Meet Pittsburgh Street Pizza
A pizza interview with Gavin McCall of Pittsburgh Street Pizza, a new mobile pizza unit in Pittsburgh who is doing "Pittsburgh Neapolitan"
Happy Pizza Friday!
Hope your week has been filled with sprinkles of Parmesan, globs of mozzarella and slices slathered in marinara. While most people eat pizza on Fridays, it’s okay (and maybe more than okay) to eat pizza on a weekday. Heck, I ventured out to Necromancer Brewing to get a pizza from Pittsburgh’s newest entrant in the mobile pizza game. Pittsburgh Street Pizza is helmed by Gavin McCall, a passionate and knowledgable pizza craftsmen.
I reached out to Gavin earlier this week to ask him more about his pizza background and better understand his perspective. He had some really thoughtful answers and I think you’ll find this look into the mind of a pizza maker fascinating. I’ve edited these comments a bit, but I hope you enjoy the content. If you get a second, check out Pittsburgh Street Pizza on Instagram.
What is your pizza background? How did you hone your craft?
I think my pizza journey started out with making grilled pizza in my backyard. My first attempts used frozen dough and were shaped like someone ran over a football. I graduated from there to using a pizza stone on my Big Green Egg, and making my own dough. Pretty soon I was doing that just about every weekend.
Eventually I got the idea that this is something I might want to do for a living. I started working in a Neapolitan restaurant as a pizza maker, and from there I bounced around to a bunch of different restaurants and pizzerias, including managing a pizza food truck.
While I was working 40-50 hours in restaurants, I was spending a good chunk of my free time reading pizza books, watching videos, and researching dough recipes online. I got my first Roccbox 2 or 3 years ago, and I started experimenting casually with different dough formulas, scaling up to obsessive experimentation in the past year or so.
Because of my own tastes and the way my brain works, my interest has always been in executing the simple things (the dough, the sauce, the cheese, the bake) exceptionally, rather than experimenting with lots of topping combinations. That experimentation continues, and I’m always tweaking little things trying to get to my vision of “perfect,” whatever that means.
How would you classify the type of pizza you’re making? Neapolitan? Neo-Neapolitan? Pittsburgh Neapolitan?
I love the term Pittsburgh Neapolitan, I want that to be a thing. If no one else has taken it yet (and with your permission of course) I’m going to steal that.
I have a hard time with these terms, but maybe Neo-Neapolitan, or artisan pizza. It’s definitely inspired by Neapolitan pizza as far as the toppings, but then shaped by my own sensibilities as a Pittsburgher and pizza obsessive.
My dough is my own formula made with a mixture of flours including Italian 00, whole wheat, and unbleached bread flour with a little olive oil, and it’s cooked at a lower temperature than Neapolitan standards require, between 700F and 800F, giving it a crispier crust. I use California tomatoes, because I prefer the flavor and brightness over San Marzano’s. I make my mozzarella from Wisconsin cheese curd, and I’m going for something that’s a bit firmer and more flavorful than traditional fresh mozzarella.
Basically I’m just trying to achieve a great pizza based on my own standards: a strong crust with deep notes of fermentation, baked pretty dark. A fresh, slightly acidic sauce. Topped simply with good ingredients, and then finished at the end with obscene amounts of fresh basil and Pecorino Romano. That’s a great pizza for me.
Pizza as street food is a great way to frame pizza. But the portability aspect isn’t there! I saw you had some calzones on your instagram, is that something you’re looking to explore more of? I also think of Spirit’s newest fried pizza that is a nice handheld way to eat pizza.
I find the concept of pizza as street food very romantic. It’s the origin of pizza in Naples, and it’s also how pizza first came to the United States, street vendors selling simple, working class food. I try to use that idea, “pizza is street food” to keep myself in check when I start feeling too artistic about the whole thing. While I want to execute it as well as I can, in the end pizza should be fast, affordable, and delicious.
I’ve designed my pizza to be pretty portable: I make 10-12 inch pizzas, and it’s a strong crust, so you can pick up a slice without it going everywhere. You can hold the box in one hand and eat with the other. Or set it in the passenger seat and eat while you drive. Getting sauce on your shirt is just the risk you take.
Why start a mobile pizza unit? I saw you’re using some portable gas ovens. The price of entry to be a mobile pizzeria has dropped considerably. No longer do you need to tow a brick oven around with you.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Ever since I started working in pizzerias I’ve had ideas of going into business for myself, but I hadn’t figured out how to do it financially. As a cook, I wasn’t exactly making the kind of money it takes to open a brick and mortar restaurant. Even a mobile oven would have required a sizable loan. I had written a business plan for something like that, but then I got the idea of using my trusty Roccbox.
I had seen a few people online using multiple Roccboxes to do pop ups, and my wife suggested the idea of going out and doing a few pop ups at farmers markets and such to test my concept. I started out with a tent, a few tables, two Roccboxes, and a cooler, and we’ve just been growing step by step from there.
What was your go-to pizzeria growing up? I always find it interested to hear about everyone’s favorite spot as a child.
I was definitely a Mineo’s kid. We lived a few blocks from Mineo’s until I was 10 or 11, and that was our go-to. I definitely got it for a few birthdays growing up.
What do you hope to add to the pizza tapestry of the city? There are so many new shops / pizzerias opening up here, how do you want to stand out and be remembered?
I’m a big believer in abundance. I'm not trying to beat anybody. I think if you’re making great pizza, or great food in general, there’s room for you in Pittsburgh. The more great pizzerias open in town, the more people are going to take an interest and view us as one of the great pizza cities, which makes more business, and more pizza, for everyone.
`As for my part in all that, I’m aiming to do something very specific and handcrafted. I offer 6 pizzas on the menu on a typical day. I do everything myself and by hand, from making the dough and fresh mozzarella to stretching, topping, and baking the pizzas. So what I want to bring is something that’s both simpler and bolder than what the larger shops are doing. I’ll only ever be a tiny percentage of the pizza that’s served in the city, and since my menu is small, I’m not going to have the perfect pizza for every person. But for people who share similar sensibilities, I want to bring something that’s fresh, simple, and a bit different both from the usual takeout pizza and the high end wood fired stuff. I feel like people’s expectations can be pretty low when they buy food on the street, and I want to surprise them with something that’s genuinely amazing.
Very cool stuff! Always excited to have more pizza in the city and from what I’ve tasted of Gavin’s pizza, it’s good stuff. Keep an eye out for Pittsburgh Street Pizza.
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