ARTISAN vs COMMERCIAL pizza

 A comparison that is coming from the foundation of the pizza: THE CRUST

I have to start with how I define the 2 major categories of pizza making.

• The ARTISAN way of pizza making: Constantly reaching for the unreachable. When the pizza maker understands dough fermentation at a very deep level. Knows the relations between hydration, temperature and ingredients ratio. For this person the Pizza is a form of art, constantly pushing the limits and trying to bake the best pizza with every attempt, using the dough at its optimal stage. The pizza maker knows that timing is key and fermentation level is everything. Quality is always before quantity for an artisan pizzaiolo.

Then there is the "everything else" category.

• THE AVERAGE WAY (it includes the CORPORATE CHAINS): The pizza maker uses some sort of dough recipe. Making uniform pizzas is more important than creating something extraordinary. The dough has to be easy to handle by any pizza maker, therefore the optimal fermentation level is not a goal. The dough is not pushed to its limits. The people who run these operations, most likely do not even know about timing and optimal dough fermentation. Pushing the dough to its limits in order to achieve extraordinary results requires special knowledge and skills. Those are scarce and expensive commodities these days. No room for those in a mass and mediocre pizza production setting. Profit and quantity is first and foremost.

This crust lightness can only be achieved with optimal dough fermentation and proper baking temperature in the oven.

The fading reputation of pizzas

Here is what the vast majority of people think what pizza making is about: find a recipe, throw the ingredients together, wait some time (who knows how much time or why, whatever the recipe says!!!), stretch the dough, top it, then bake the pizza in the oven at whatever temperature. Easy-peasy, anyone can do it.

Let me make this clear. It is not the average pizza lover customer’s fault. How would they know what a real artisan pizza is about, when the corporate pizza chains successfully forced the 99% of the independent, small pizza shops out of business by now? In North America in our current age, practically any round shaped food that has bread-like bottom and cheese on the top is labeled as pizza. Most of the pizzerias have no clue about the art of the dough. They use a corporate recipe and are not allowed to change anything in it. And the knowledge and experience needed to know what to change, is not there anymore.

Any shop can buy the best pizza oven on the market and the best ingredients. Unfortunately none of them really matters if the dough is not fermented properly and not baked at the right time. Without this, the pizza will never be exceptional. And DO NOT FORGET... the crust will always be the focal point of any real pizza. For any artisan baker, the dough and the crust is the most important thing. It carries all the experience, knowledge and the unique fingerprint of the baker. Anybody can use the same toppings, but the crust can identify the passionate baker.

Gluten free sourdough crust made from scratch

Timing is NOT on the corporate pizza’s side

TIMING. The most crucial element. The yeast is the moving force of the fermentation process inside the dough. After kneading, the dough is heading uphill towards the optimal fermentation state, then passes it, then goes downhill into degradation. This optimal fermentation state is not measured by days. We are talking about hours here. Baking a pizza from the dough before or after this optimal stage of its life cycle will result in a pizza crust that is far from being excellent.

The real artisan bakers work with smaller batches of pizza dough that is made to be used at its optimal fermentation point. They know exactly when they have to make the pizzas from it. It is a narrow window of around 6-12 hours (depending on a few more complicated factors) when the crust will be simply sensational. After that the quality of the dough is going downhill, so does the quality of the baked crusts. Lightness, airiness, etc. It is like a finely tuned machine.

While on the other hand, the pizza chains make their dough to be used for up to 3-4 days if necessary. From what I explained so far, you can see that the dough most likely will not be baked at its prime state, hence the average, pizzeria level crust.

Working with a yeasted dough (whether it is wild yeast or baker's yeast) is extremely time and temperature sensitive. There will always be a huge quality gap between a real handcrafted pizza crust and the mass produced one. When we eat, we don't just want to feed ourselves, but we are looking for some culinary satisfaction that comes with the masterfully crafted food. I call it the "wow-factor". And that is what people are missing out on with the less and less artisan pizza shops in our neighborhoods. That is why we have to keep the small and independent mom-and-pop shops alive. Their generational knowledge and experience of their craft will be lost forever when they are gone. Does not matter how many new, franchise pizza places open on every corner, they won't bring that back ever.