Why try like to be New York Pizza or The Chicago deep dish pizza. Be a New Mexico Pizza.
This was our mantra when we set out to do pizzas. Why is everyone trying to be like some other place other then their local cuisine. You always hear from others is this a New York style pizza? A lot of chemistry that goes into being a New York pizza number one the water. Then of course the flour and that is where we stand out. We are bakers first and foremost, We have made so many different kinds of baked goods over the years and the one thing that stands out for us is we know flour and the chemistry around baking. That is where we started out in our quest to make a New Mexican style pizza and who would know crust better then a baker. So lets dive in a little bit of the process we took to create one of the top pizzas in the country.
Local Ingredients is a great place to start. One of our key ingredients is Blue Corn which comes from our local pueblos from around New Mexico. The first thing that comes to peoples mind is when they hear a “corn” crust is it is like a corn chip or its gluten free. That is differently what we didn’t go for when we started to develop the recipe we wanted the crust to have the same lightness as a hand tossed pizza but we also wanted the nice hard crust as if you baked the crust in an Orno (traditional adobe oven) the one item that is missing in blue corn is gluten. We added some hi protein flour to the recipe and then to bring the flavor out we added a little bit of rye to the recipe. when you bind rye and Blue corn it brightens the flavor of the blue corn. What you will start to notice with all our crust recipes it is not just one kind of flour or grain but multiple kinds of flours that give you layers of taste. And to add another layer of flavor to our Blue corn crust is the Blue corn is roasted before it is milled. The last key to brightening flavor of the blue corn is to let it age for 24 to 48 hours and allow the fermentation to develop the flavors of all the ingredients we added to our recipe.
The legendary New Mexico Green Chile Crust. What makes this crust so legendary? It’s because it roots to this recipe has a deep history with Golden Crown Panaderia. You see many many moons ago, Chile roasting was all done in local bakery’s not in the roasting tumblers that you see in front of grocery stores today. We would roast tons and tons of New Mexico Green Chile during harvest season. Our customers would come in smelling the fresh roast Green Chile and would say to bad you couldn’t bottle up that smell and that is when the idea of Making our New Mexico Green Chile bread. When we did wholesale to other restaurants we supplied our New Mexico Green Chile bread to hundreds of restaurants in Albuquerque and then one day the Food Network took Notice of our bread and has highlighted the bread in many segments between magazines and TV shows. So we decided to convert our bread recipe and turn it into a pizza crust recipe and ever since it has been a major Hit. The recipe has New Mexico Green Chile from the hatch region, Cilantro, Tomatoes, Onions and Parmesan cheese and that is just whats in the crust alone.
When we started the process of creating our Peasant Dough Pizza crust we started out with words that would inspire what we wanted people to experience when they had our pizza Hardy, Crispy, Nutritious, Delicious and Beautiful. We went to work re imaging what kind of ingredients would create that experience. Most pizza doughs are just a few ingredients Hi gluten flour, salt, Olive oil, and water don’t forget how important water is it is what majority of people credit what makes a New York pizza unique. Since we are bakers we deconstructed pizza recipes and started to use bakers math. We changed everything people know in making a pizza crust. We decided to bring in spelt which is know to be one of the oldest forms of wheat know to man kind which has been written about in the bible. Rye we used to bind the flavors and to bring out the heartiness of the spelt. Then we brought in the a mixture of whole grains. When the development of mils started to evolve the aristocrats believed that the whiter the flour the more elite it was and what they didn’t realize is the whole the grain is the better it is for you. You have all the minerals and oils. We brought in a mixture of whole grains such as Wheat Crack, Barley,Brown rice, Rye, Oats and Flax seed. And we encased all the richness with our Hi gluten flour. And that is where the description “Peasant” came from and what makes our Pizza crust so hearty.
The story of our oven it is part of the recipe!
If you have a little time I will tell you a story for the past two years I have been researching all the different pizza ovens and bakery ovens on the market. Then an opportunity arose for me to try them out in one location. Every three years there is an International Baking Expo that happens in two locations, one in Las Vegas, NV and the other one in Europe. If I didn’t go to the one in Vegas I would have to wait 3 years to go to the one in Europe, or I would have to travel to each location where they had the ovens to try out. It was a no brainier. I booked my hotel and flight to Vegas. But the real challenge was how do I test out my dough in a different city? The challenge is trying out baking equipment in a different city with a different elevation, with different water, with different flour. There was only one solution available to me. And that was to carry 100 pounds of dough with me to Vegas. That was an interesting conversation with the airlines. When I got to Vegas and checked into my room I asked the concierge if they could store my dough in their walk-in refrigerator; she gave the strangest look. She asked me what do you mean dough? I then explained the whole story to her and why I came out to Vegas. Unfortunately, the chef said no but they did bring me 5 mini refrigerators to my room.
One person in the crowed started to stand out. He started to ask a lot of questions about my place, How we came up with the recipes. It turns out that this gentleman is the editor of one of the largest pizza magazines in North America. He told me that this is easily one of the top 10 pizzas in the country he has tried and he wants to do a story about us. WOW! I was blown away. I knew that this was the pizza oven I wanted. I shacked hands with the dealer and told him that’s the one I want.
And then the reviews started to come in.
We started to notice more and more customers where seeking us out because of reviews from Tripadvisor, Yelp, Facebook and Google. Then very quickly we moved up to the ranks of best Restaurant in the city of Albuquerque. We where and are blown away that a little neighborhood bakery with less then 2 tables inside and few tables outside was Rated #1 out of 1,115 Restaurants in the whole city. That is going up against all the fine dinning and chain restaurants. One of our favorite reviews that never made it on review pages or social media came from an assistant to Andy Warhol, he came by the bakery one day and had our pizza When he got back home from New York City he sent us a post card that said “The Empire state building is tall but not as tall as your pizza.” It is truly one of our favorite story’s.
Then the Food Network showed up. There is a TV show called Diner’s Drive-ins and dives MC by a Gentlemen name Guy Fieri. They completely took over the bakery. He asked us to make him a Pizza on our Blue Corn Crust. We where very honored to have him try our pizza so we put some Roasted Chicken, Artichoke, Red onions and fresh basil on the pizza. He absolutely loved it
And then the biggest review we ever had is to list as part of the elite pizzas from around the country. Coming in at number 49 of Best 50 Pizzas in America. It truly has been an amazing journey that we are currently on. From doing Pizza dough brawl competing against 32 Pizza places in Albuquerque coming in 2nd place against Dions pizza which is the largest local pizza chain in New Mexico. To hitting the national spot light and being selected as the top 50 in the country.