GoreMade Pizza is making 2018 the year of #YourPizzaDreams. And with that, we're asking you one question... what are your pizza dreams?

WHAT DO YOU MEAN "PIZZA DREAMS?"
When we ask people to tell us their pizza dreams, we typically get three different types of responses. First is those who assume it to be a question about a certain combination of toppings. "My pizza dream is a pizza with eggs, bacon, olive oil, fresh mozzarella and fresh cracked pepper". This is the most common category of response. It's literally what we call the create-your-own pizza on our menu.

Next would be the sleeping dreams involving pizza. One woman had an anxiety dream about ordering a pizza delivered for a friend's birthday and it never showing up.

The third category is a little harder to nail down, but it revolves mostly around what people want to do with/while/for pizza. This is pretty much the wild card and what seems to have the most unexpected responses.

Our hope is to allow people to consider their pizza dreams on their own terms, without limitation. It could be ANYTHING, and that is both amazing and intimidating. Whatever the case, we want to know as many of them as we can. So we've decided to start the conversation. 

WHY?
First and foremost, we're curious. More than that, we're interested, excited and entertained by other people's pizza dreams. I know what I think about pizza dreams, but what do YOU think when you're asked to define this same idea? 

And part of this project is to maybe make some of those dreams a reality. Some will be easy. Hell, we may already be making some of them come true and you just don't know it! Some will be hard, and if we're intrigued and inspired, maybe we'll put in some work to make them a reality? And some will surely be impossible. But no matter the case, we wanna know as many as we can!

The responses we have received since the beginning of the year have already blown my mind, and we'll be sharing some of them as this project moves forward. But the truth is that making people's pizza dreams come true has been the game for us this entire time. It's why we opened our pizza doors in the first place. It's only recently that we've begun to look at it from a different angle. To take a more grand approach to the idea. We want to know EVERYONE'S pizza dreams, without limits or boundaries.

WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?
Quite simply, we're asking you to answer the question however it most makes sense to you. The easiest way I guess, would be to comment on this blog since you're already here. Other than that, there are several ways we're suggesting sharing. Some mediums of communication that come to mind would be; postcards/letters, comments, social media/blog/internet posts using short stories, videos, photos, collage or any other form of communication you can think of. But like this whole project, it is completely up to you. However you communicate, our only real hope is that you do. This project is nothing without your responses. Your pizza dreams. 

You can send us things in the mail to 936 N 4th st, Columbus OH 43201. WE LOVE MAIL! If we get any responses, we'll start a dream wall in the pizza shop and put em on display! We also have a pizza dream journal that we've got on the bar if you come in. Folks have already been writing in it for over a month, which has been amazing!

Beyond that, it's up to you!
​
Who knows where this project will go or what will come of it all, but it's time to find out. One question remains... What are #yourpizzadreams?


NickG,
out
​

The space has shifted into a mode of construction. 

​There's still lots to be done, but we are slowly making some headway on the grand process that is turning an old TV repair shop into a bustling little wood fired pizza shop. The pace is definitely a bit slower than my excited self imagined it a year ago, but this has allowed me to really sink into some details that will really add a lot of character to our humble pizza operation. Soon, things will snowball into a whirlwind, and I'm sure I'll be missing all this free time and wishing I had some more!

First off, I should mention the score! My father-in-law was somewhat of a Renaissance man, and in so, a collector of amazing things was a byproduct of his life. He encouraged me to poke through his "junk" for anything to throw into the pizza project. American pickers would have shit their pants! Mind boggling amounts of interesting things in a disheveled mess of awesome!

We ended up digging around and finding an enormous amount of beautiful wood, stacked to air drying for over 20 years on the second floor of his "shop". There was pretty much an entire walnut tree just hanging out in the corner, along with a ton of other types of wood. I don't know board feet, but it is an amazing amount of awesome wood! He told me to take as much as I wanted.

So now we have wood milled by my father in law, for the bar, benches, shelves and decorations. I'm also teaching myself how to make things. I've started with cheese/charcuterie boards out of some beautifully patterned live edge black walnut. This is my first attempt. It's a bread cutting board I made for my wife, built to fit our homemade pan de mie bread that our family so much enjoys!

I also just took a class on whole hog butchery through The Commissary last week. If you haven't checked the place out, I suggest you do! The class taught us how to break down a half hog, and we were sent home with all the spoils of the class, including a bone saw, boning knife and a whole lotta pork! My oldest son was pretty excited to touch a pig's brain, let me tell you!

​I didn't get many pictures, but here's what we started off the class with (a warning for the squeamish, though it may just be too late by this point in the paragraph to avert the eyes).  

​February 5th, 2015, we connected with a random craigslister about a vacant space at 936 north 4th street. That person turned out to be a long time friend. After around 388 days, we still have yet to open our doors, but the same sense of serendipity has been with us throughout the entire project, Illuminating the way in the darkness. My gut has proven quite a trusted friend, and we've met so many wonderful people along the way. ​We've still got a long way to go, but I am learning to see the joy in it all. I see this lengthy build-out as a gift. A gift I wanna rip open and cook pizza with! Alas, with all good things comes patience, and I will spend my days making this project ever stronger.

Thanks for sticking with us through it all! ​It will be my pleasure to serve every one of you amazing pizza people in this amazing space. More as the story unfolds!

xoxo, 
​NickG

​It may seem obvious, but the key piece of equipment, the engine of any wood fired pizza shop is the oven. This baby right here, the Mario Acunto Classico 5, is our engine. And it just arrived yesterday.

A little background. The Acunto family has been building Italian wood fired ovens since the late 1800's. They specialize in making ovens specifically designed to accommodate high-heat neapolitan-style pizza. They are rooted in tradition, and it's an honor to have one of their ovens at the helm.

From finding the best oven for my needs to getting it here, it was quite a journey. I've been anticipating this day for about 6 months, when we first drove out to met Ellie Olsen of Wood Fired Oven Bakers back in april of this year. 

Ellie's an oven importer and fellow pizza nerd who has a warehouse or two outside of Denver, CO. She deals in all things wood fired pizza, from ovens to plates, and everything in between. It's been a pleasure working with her. We could talk for hours if we both had the time. But even before meeting her, there was lots of research and many phone calls and emails sent to different pizza makers across the country to get their insight and opinions. 

On monday morning, October 26th, the fruits of said journey showed up at our doorstep. 

The Acunto Classico 5 is the smallest of the Classico series, weighing in at just under 5,000 lbs. It's a little over 5 ft wide and comes fully assembled. These numbers make for quite an undertaking in order to get it from the truck to inside the building. If anything were to go wrong, I'm not sure how we'd manage to get another oven. 

Pat, the contractor for our restaurant's build-out, was at the helm of the monstrous fork-lift we rented to get the oven in place. He showed up around 6 am to get the face of the building removed for the delivery. I showed up around 8:45 am and quickly realized my oven was already strapped on the forklift and coming down the street. 

The next hour was dedicated to placing the oven in the building. I'd been pretty worried about the process, but it turned out to be quite smooth, even in spite of the fact that Pat had just learned how to drive the forklift that morning. He didn't tell me this fact until after the oven was fully in place, thankfully! 

Once we had the brunt of the job taken care of, I was able to really appreciate the event at hand. Pat tried to talk to me as I lay myself on the oven, but all I could do was smile. His words were like the teacher from Peanuts. Just muffled noise overshadowed by the joy of the moment. He picked up my camera and took this photo after realizing I wasn't listening to him.

It may seem like just another step in the process, but this oven is about as close to magic as a pizza maker can get. It's truly a master's tool. I've been making pizza for years in an oven that gets the job done, but this... this is the stuff pizza dreams are made of! 

We still have a few things stopping us from setting it up and starting to really see what it can do, but the hard part is over.

After the oven was placed, the front was boarded back up. Next comes the windows, the awning and finishing work. Pretty soon, this should start to look like an actual store front. And once we stop playing the back-and-forth game with building and zoning services, we can get to making the inside a pizza shop. People keep asking me when we'll open our doors. All I can really say is soon... I hope!

One step at a time! 

xoxo
NickG

​Well, after years of learning and growing, it's finally time to take GoreMade Pizza to the next level by opening our very first brick and mortar restaurant. If you recall from our first blog post back in 2011, this has been in the works for a long time! We've secured the most awesome of spaces, and I can't believe our luck!

The way we found the place was really quite serendipitous. This was the third property we attempted to make our home. Our second attempt was the purchase of a building in Clintonville. After months of negotiations and meetings and talks with the city, the deal abruptly fell through on a tuesday night. 

The following morning, a little disheartened by it all, I perused the craigslist classifieds for some new leads, and stumbled upon something that had to be checked out. "Wanted: Pizza Shop/Italian Cafe in Italian Village".

I was in no real mood to take on another project at that moment, but the specificity of it all was begging an inquiry. I sent a quick email just to see what was up.

Hey there,

Just saw your post about looking for a pizza shop. I am currently looking for a place to park my mobile wood fired pizza business and would be interested in checking out what you've got going on.

Thanks,
NickG


Simple email to a random craigslister. And here's the response I got back about a half hour later.


Nick!  It's Brian's friend Kevin!!

Dude we need to talk!  You got time tomorrow or Sat? 614-xxx-xxxx

-Kevin


Kevin and I have known each other for about 8 years now. While we hadn't talked in over a year, we were always glad to see each other when we did. Turns out Kevin bought a building in Italian Village with the intent of bringing some much needed Italian food to the area. After some research, he decided to stick with real estate and let someone else make the Italian food. The craigslist post had only been up for about 12 hours when I stumbled across it, so the timing was quite impeccable! 

Here's what the building currently looks like and a little bit about it.

936 North Fourth Street is located in the 4th street corridor in Italian Village, right next door to Little Rock Bar. It's a bustling neighborhood that's on the verge of becoming the next - big - thing. With hundreds of apartments and condos currently being built within one block of us, GoreMade Pizza is sure to be a cornerstone of the Italian Village food scene.

As you can see, the place needs some work. We launched a GoFundMe campaign a few days ago to help raise the funds to turn this into an amazing and welcoming space that serves the best pizza in town! I've met some of the locals at the neighboring bar and we were fast friends. It will be an honor to serve them in the coming years! 

In the long expanse of our culture's history with food, it is only very recently in that timeline that we have had the modern convenience of refrigeration. My grandmother tells stories of purchasing blocks of ice from the local Ice House in town to keep the milk cool for days at a time. Meat was usually only eaten fresh within a few days of slaughter. It was out of necessity that we found ways to make our food last more than the few days before going rancid. Out of this came cured meats!  

Modern day meat curing has become more of a flavor enhancer than a way of keeping food for extended periods of time, though that is indeed an added bonus. I first found interest in the art of charcuterie after realizing that cured meats fell well outside of all the food rules I knew. The fact that I can hang a pork belly in my basement for 3 months and then eat it was something I had to better understand. So, around December of 2014, I began to amass the knowledge, equipment and ingredients necessary for some very basic charcuterie.

​After finally having everything necessary, I sought out my first pork belly. One recipe I was going to try suggested a skin on pork belly, so that's what I went looking for. It was through a local meat provider that I was able to finally order one.

It took a week, and I wasn't really sure what to expect. When I went to pick it up, I was greeted by a 12 lb slab of meat. It was later that I found there to be a row of nipples on the animal, which kind of weirded me out, to be honest. I mean it's a pig's belly with the skin still on, so I don't know how it could have been any other way, but none the less, it made me a little more uncomfortable than I bargained for. I briefly contemplated cutting them off, but the act of pinching and lifting them and slicing them off with a sharp knife was a little more disturbing than the idea of consuming them later.

My original plan was to make a rolled pancetta, which would cure for about two or three months. I also decided to make a pancetta stesa, which is not rolled and hung for about 10 days. And lastly, some smoked bacon. I'd never attempted smoking any foods before, so this was also new to me. 

First, I cured these two slabs of bacon in the fridge for about 9 days in a 2 to 1 mixture of salt and brown sugar in a ziploc bag. Then I rinsed it off and let it sit in the fridge for another 24 hours. This creates a sticky outer layer that the smoke will better stick to. The above picture was my very basic smoking setup for the bacon. A smoldering fire in a weber grill for a couple hours. I never let it get over 200º, which took quite a bit of attention. More so than I expected, at least.

After it was all said and done, I realized that the meat should have been soaked for a while, as opposed to just a quick rinse. It was the saltiest meat I've ever experienced. I ended up putting it in a big vat of black beans and making feijoada and replacing the salt pork with my slabs of super-salty bacon. It was amazing!

Second was this Pancetta Stesa, or flat (as opposed to rolled). This and the rolled pancetta (below) were cured in the fridge for 3 weeks in a ziploc bag with some awesome spices. This is basically the Italian version of bacon, and doesn't require smoking. After the stesa hung in the basement for 9 days, it was ready.

I don't think I've ever had a better cured meat than this. Such a bold and amazing flavor. It was the shining success of the experiment, and something I plan to make again and again!

The third and longest cure was this beautiful Pancetta Arrotolata, or rolled pancetta. This cure had the skin left on it to slow down the release of moisture. It was also the most labor intensive, including learning how to tie butcher's knots. I failed many times before finally getting the knots down. 

It hung in my basement for over 2 months, and was quite an interesting thing. One part of me was weirded out by the concept of allowing meat to just hang. It felt a little wrong. I can't imagine what my wife was going through. She's the cautious one of the family. I'm sure she had her doubts about the whole prospect of aging meat in our house, but kept her thoughts to herself.

The other, more excited side of me just couldn't bare the wait. Two months the longest time I've ever spent prepping food of any kind. The anticipation was great, but you can't rush flavor.

Finally, last week, the moment came where the meat had lost 25% of its weight in moisture, and it was time to take it down and try it out. 

Now, just to review, when you hang meats, the idea is to block the bad molds and allow the good molds to thrive. So, mold is inherent in the process  They say white molds are good, green/blue molds are ok, and black or red are deal breakers and should be thrown away immediately. 

When I finally cut into it, this is what I found...

The green, gummy edges of the roll had an immediately negative response from my gut. Also, the yellow mold was instinctively no good, though it was never mentioned in my initial research of mold acceptability. After searching around, I found the consensus to be "throw it out!". Better safe than sorry is the way of the beginning charcuterie enthusiast.

It was heart wrenching. I'm inherently waste-averse, especially after putting all this work into a food. It took me a couple days to actually put it in the trash. 

In the end, I had one failure, two over-salted bacon slabs that went perfectly in a huge pot of beans, and the most amazing cured meat in the Pancetta Stesa. Two out of three ain't bad, they say. As a first timer, I think things came out quite well. I think I'll stay away from the rolled pancetta for a while and stick with the more basic meats. I'm looking forward to trying other whole meats and eventually some ground meats as well. 

Baby steps!

The beginning of this year's pizza season started off with an interesting event for GoreMade Pizza. One of my ingredient providers needed the use of my wood fired oven for a product demonstration at their annual food show. They had an italian pizza chef (who didn't speak a lick of english) flown in to demonstrate a new kind of flour entering the market. I'm not in the business of renting my oven, so I was hesitant at first. In the end, they hired me and the oven and all was well.

It was exciting to not only eat true italian wood fired pizza (having never been to Italy, this would be a first), but also to see how this particular pizzaiolo does what he does. He had a translator by his side, and a small entourage of fans huddling around him throughout the day wanting to see a master at work. It was at some points a struggle, but I made sure to watch every aspect of his process despite the crowds. From the fire placement to the way he stretched and topped the pizzas, there were mountains of details and information to take in. And to top it all off, I was getting paid to be a part of it!

When the luster of the moment died down, it was just he and I on a loading dock of the convention center overlooking the bustle of a highway on-ramp. Through a series of grunts and gestures, we had a nice conversation about pizza and technique and families and bambinos (the only italian word I knew besides stromboli).  I ended up making a few pizzas from his dough balls to take home for the bambinos and the bambino-sitter, then it was off to the after party. 

If you've never been, RDP puts on a tremendous show at the LC pavilion once a year for all their customers. Free drinks, loads of entertainment (my wife being one of the hired stilt-walkers), and some kind of popular music act to finish off the evening. They truly do it up right! It was fun seeing the Italian pizza chef in plain cloths and blending into the crowd. 

There was a moment in the evening where, after a few drinks and knee-deep into the main event, I felt the need to have his translator tell him that this hair band cover band was not the quintessential America as it may appear. After all, he brought amazing pizza, and we gave him hairball. The translator insisted that it was, but I forced him to convey the message, even if just for my own well being. Looking back on it, that just might be what America is. Those small moments after a hard day's work that allow us to unwind with someone else's hard work.

In the end, I learned a lot about the subtleties of the wood fired pizza making from one of the pros, I got to eat some amazing pizza, and I got paid to be a part of it all. Another awesome win for myself and GoreMade Pizza.


NickG,
out