Pizzaiola – Making pizza in the queen city

Pizzaiolo – n. Italian for a male artisan pizza chef who specializes in the perfection of the crust, the secret ingredient to an outstanding pizza.  This elusive and exclusive group obtains their titles from nearly a lifetime of experience, earning respect from their peers.  f. pizzaiola pl. pizzaiolos/pizzaiolas.

Nothing went as planned.  Nothing was as expected.  Nothing could have been better. I suddenly wanted these people to like me more than I ever did my peers in high school, which is the kingdom of the unknown where the land is ruled by wanting to be liked and the currency is nervousness.  I had had the captain of the basketball team wrapped around my finger, but these guys turned me to mush.  I felt like a bird without feathers, naked and vulnerable.  To top things off, I knew nothing.  I didn’t even really care for most pizza.  Yet, I was to become a pizzaiola at Pie Town, Charlotte’s first “artisan” pizzeria, and I was terrified.

The problems began before I arrived.  What does a pizzaiola wear?  This was the least of my problems, as I also didn’t know how to make dough or bake a pizza.  As much as I would like to say that I prepared extensively by learning everything I could, I didn’t. I was going in blind.  I ate pizza for lunch that day, hoping to get in the mindset.  This later proved to be a detriment, as the pizza was soon flowing and I was already nearing my saturation point.

This adventure had begun when I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon in the kitchen of Pie Town.  Peter Reinhart, renowned baker and pizza expert, had traveled the world in search of the perfect pizza. As a result, Reinhart teamed with primary owner Pierre Bader on Pie Town. Reinhart is the executive pizzaiolo and consulting partner.
Pie Town’s professional pizzaiolos would teach me their ways so that I, too, could become a pizzaiola, or at least take one step down the path to perfection.  They enticed me with the promise of learning their secrets.  Normally, I would tell you that I play hard to get, but let’s be honest, I said yes before all the details were even finalized.  The staff’s T-shirts ask, “Could this be the best pizza in the world?”  I was ready to find out.

I arrived at 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon.  My only knowledge of restaurant kitchens came from “Kitchen Confidential,” by Anthony Bourdain.  He paints a descriptive picture of a kitchen as a brutal environment, filled with ex-cons and chaos – not a place for a young suburban co-ed.  After a round of formal introductions, the cooks went about their work of barbecuing chicken and slicing prosciutto, listening to my battery of questions but remaining a little distant.  As this was a new experience for everyone – my first time in a kitchen and their first time showing the ropes to an outsider – no one knew how to act.

We began by making dough.  Not just any dough of course, but a dough that is capable of creating “a crust that has balanced but complex flavors and a texture that contains both a crisp and smoky snap and a creamy texture inside the puffy edge,” as the menu touts.  I was quickly enrolled in Pizza 101.  We went over the precise ratio of water, flour and mixing.  My first lecture was a brief history of pizza and the differences among varieties.

I don’t know whether I proved myself by being an active listener or if they simply got tired of having a follower, but I was soon given an apron and cap and became part of the in crowd. I was a professional – or at least I looked like one.  It was the easiest initiation I had ever been a part of: no embarrassment, no pain. I helped slice pig jowl, a big hunk of creamy fat with some meat hidden inside, and immediately showed my amateur status by holding the meat with elongated fingers.  In a tone mixed with urgency, distress (he probably didn’t want any blood squirting into his bacon) and respect for a near-stranger, Austin Krum, the head of the Pie Town kitchen, explained that it would behoove me to hold the pig jowl with curled fingers curled and rounded knuckles.  “You wouldn’t want to lose a fingertip!”  I got the point and we made some delicious guanciale, cured bacon, from that jowl (not the belly, the source of regular bacon).

We then moved onto the true nuggets of pizza gold, the dough balls.  As my compatriots in white churned out ball after ball, I struggled to have any control over my pieces.  As dough quickly swam through their hands, it somehow got stuck in mine.  Each pizzaiolo offered his special tip.  Unfortunately, their three strategies did not meld into one perfect hybrid, but I did at least earn passing marks.  With so many hands, this task was quickly over, with all of the dough converted into pizza dough balls.  All that was left was to wait with baited breath for the diners to join us and order a pizza pie.

Most of the duties had been completed by this point, a classic case of hurry up and wait.  Conversation began to flow as we waited for the first customers of the evening.  The manager, bartender, wait staff – everyone – came into the kitchen to chat during this downtime.  Just like at a dinner party, everyone congregated in the kitchen.  Anecdotes were shared as we began to get to know one another. People shared stories about their past lives as culinary students or bulk food distributors. I was even able to add my two cents about my expertise in ice cream (see the September 2009 issue of Uptown for my ice cream initiation).  Food’s greatest strength was at work again – bringing people together.  These strangers suddenly began to become friends.

Like a medieval ball, I had been chained to Austin for the evening.  He had been at Pie Town since day one and had an amazing ability to move everyone forward; he was a team captain, not a dictator.  Chris Reinhart, Peter’s nephew, was the first to offer me a sample slice, so I liked him immediately.  I quickly realized this was no special treatment as I soon had whole pizzas coming my way, but he made a good first impression.  Gino was the new guy, despite being the oldest, at about 45.  He had been in the pizza business since he was 18, but wanted something new and extraordinary, so, he headed to Pie Town.  Gino took me under his wing as we manned the pizzas for the rest of night.  I knew it would be a fun night when Gino joked, “Now, that is G-I-N…” to ensure I spelled his name correctly in his Uptown debut.  These men were true pizza freaks, eating pizza nearly every day of the week, even on their days off.
At first I practiced with dough left over from the day before, waste dough. I was not yet trusted with the good stuff.  I felt like I was trying to entice a jellyfish to reshape itself.  Flour on my hands was key, in the right proportion. This wasn’t a case of more is better.  The dough was in a smooth half-dome about the circumference of a CD and a couple of inches thick.  I started in the middle, pressing down the dough with the pads of my fingertips, working my way to the edges.  The crust was to be as thin as four or five pieces of paper, but strong enough to hold all the goodies.  Meanwhile, what a layman (myself mere hours before) would refer to as the crust edge, the often-rejected bit, could be thicker.  In the world of artisan pizzas, the crust edge is the cornicione, and is the star of the show.

Just when I thought I was getting a handle on the finger pressing, it was time to move onto the next step.  Again, the three competing styles of each pizzaiolo showed their faces.  Austin told me to use my middle knuckles while I interpreted Gino’s method of choice as using the flat sides of his fingernails.  Gino told me, “Gravity is your friend,” while softly stretching the dough as long as the table still supported some of it.  At the same time, Austin encouraged me to free the dough of any outside support. Chris had his own tricks. I fused all of the styles to craft a new creature that at least appeared pizza-like in the end.  Toppings and sauce were the easy part.  A dollop of sauce in the middle was spiraled out with the bottom of a ladle.  Adding cheese, if you want to be efficient, is a two-handed endeavor.

The oven demands your respect.  It is the centerpiece of the kitchen, taking up most of the room and easily making its presence known by its constant heat.  The gas-fired brick oven kept a constant temperature of about 800 degrees.  With only a couple of feet between the oven and the production space, the back of my neck was treading the line between hot and uncomfortable.  My eyes burned as I kept a constant watch on the pizzas, but I could not tear them away from the cheese that boiled like rolling ocean waves.  Mere seconds were the difference between done and overdone.

A long-handled wooden board, a pizza peel, was used to transfer the pizzas from the assembly area to the oven and from the oven to the plate.  It took a delicate shimmy of the wrist to smoothly slide the pizza into the oven.  At this I proved to be a natural.  It may seem like a minor detail of the process, but without the proper transfer a pizza could be lost.  The outer edges of the oven are drastically warmer than the center, so the pizzas had to be rotated every 30 seconds to cook evenly.  This is done with a different peel – one that has a smaller metal disk at its head.

At last, mission accomplished: I made a pizza of customer quality!  From dough to finishing salt, I had a hand in every step of the process.  More important, I was proud to be a part of the operation.

Guests at Pie Town are welcomed back into the kitchen to see the process and ask questions.  They had no idea it was my first day, that I was just a visitor like them. By the end of the night, “Reinhart” (Chris and I were now on an informal footing) was taking pictures of me spinning dough in the air.  The rigidity of measurements and protocols had been replaced by laughter and fun.

As we were saying our goodbyes, I mentioned that this wasn’t at all the experience I had been expecting; it had far exceeded my expectations.  First off, I wasn’t planning on staying for nearly seven hours.  Secondly, I wasn’t expecting their kindness or patience.  And finally, I wasn’t expecting the calm and quiet of people working hard at what they do best.  Austin, the pizza guru, responded, “You exceeded our expectations too.”

As I reflected on these words, I realized that maybe they weren’t looking forward to my arrival, and now I certainly understand why I might first be perceived as a burden; they wouldn’t want someone coming into their space for a night, adding responsibility and work to an already full plate. But they told me that I did what I was supposed to, without even knowing it, and that I was even helpful.  I saw how this microcosm is representative of life. Is it human instinct to have low expectations of the unknown, of outsiders? Probably.  At the same time, it suggests that we are also willing to be proven wrong.  We may put up a guard initially and test newcomers, but relationships can be built quickly in the heat of fire.  Although I technically became a pizzaiola by making a customer-quality pizza, I think the true test was in being accepted by the community.  For one day I was able to become someone new, from restaurant guest to restaurant chef, from outsider to insider. I was a pizzaiola.

~ Jenn Burns