Five inspired pies
Colleen Cross
NewsThese irresistible topping combos from 2016’s Chef of the Year competition will help you gear up for this year’s event
Looking for inspiration to shake up your pizzeria’s menu? These five pizzas from the 2016 Canadian Pizza Show will ignite your taste buds and fire up your imagination. Our creative, passionate and cutting-edge Chef of the Year competitors deliver!
La Pizza di Grano Antico
Mateusz Rzeszutek of Queen Margherita Pizza in Toronto baked his way to third place with this complex pie. It featured whipped ricotta and a white balsamic vinaigrette made with Dijon mustard. The dough consists of Kamut flour, “00” flour, salt, water and yeast. The pie was topped with kale, fried chilis, toasted pine nuts and Parmesan.
Pesto Chicken Pizza
Richard Anger, manager and head chef of Buoys Eatery in Gore Bay, Manitoulin Island, Ont., used an olive oil base made from scratch on Buoys’ regular pizza crust. To this he added chicken, red onions, bacon, tomato, mozzarella and topped it off with Parmesan.
Richard: “I strive to make the best hand-crafted pizza out there. I’m always testing the boundaries of dough and different combinations to find the next best pizza. That’s the charm of pizza: it can be everything and anything.”
Pizza di patate viola
Dean Litster, corporate chef at Armando’s Pizza in Windsor, Ont., said he wanted to make something traditional but still a little outside the box. His Sicilian style deep-dish purple potato pizza featured provolone cheese, caramelized cipollini onions and
prosciuttini.
Dean: “I found that perfect balance working along the lines of a traditional potato pizza but adding my flair to it, the fresh herbs, the purple potato, the Italian Gorgonzola and the pickled bird’s eye chilis.”
Margherita with Guanciale
Marco Zambri, owner of Slopes of Vesuvius Mobile Pizzeria in
Uxbridge, Ont., created an innovative pie using cured pork cheek, known as guanciale in Italian. It featured San Marzano tomatoes, fior di latte mozzarella, fresh basil and grated pecorino cheese.
Marco: “Less is definitely more when it comes to pizza when it’s done the way it was meant to be.”
La Molisana
Roberto Vergalito, owner of Roberto’s Pizza Passion in St. Catharines, Ont. whipped up one of his hottest-selling pizzas.
La Molisana is a truffle pizza named for the truffles found in the Molise region of Italy. It is a Neapolitan thin-crust pizza topped with black truffle paste, mozzarella cheese, oyster mushrooms, dabs of fior di latte mozzarella, fresh parsley and a drizzle of black truffle oil.
Roberto: “Truffle is a type of mushroom found in the ground. There are two types of truffle: black and white. Black truffle is more commonly found whereas white truffle is more difficult to find and can cost $6,000 per kilogram.
Print this page