Stephen Crivillaro: It's All In the Crust

Stephen Crivillaro

Stephen Crivillaro is a veteran green energy consultant. He holds a degree in Labor Studies from Queens College in New York, and says that he enjoyed his consulting work. But he also has the American Dream of running his own business. He is now working in the pizza industry, and says that sometime in the not too distant future he will explore opening up his own place.

He knows that the pizza industry is highly competitive, and that he'll need to do something really special to make his pizza stand out from the crowd. He will be closely monitoring, via the Internet, the second annual Global Pizza Summit in New York in January, and a pizza competition that is being held simultaneously.

Stephen Crivillaro was greatly impressed to hear about the pizza made by an Australian pizza maker, who was named "Best Pizza Maker" at the Pizza World Championships in Italy. Johnny di Francesco introduced what he called the Super Cheese pizza that featured a remarkable ninety-nine different kinds of cheeses on top.

Stephen Crivillaro says that sounds pretty good to him, but he is convinced that the most important part of any pizza is its crust. It should be light and crispy on the outside, and flakey and not too doughy on the inside. He has been working carefully to develop a special way of making pizza dough, adapted from how his mother made it when he was a kid.

He says it was basically bread dough that only goes through one rising, but the secret is – well, he didn't want to say because then it wouldn't be a secret anymore. But it has to do with giving the dough a long, slow rise.