A Magician Makes the Best Pizza Rossa, Pizza Takes Over the Local News
Some of the best new pizza in the city is available on Sundays in Tina's cocktail bar and WTAE does a pizza deep dive.
The Pittsburgh pizza world continues to expand. Much like the universe itself, there’s no end in sight. New shops, new pizza, new experiences appearing in the cosmos. Let’s talk about one of my new faves.
Daniele Brenci The Pizza Magician
Daniele Brenci is a local bread wizard that has complete control over the formation of gluten networks, crispiness and flavor profile. He may be the Yen Sid of pizza, commanding it to take shape and forms that seem impossible, but the way he molds and creates bread is a sight to behold.
Does it undermine someone’s expertise and craft to compare it to magic? I hope not, because this pizza feels otherworldly. And right now you can find it on Sunday’s at Tina’s in Bloomfield.
Typically Tina’s is a cocktail bar serving up a variety of classic and unique cocktails. It’s one of the few places in Pittsburgh where you can get a good Clover Club! Not to mention the variety of Negroni’s you can try. If you need to lift your spirits, you gotta check out Tina’s.
On Sunday, Brenci takes over Tina’s to serve up complex flavors of bread, cookies and pizza. I’d say they are as handcrafted and artisan as Tina cocktails, without feeling pretentious. It’s good hearty breads that perform as you’d expected, a paragon of flour, water and natural fermentation.
When you walk into Tina’s your eyes will need to adjust from the sunless grey Pittsburgh sky to adapt to cozy cave-like ambience of Tina’s. After a few seconds you can make out the soft glow coming from the booths and on the bar a whole paradise of breads. You can enjoy coffee service in a booth while you munch one bread, or grab stuff to go. On this day I grabbed some focaccia and Pizza Rossa.
The pizza may be my dream pizza. No cheese! Sorry folks, you know the older I get the less I appreciate cheese. Don’t blame me, blame my gut biome! The Pizza Rossa is made in the “Pala Romano” style. This is a stretched out pizza, long, with rounded edges. From my research it looks like you pull the pizza as long as you can with the pull when you put it in the oven. Very popular in Rome.
What this means for you is you get about two feet of pizza to take home. It’s folded in half and stuffed into a bag, like an acrobat sneaking into a vault via a small container.
The pizza is divine. The sauce is vibrant, it pops in your mouth like a sunshine sucker. The flavor is rich and I got a hint of anchovy flavor which, for me, is a must in any red sauce. I’ll have to ask Brenci about his recipe, but it’s a simple and robust flavor that will keep you munching down this pizza.
The crust is slightly thicker than your New York style pizza, it certainly has a nice crunch. The bread is flavorful, chewy and crunchy. Really the ideal base for a pizza. I’m sure you can take this Pizza Rossa and doctor it up to your liking, but I think the simplicity is the point. This is a pizza you can chew on and really decode the flavors and understand how the fundamentals work together to create something where the whole is greater than the sum of their parts.
Follow Daniele Brenci on Instagram here for updates. You can order ahead of time for pickup on Tina’s, but strike while you can. Here’s the menu and when I stopped by last Sunday there was plenty for pickup.
WTAE Does a Pizza Deep Dive
This week WTAE put out an hour long episode of their Chronicle series focused on Pittsburgh pizza. You can view it here. They do a lot of good journalism and cover Pittsburgh pizza from a variety of angles. You can learn all about the origin of the Mineo’s vs Aiello’s rivalry, see some Ohio Valley pizza being made at Police Station Pizza, and hear about the newest spots like Slice of New York Pizza and Gus Franco’s.
The Pittsburgh pizza scene has blossomed over the past decade and this report does a good job of capturing the historic pizza places that have large footprints and the new crop that’s sprouting in the shadows of those giants. Heck, you can say that’s even the whole point of white I’ve been writing about Pittsburgh pizza for over ten years!
If you want to read about some of the places mentioned in the WTAE report here’s some links to my past articles featuring a handful of spots interviewed:
Also I’d be remiss not to mention my book chronicling ten years of Pittsburgh pizza history. I’m out of physical copies (maybe I should do a reprint? Is that something people want on their shelves?) but you can get it digitally for free right here.
The Pittsburgh pizza world is vast, varied and wonderful. Great to see it get the recognition it deserves.
This holiday season how does pizza factor into your celebration? I got some Pizza Rossa from Brenci for Christmas Morning. That’ll sit under the tree, a great gift waiting for everyone brought by Santa themselves.
Pizza ya later!
-Dan Tallarico, Pizza Journalist