|
|
 Issue #1 - Fall 2007 --- --- |
Backyard Brick Oven Pizza Seattleites Fire Up the Pies for Friends and Neighbors - by D.C. Staff  ROLL OUT YOUR DOUGH, spread a little corn meal on your pizza board, add sauce and toppings, cook at 800 degrees for two minutes. photos by Rex Every Friday this summer Christopher Gronbeck has being mixing, portioning and proofing organic pizza dough for a steady stream of hungry guests, who bring their own toppings and fire up their personal creations in the 800-degree wood-fired brick oven in his backyard. What a great way to share food, almost like in the feudal times of yore, when the peasants would take their meals to be cooked in the communal town oven! But with better beer. We brought Sea Beans, pepperoni, low-grade supermarket mozzarella and various vegetables, but a cornucopia of topping possibilities already awaited us, including "pomodoro San Marzano," double the price of standard canned tomatoes and well worth it for this application: perfect as sweet pizza sauce straight out of the can. (Seattle's Tutta Bella pizzeria uses the stuff.) A pizza that has those crispy, slightly burnt blisters here and there on the crust is pizza heaven: light years beyond the sad corporate pies inflicted on so many of our fellow Americans. Note to fellow Americans: for your next summer pizza fix, seek out a backyard full of interesting people, a smorgasbord of gorgeous toppings, and a big, wood-fired oven. Gronbeck's consulting firm, Sustainable by Design, provides solar engineering and green building consulting, primarily within the sustainable energy and architecture fields.  PIZZA WITH SEA BEANS, mozzarella, tomatoes, supermarket grade pepperoni, canned artichoke hearts before and after a two minute-blast in the oven. ---  BRICK OVEN ROASTED CORN IS UNSHEATHED, attracting the attention of local food critic Roger Downey. |