Pizza Kickstarter News - The Pizza Grate

Another day another Kickstarter trying to revolutionize the pizza business. Well, the home pizza business. This time, The Pizza Grate is trying to capture The Elusive Home Pizza.

The Elusive Home Pizza (TEHP) is something I’ve chased. Like a pizza-shaped rabbit down a greasy rabbit hole, anytime I think I’ve nabbed it, the rabbit slips from my grip. My greasy pizza paws clawing at nothing. 

But TEHP is important—it’s 2013 and getting a bubbly, crisp, airy, pizza shouldn’t be impossible. Hopefully, The Pizza Grate is the missing link between your oven and a perfect pie.

So how does it work?

Well, I guess this grate does a few things differently than other grates and stones.

  1. The Pizza Grate is aluminum, which retains heat better than most metals. So I’m told. I’m not metalologist. 
  2. The holes in The Grate allow steam to escape from the bottom of the pizza, meaning your crust is free of moisture that it would otherwise absorb.
  3. No rusting - and easy to clean. My pizza stone is actually in quite a hideous state as we speak. 
  4. You can cook a chicken on it, which I guess you would then put on top of a pizza.

Pretty neat stuff. I know I’ve almost burned the house down trying to get my oven hot enough to produce TEHP. And, I don’t have a stock of bricks lying around to construct my own pizza oven. This seems like something that can bring The Elusive Home Pizza to the masses. 

Check out their Pizza Grate Kickstarter for more info. Maybe I’ll try and nab an interview with these pizza innovators?

I work at WebKite (which is hiring some sales folk if you’re interested). One thing I created at the company is that super awesome Pizza Directory. Sort and filter by a number of very very important pizza facets! Life-changing technology!

Anyways, one of these sales candidates came into the office for an interview and fulfilled all my criteria for a stellar interview:

  1. Arrive slightly early (but not too early).
  2. Dress like everyone is watching.
  3. Bring pizza.

Done and done and done. He brought this pizza after doing some Googling and realized that I am a pizza journalist that works at WebKite. Also, he noticed I haven’t written about Mama Lucia’s which is his go-to pie shop.

I grew up scarfing down Mama Lucia’s but don’t get out there for pizza-errands as much as I should, so he murdered like four birds with one pizza. 

Either way, this sales guy knows his audience. Too bad I’m not the one making these very important hiring decisions. Sorry, bud!

Insider Pizza Secret

Halloween is the Black Friday of pizza business. I’d make nearly $100 in tips on Halloween night and the phones would ring straight from 3pm to 8pm. Every employee was required to be in the kitchen ready to make some spooky pies.

Gotta fill those kids up with as much pizza and candy as is humanly possible.

If you’re getting a pizza tonight I reckon you order now!

It's National Cheese Pizza Day and the Pizza Compass App is FREE in the App Store →

Got this email sent to my pizza journalist account and I thought I’d share it with all you pizza hooligans. 

If you have an iPhone you can download the pizza compass for free today. I gladly paid a dollar for the pizza compass a while ago. Great for parties or, you know, hunting down pizza.

Di Fara's Pizza in Brooklyn -

I recently took a trip to Brooklyn, New York. The same area that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles got their start and, I’m guessing, their addiction to pizza. A turtle eating pizza makes total sense in a  place like Brooklyn. The pizza there is like an ambrosia passed down by the god. Every one of these pizzerias found their equivalent of Thor’s Hammer, but in the form of an ancient pizza oven.

While traveling through the Olympus of Pizza I did find one clear winner. And no, it was not that fried pizza from Forcella’s in Williamsburg.

One pizza place that understands the balance of the pizza triforce; a perfect blend of sauce, cheese, and crust.

A pizza place that knows how to deliver a fundamentally perfect pie and sidesteps gimmicks.

A pizza so perfect that it was crafted on Zeus’s anvil and delivered by pegasus himself. 

That place is DiFara in Midwood, Brooklyn. I was so inspired by my visit I put together a video chronicling what goes on at DiFara. I talk to some folks who waited an hour in line just to get into the pizza place, and a chef who goes into the nitty gritty of what makes DiFara the best.

Enjoy the video. I’ll have more on DiFara Pizza tomorrow.

Some say Pittsburgh’s Little Italy is in Bloomfield. But those people are wrong. They’ve never been to the secret best Pizza place in Pittsburgh - the backyard of a certain Dan Cardone.

I’m lucky enough to frequent this quasi-pizzeria  regularly and it never disappoints. When you get over the shock that there’s a legitimate pizza oven in the backyard (next to the Bocci court, naturally), the surreal thought thatmaybe, just maybe, you’ve been transported to Naples begins to set in. 

The oven is a magical thing. Dough, cheese, and sauce go in, and out comes a circular, bubbly, disc, that shares the same DNA as the pizzas served in the heart of Italy. The edges get a little charred during the cooking.  But because of the 900 degree temperatures, it remains fluffy and soft on the inside. It’s hard outer shell is just an evolutionary feature of pizza and, obviously, how it’s survived in the wild so long.

No matter what comes out of that oven, it’s automatically added to the list you keep in the back of your mind of the top 10 pizzas you’ve ever eaten. There’s no discussion, no discourse. It’s added onto the list and there’s nothing you can do about it. Then you spend the rest of your life wondering if you’re the type of person who builds a brick oven in your backyard. And guess what? You probably are. Start collecting those bricks.

While my Lawrenceville apartment can’t currently host a pizza oven without fear of burning down a city block, this is the next best thing. Enjoy the photos - they chronicle my latest outing there and what it takes for a pizza to go from a chunk of dough to a slice of heaven.