Presentation and quality ingredients come together to make the perfect pizza

Having proven itself as a solid profit maker, pizza has evolved far from its humble origins and today the category encompasses everything from top-end gourmet pizzas to value-driven QSR offerings. It’s also become a staple of the pub and club market – and no wonder, given its cost-effectiveness and how much creative chefs have been able to do with it.

“Pizza is one of the most versatile items you can have on the menu,” points out chef and pizza competition judge Peter Wright. “You can put virtually anything on top of it – I recently made one with peanut butter, kimchi and mozzarella; I actually got the idea at a local café where they had made a jaffle with those ingredients, and as a jaffle is basically a folded pizza, I trialled a recipe and it turned out to be a really enjoyable meal.

“When you break down a pizza into components, the base is like the plate of your meal – regardless of whether it’s a standard yeast dough base, gluten free or butter enriched. That’s your blank canvas. You then add the sauce, which traditionally is a Napoli sauce that imparts umami. The slow roasted tomatoes in that sauce helps balance the other ingredients, and is a big part of why we love pizza so much. So if you change the base sauce, it has to be to one which is similarly rich in flavour, because that sauce is the conduit for the rest of the ingredients.

“Anywhere which has pizza on the menu also has everything they need in their ingredients deck to create a pasta bar”

— Peter wright

“Then come your toppings – and whatever you use has to be cooked at a high temperature in order to caramelise the cheese, get those blisters on top and bake the base so it’s not soft and doughy and chewy. Then post-cooking comes your garnish. You might do a simple pizza with a Napoli sauce and cheese, then top with some sliced pear, rocket, shaved parmesan and balsamic glaze – in which case you’ve almost put a salad on top.

“I’ve recently come back from Japan and seafood pizza is trending over there - once it’s cooked they put a whole bunch of coriander on top, almost one centimetre thick. This is a good example of how pizza is continually evolving.”

Complementing pizza menus with pasta

Peter is also fond of dessert pizzas, naming as a current favourite “biscotti spread or Nutella on the base, topped with marshallows which puff up like souffles once you put them in the oven. When it comes out it’s this amazing looking pizza which you can then garnish with some fruit coulis, cream or a big scoop of ice cream in the middle. Dust it with icing sugar and serve it and it’s one of the most amazing desserts that’s going around, yet is so simple to make. 

“There’s also a trend right now of pizza menus being complemented with pasta meals – and when you think about it, anywhere which has pizza on the menu also has everything they need in their ingredients deck to create a pasta bar. If you make a basic margarita, which is dough, sauce and cheese, you can take those some ingredients and make a great a penne pasta, which you could further enhance with some bacon, chilli or salami.

“Conversely, you can adapt pasta into pizza – I’ve recently experimented with a mac and cheese pizza, where you drizzle the macaroni over the Napoli sauce then finish with some toasted parmesan, bread and olive oil crumble, and you can make that a centimetre thick post-cooking. It’s almost like a pizza pie. I’ve even made a party pie pizza – one party pie on each slice with a little Napoli sauce drizzled on the end.”

Pizza a mainstay across pub menus

Gary Johnson, National Executive Chef for ALH Group, says pizza is a mainstay across most of ALH’s pub menus. “Today’s pub menu has to be well-rounded and not only do we hang our hats on steaks, schnitzels and those classic pub staples but pizza are very important too.

“We’ve got wonderful impinger ovens which operate at 320 degrees and they can cook a pizza in one minute forty seconds, so the customer doesn’t have to wait around for it. 

“All of venues tend to shy away from those par-baked or pre-prepared pizza doughs because they tend not to reheat or reconstitute very well. For me the benchmark of any pizza menu is the margarita – if we can deliver that really well, with some great Napoli sauce made from vine-ripened tomato, buffalo mozzarella and a little sea salt flake, fresh ground pepper and fresh basil, that’s as good as it gets.”

“There’s a move towards more inventive flavour combos – such as replacing the traditional Napoli sauce base with something like a garlic confit bechamel”

— Gary Johnson

Gary is also keeping an eye on emerging trends, such as the arrival of coloured pizza bases – “we’ve seen purple beetroot-derived bases, green spinach bases and black charcoal bases, and these have added another dimension not only in flavour but in colour combination and presentation appeal. There’s also a move towards more inventive flavour combos – such as replacing the traditional Napoli sauce base with something like a garlic confit bechamel. You might then top that with wild mushrooms, freshly plucked thyme, grated parmesan and once it goes through the oven finish with a drizzle of truffle oil just before it goes out. You can just imagine the aroma of that!”

The burgeoning popularity of sourdough bases has also added an extra flavour piquancy. “There are some great quality sourdough bases now which come raw and frozen so all you have to do is thaw them overnight and bring them up to room temperature for half an hour before service.

“One of the best things about pizza is that it crosses borders of different cuisine styles. One of my favourites is a Middle Eastern recipe I learnt how to make working in Istanbul. It’s called a lahmacun, made from a freshly pulled piece of pizza dough – not rounded, more of an oblong shape – with fire roasted capsicum sauce on the base topped with ground lamb. There’s no cheese on it but the lamb gets nice and crispy and when it comes out of the oven you garnish with a little fresh chopped parsley and a wedge of lemon, then some sumac and drizzle over a drip of ayran which is a kind of sour yoghurt with the consistency of milk. This wonderful Turkish version of pizza is so popular all around Istanbul.

“Closer to home, we recently put on a pizza with a Spanish saffron base, topped with capsicums, Spanish onions, green olives, a little crumbed chorizo and some manchego cheese – these are authentic Spanish ingredients and the harmony of flavours create a real taste experience.”

You can top pizza with pretty much whatever you want

George Diamond, Group Executive Chef at Trippas White, says pizza’s popularity is driven by its status as a comfort food – “it’s accessible, inexpensive and it also lends itself to the current trend of customers looking for more meat-free meals, because there are so many vegetarian recipes you can make for pizza. I reckon we’ve seen around a 50 per cent increase in demand for meat substitutes on pizzas in menus within Trippas White Group. For example at Terrace on the Domain in Sydney we have a potato pizza with taleggio, a roast mushroom pizza with porcini, thyme and parmesan – we’re catering more and more for meatless pizzas, although we still have the classics like capricciosa which is probably one of our most popular meat-based ones.  

“The great thing about pizza is you can pretty much top it with whatever you want – you can make a Peking duck pizza with green shallots, sesame and hoi sin sauce! – so it’s ideal for moving any particular products or ingredients. Currently we’re seeing NY style pizza sold by the slice becoming a lot more popular, because the thick crusts are fantastic and the customer doesn’t have to order a whole pizza. The opportunity to create pizza with thin, thick or filled crusts really speaks to its versatility and ability to resonate across many different food cultures.

“Make sure your menu has a healthy balance between the traditional favourites and the more artisan or gourmet options”

— George Diamond

“I think the key with pizza right now is to make sure your menu has a healthy balance between the traditional favourites and the more artisan or gourmet options, including vegetarian, plant-based and gluten free. Pizza can deliver some terrific flavour profiles – which vary depending on the cooking process, such as whether you’re using a wood fired or conveyor oven. You’ll also get different textures, different mouthfeels according to the process and your use of ingredients.”

George says dessert pizzas also have a place on the menu, but argues “the majority of people we see ordering them are getting them for the kids. That said, they add another element to the menu and there are some terrific choices, from your classic Nutella and whipped bananas to a beautiful raspberry mascarpone pizza with a doughy crust – that can be really nice! You might even do a cookies and cream pizza with white chocolate and cream cheese frosting – it doesn’t really matter what toppings you use, as long as you follow the simple rules of flavour matching.”