choice when they try to please all involved parties. This nutritional tug-of-war puts schools in a bad light despite having so much hunger to satisfy.“The way we see it, we have to find a balance to give the kids the food they want, give them the food the government wants to give kids, and be financially responsible,” George said to me.

In the grand scheme of things only 15% of a student’s meals come from school lunches in a school year. Is two tablespoons one way or another going to run obesity out of this town? Probably not, especially if the food at home isn’t any better. George, doing his reverse journalist schtick, asked me if I was ever taken to Pizza Hut as a kid. “Absolutely,” I said, “The Book-It program got me more pizza than I can remember.”

“That’s great, but did your parents restrict how many slices you could have?” George asked. “Did they make sure you had a certain amount of vegetables with every slice? Were there any restrictions on your meal?" 

"Uh, no…" 

While pizza becoming a vegetable is absurd, it’s but a drop in the nutritional bucket. Schools need to serve a certain amount of vegetables and it’s a shame that these outlandish classifications may result in students devouring a restricted assortment of health foods. It doesn’t seem like it’s a problem at North Hills, but other schools may not be as fortunate where vegetables could be cut since pizza performs so well.

Perhaps it’s about time I start my "Teach Responsible Pizzaing” campaign.

Pizza Journalism: Interview with the Creator of the Pizza Sleeping Bag

An item hasn’t truly been evolved to perfection until it somehow resembles the texture, smell, taste, or look of pizza. Thus, this pizza sleeping bag is not only the pinnacle of sleeping bags, but also the highest echelon of pizza sleeping bags. I just had to interview someone who was inspired to design such a sleeping device! What makes them tick? Why pizza? Do they even like pizza? So, I found the designer, Brook, on Etsy and asked her some questions. Brook is a recent graduate of Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and loves fibers. Hence, her bachelor of Fine Arts in Fibers and Material Studies. Enjoy the interview! Surprisingly, we discuss much more than pizza.

Pizza Walk With Me: Describe your perfect pizza.

Brook: Crust means everything to me when it comes to pizza. It can’t be too doughy and it can’t be too thin. Other than that, just cheese and sauce will do. I could eat a slice of plain cheese pizza anytime of day, any day of the week. My favorite pizza in the world comes from the pizza shop next door to the pottery studio where I work. Their slices are huge and the crust is perfect. Not too thin, not too thick and just the right amount of crisp. 

PWWM: Would you ever put snails on a pizza?

B: I have never actually eaten snails, but based on my personal pizza philosophy which is basically: Less is more, I would not like it one bit. I have no doubt however, that many people would find it quite enjoyable. 

PWWM: Why a pizza sleeping bag? Do you have a desire to sleep inside the warmth of a pizza?

B: Who wouldn’t want to curl up inside a slice of warm cheesy pizza? Well.. minus the grease and plus some satin lining. I’m always looking for ways I can make food into comfortable functional objects to add to my comfort food series. My idea is to take the comfort that people feel while they’re eating their favorite foods and make them feel the same way when they are interacting with my objects. I was eating a slice of pizza one day and the shape reminded me of a bed and then I thought, sleeping bag! and voila!

PWWM: What food item will you conquer next? I saw what I think was a waffle and a potato. Do you only sew your favorite foods? I think you’re really onto something with letting people sleep inside the food of their fantasy.

B: I really let the shape of difference foods influence the object that I will make. While they aren’t necessarily all my favorite foods, I don’t think I would use a food that I didn’t like. Looking at and thinking about a food that doesn’t taste good for as long as it takes to make one of my objects would probably make me sick. As for whats next… I’ve been playing around with some designs for a cheeseburger dog bed. We’ll see. 

PWWM: How has this brief stint of “Internet Fame” impacted you and your business? Is it encouraging? Do you feel a lot of pressure?

B: I am so excited about all of the positive feedback I have been getting! I knew when I first made the sleeping bag that it could be a popular, sell-able, object but I never knew if I would be able to actually make it happen. Now its happening! I’m currently taking orders for pizza sleeping bags via Etsy. Mostly I’m just excited and any pressure that I feel, just feels good because I’m doing what I love. 

PWWM: How would you describe pizza to a person who has never seen or heard of this delicious dish before?

B: First I would have them crawl inside my pizza sleeping bag. Then I would tell them that eating a slice of pizza makes you as comfortable as sleeping in that satin-lined bag. 

PWWM: If you could approve upon current fiber technology, in what would that be?

B: Anything that makes any fiber technique faster would be an improvement. As any fiber artist could tell you, fibers are a meticulous material to work with. I couldn’t tell you all the hours of my life that I have spent embroidering, crocheting, knitting, sewing, dying, re-dying, sewing again, etc. It takes forever but I love every moment I spend working with fibers so I maybe it’s good that it takes an eternity. 

PWWM: If you could somehow improve pizza technology, what would it be like?

BFirst of all… is there such a thing as pizza technology [Editor’s Note: YES]? I don’t think technology and pizza should ever mix. And why try to improve on something as perfect as pizza in the first place? Pizza should be made by hand, just like art, and just like it has been for all the delicious years its been in existence.

For more of Brook’s work, check out her Etsy page. I have my fingers crossed for a pizza scarf, hat, and glove combo set to pop up on that store any second now…

Pizza Adventures: Sir Pizza

I’m not sure how a pizza gets knighted, or even why a pizza wants to be knighted. Perhaps there was once a dragon who pillaged villages for their pizza and hoarded hundreds of slices in their cave? Then, Sir Pizza emerged from a pizza oven to answer the prayers of the villagers and defeat the pizza dragon. All I know is that if every pizza of the roundtable tasted as genuine and delicious as Sir Pizza I can guarantee you I would devour them in seconds. 

I don’t find myself wandering in the Sir Pizza neighborhood as much as I’d like to these days. There was a time where my Pizza Pal, Pat, worked at Sir Pizza which gave me an unlimited number of reasons to visit the parlor. That was a time in my life was filled with a thick pizza haze and diced pepperoni’s. Surprisingly, not much has changed. Insider secret: did you know the staff of Sir Pizza hates when you play Cheesburger in Paradise on the jukebox? Try it out sometime!

This evening’s pizza event found me and Pizza Pal Adam splitting a small plain pizza. “But Pizza Journalist Dan,” you’re clamoring, “how can two grown adults manage to survive on a singular 10 inch plain pizza?” That’s a great question! One day science will create a 10 inch pizza that will appease two adults and solve the world’s hunger problem. In this case, we ravaged the pizza like vultures encountering fresh road kill then starred at each other waiting for someone to suggest we order another one. It didn’t matter if it was a vagabond or the pizza knight himself. We just needed a reason.

For most people, double dipping into pizza would be a sign of impending rock bottom, but for me it was just one of those “day in the life” scenario. And yes, we got a second pizza.


What separates Sir Pizza from second tier pizza parlors and the slew of “New York Wannabes” is the way they cut their pizza. As you can see you don’t get slices, you get squares. This is perfect for a number of reasons:

  1. You actually have no idea how many slices you’ve eaten which makes eating your weight in pizza more feasible than ever. It’s like eating air covered with sauce and cheese.
  2. You can make awesome designs by strategically eating some slices. Some of my favorites are a duck or a sail boat. 

Not enough can be said about the crispiness and freshness of the pizza. Every time I eat there the pizza is perfectly cooked. There’s never too much cheese, grease isn’t eating its way through the table, and ingredients aren’t piled on. I don’t know how much they eyeball toppings/cheese, but their standards are spot on and they’d be a fool to change just about anything. The only wild card is that sometimes the peel is over salted, which can leave some salt residue on the bottom of your pie.

Some people might be bothered by a hint of salt, but I secretly pray for those moments. That salt adds an endearing element, almost as though you’ve been inducted as an honorable pizza knight for the evening. Plus, it brings out some of the flavor.

I can’t recommend Sir Pizza enough to travelers to the city. It’s a shame the closest one is out in the North Hills, but if you find yourself in the area stop on by, put a dollar in the jukebox, and play some Cheeseburger in Paradise. Also, it’s one of the only establishments that has a Pac-Man and Dig Dug cocktail arcade cabinet. Five pizzas out of five.