Smoking foods has been around forever. There are very few natural manipulations that humans have used to influence the taste and texture of food while preserving it at the same time. The salted and smoked meats that ancient humans preserved enabled them to pack up...
Sweet peppers are one of the most versatile and forgiving vegetables around. They can take a beating and come out perfect. Roasting peppers heightens them with an initial frontal mouth-blast before the caramelized sugars kick in for a delicious finish. These red,...
Panini is the plural form for panino, which is literally the term for “small bread roll” in Italian. Technically, any sliced bread shouldn’t be called a panini or panino, but even in Italy, most sandwich shop operators will let you get by with calling everything a...
At 4:30 pm on August 15th, 2009, I made the best business decision I’d made since opening my pizzeria ten years earlier. I changed my dough. I had been in business for more than nine years. That steamy day, I cruised up and down the undulating hills and steep ravines...
I have been involved in a complicated relationship for 14 years. My partner is fickle, moody, unstable and inconsistent, but I can’t get rid of her. Because of her voracious greed, she takes all my money, squanders it and I never see it again. Unfortunately, my...
Pizza pans matter when it comes to creating the perfect crust, flavor At an old used restaurant warehouse in West Virginia, I stared into a dark corner at several three-foot stacks of blue-steel pizza pans piled like greasy towers. Their thick, bumpy sides indicated...
My pizzeria’s love affair with steak began over eight years ago when restaurant consultant Big Dave Ostrander convinced me to put steak on my menu. Of the 53 toppings I offer, it’s a standout. In fact, in the past 10 months, steak has been responsible for the sale of...
In 2002, my menu consisted of cheap deals, 23 toppings, one sauce, one crust type, no specialty pizzas, no calzones and no wings. I advertised how good my product was but got tired of telling customers, “That’s all we have, take it or leave it.”Then one day I changed...
A Matter of Perspective John Gutekanst Avalanche Pizza Athens, Ohio It was a busy night and we were running at a 55-minute pizza delivery time. I just put four large pizzas on the rail of my conveyor oven and pulled the ticket from the make line that would...
I’m a pizza guy. Like many of you, I spend a good amount of my time with my hands and arms in a 485 F oven or bent over sticky globular masses of dough. After 11 years making pizza, I know my place in the strata of celebrity chefs, culinary pundits and artisan...
