Brick oven puts its own spin on pizza

MOSES LAKE - There's a certain kind of cachet attached to a brick oven, at least when it comes to making pizza. Some gourmets will insist on it - handmade pizza crust and all that, and just watch those guys flip that pizza around. It's all in the bricks.

Are they right? Is it all in the bricks?

It's one of those questions that will be argued forever, like the best superhero. Nic Galfano comes down on the side of the bricks.

"What makes a brick oven is, you're cooking old style," he said. Classic brick oven style starts with a wood fire, heated to blue-hot, burned to coals which are banked to provide a more even heat. "Then you've got to do it all over," he said. All that wood translates to a lot of babysitting the oven, he said. The wood fire also produces an inconsistent heat.

So Galfano and his wife Stefanie opted for a dual oven with a natural gas option when they opened Guido's, their restaurant in Moses Lake. But hold on, it's not just the oven.

Galfano is from a restaurant family, some of them Italian restaurants, so his family had expectations - and so did Nic and Stefanie, he said. The Galfanos bought a kitchen-sized brick and started experimenting with recipes for pizza dough, Galfano said. It took months to get it just right, Stefanie Galfano said.

They were going for a crispy crust, not chewy, but something that could take the high heat of the brick oven. The classic brick oven is built with a dome to collect the heat, and it can hit 900 degrees - or more - at the center of the dome, Stefanie Galfano said. "I clean it at 800 (degrees)," Nic Galfano said.

But the crust has to be right, Galfano said. "That's what makes brick oven pizza, is the crust," he said. The Galfanos mix a fresh batch of dough every morning at a neighboring business, Nic Galfano said.

The cooking process is fast. Galfano timed it at two minutes, 37 seconds for a medium pizza. It's possible to cook smaller pizzas, but because the cooking process is so fast, a little pizza needs a lot of attention.

Actually any pizza needs attention in a brick oven. "You can't walk away from the oven," Galfano said.

"You're constantly turning it," Stefanie Galfano said.

"You have guys on that oven all the time," Nic Galfano said.

"You're cooking from the bottom up," he said, and while the gas provides a more consistent heat, the pizza still requires constant adjustment and attention.

Just how much attention it takes was evident when Galfano sneaked a look at the clock on his phone. In that few seconds the bottom of the pizza got a little charred. Stefanie Galfano said a little char actually is something that brick oven aficionados really like.

Nic Galfano said pizza, at least his pizza, doesn't need a lot of sauce; the focus should be on the toppings. But he does pay attention to the cheese. His grandfather could produce a good pizza with sharp cheddar, he said, but he sticks with a more traditional cheese blend that starts with mozzarella.

Guido's Pizza is located at 2707 W. Broadway Ave., Moses Lake.