World’s Best Pizza Secret
Slug: Pizza / Staten Island, NY– 10/22/2013 : A survey of pizza establishments on Staten Island. Here: Goodfella’s Quatro Cantone pie has 4 toppings: alla vodka, smoking Goodfella, Sally pie (lemon chicken) , and margarita NYTCredit: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
Pizza Secret, what is the secret to making the “World’s Best Pizza”. Well, I have been lucky enough to be part of the Goodfella’s Brick oven Pizza crew for over 25 years and I think I finally understand the pizza secret. As Sally Russo used to say “It’s love, love of what you do”. That may seem silly but in the long run, pizza is a very basic food that has an infinite number of combinations, variables, and possibilities. Once you have mastered the ability to make the dough, roll the dough, stretch the dough, and bake the dough in an oven(which requires practice to develop the skill) then you can start assembling the ingredients to begin your own personal pizza journey. Many people are not aware of the fact that it requires the same amount of time to make a good pizza as it does to make a bad pizza. What I mean by this is that you can get good ingredients or bad, you can mix and assemble those ingredients correctly or not, then you can bake your pizza evenly at the correct temperature or not. Seems simple enough but you would be surprised. Once people start skimping on quality ingredients it’s all over. A good cheese or flour may be a little more expensive but that is the cost of making a good pie. Actually checking precise measurements and dough temperatures will determine both taste and consistency. This is the only true Pizza SECRET I have ever learned: You have to be consistent! Always! You do it correctly every day, you follow the correct procedure and recipes every day. You mix, prep and store your dough the same way every day. You use the same ingredients from reputable sources. This is the only secret. You don’t skimp on quality, you don’t shortcut time in letting the dough rise. You bake your pies the same way every time. This is your secret to success. Anybody can make one pizza hat is great but it takes a team of dedicated individual all working in coordination to produce a consistent pizza that you can be proud of. The pizza secret begins with food ordering and storage to the preparation and portioning and then to cooking. It is a progression with each step completely dependent on each prior step to achieve the result. Everybody in the line depends on everybody else. Your vendors are a key part of your success too and should be made aware that their success is based on your success so that they too have a vested interest in making sure you always get a fresh consistent delivery and this includes the delivery time also. There is nothing worse than coming in on a hot day and finding your dairy products have been sitting out in the hot sun for hours or conversely on a freezing day your produce has become a solid block. Then of course, there is the inopportune delivery times such as during the Friday rush when you don’t even have enough time to check it all in much less check quality and quantity against your order. All these things add up to the secret of great pizza so get busy and be consistent in delivering a great product and you will be that much closer to the “secret”.