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Menu Development
Detroit Style Pizza: A Guide to Detroit Pizza
Discover Detroit-Style Pizza Detroit style pizza is a square, deep dish pizza that is known for its racing stripes sauce on top, cheese crust crown and light crust. Whether you call them red tops or square pizza, Detroit-style pizza is a unique pizza style that hast become one of the hottest pizza styles and one […]
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Menu Development
2013 February: Take Flight
It’s true that chickens can’t really fly, but their wings have been flying out the doors of pizzerias for a couple of decades now increasing in popularity year after year. We’ve seen the emergence of restaurants dedicated to wings like Wild Win...
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Menu Development
Delicious Dips
Dips definitely have a place on your appetizer or bar menu, so don’t look down on them as being a food that has lost it edge. Those tasteless dips (most made with onion soup and all that) we had been urged into trying at a party might have left a b...
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Menu Development
2010 February: Great Starts
Appetizers come first in the meal, but do they come last on your priority list? They shouldn’t, because if you put as much attention into your starters as you do your main dishes, your bottom line can benefit. “Appetizers are an opportunity for u...
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Menu Development
Chicken tenders can be menu powerhouses
Call them chicken tenders, chicken fingers or chicken nuggets — they all sound good to diners. According to Technomic’s Appetizer Consumer Trend report (March 2009), two-thirds of consumers polled say that they order chicken strips “sometimes�...
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Menu Development
Dough Doctor: do I need a special dough for take and bake?
I have been thinking about adding take-and bake pizza to my menu. Can I use my regular dough, or do I need a special dough? Making take-and-bake pizza can be a pretty simple proposition, or it can be a bit more in depth, requiring a spe...
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Menu Development
2010 January: Perfect Pies
White pizza is the hot new trend in fi ne dining Italian restaurants. For example, a fi ne-dining restaurant here in Chicago recently switched cuisines mid-bite –– it went from contemporary American to Italian –– and one of its featured dishe...
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Menu Development
2010 February: Perfect Pies
Giving a pizza a Mediterranean spin is as easy as saying “tomatoes, olives and anchovies.” But, then that would be giving short shrift to so many other flavors that make up the colorful portfolio of delicious Mediterranean ingredients. For exampl...
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Menu Development
Steak Out
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 respon...
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Menu Development
‘You Say Potato’ on Pizza
As a child Sergio Vitale traveled throughout his father’s native Italy. “I remember having potato pizza in Tuscany — it stood out as a unique combination. and i loved how simple and delicious it was,” he says. Today, the chef/owner of Baltimo...
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Menu Development
Roast `Em
Why bother roasting? Roasting intensifies an ingredient’s natural flavors. it also cooks away the rawness and pulls out some of the moisture that can result in a soggy finished pie. It is a cooking method where the vegetable is exposed directly to ...
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Menu Development
2013 January: Dough Doctor
Q: We are making a thick-crust pizza but it doesn’t maintain any crispiness after we put it into the box. What can we do to make a crispier pizza? A: One of the most commonly encountered causes for a thick crust pizza to lack or loose crispiness is...
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Menu Development
Get Baked
Attention to detail — and patients — delivers superior baked pasta results Hot, hearty and comforting, baked pasta will assuage any winter blues. John Coletta, executive chef/managing partner at Quartino in Chicago, Illinois, has prepared and ser...