It starts with the crust, for which Mahin and his team spent
a year perfecting the recipe. “We made connections with local
farmers for a wheat that we liked,” Mahin says. “We are using
red wheat and white wheat for the flour, and we experimented
with water and salt amounts and kept tweaking it.
“Then we ate a lot of pizza and wrote out the pros and
cons. My favorite bread is artisan and the darker flavors, the
amber colors and the nuttiness. I wanted a dark amber flavor
in the crust and a real bread flavor coming out of it. I thought,
let’s look at pizza like bread and not like pizza dough.” Mahin
also proofs the dough like bread, which gives it more structure and
flavor, and cooks the crust longer than for a typical pizza crust.
“Then we looked at sauces,” he says. “For me, tomatoes
are best when not cooked. We decided to cold infuse a sauce.
We thinly slice veggies, put them in a cheesecloth and let it sit
for a day. You get a really fresh flavor. We use organic tomatoes,
fennel, garlic and onion, and steep everything cold. The only
time the tomato sauce is cooked is when it’s in the oven.
Vegetables are delicate and should be treated as such.”
Top, Saul Good’s Parisian pizza includes Brie and Granny Smith apples, along with
ham and honey Dijon sauce; the Kentucky Hot Brown pizza, right, was inspired by
the famous sandwich.
The Bloomsdale spinach pizza features crispy purple kale,
young pecorino, cracked black peppercorn and organic extra
virgin olive oil. “Spinach pizzas are good, but always so wet,”
Mahin says. “Texture is big, and important to me. People
notice things that are crispy, crunchy and sweet. I was messing
around with kale chips, and thought, kale is like spinach. It’s
almost like making a salad on the pizza. The kale gets crispy
and gets a lightness to it.”
The shaved-mushroom pizza features local crimini
mushrooms, as well as Gruyere, melted onions, black truffle,
torn parsley, rosemary and thyme.
Mahin was inspired to create the asparagus and prosciutto
pizza from a childhood trip to Italy. “Prosciutto is best raw. I
had this pizza as a child and have always remembered it. It has
Parmesan and red onions and is a super-nutty pizza. We slice
asparagus super-thin and sprinkle it on top. The Parmesan gets
caramelized, and right when it comes out of the oven, we put
the prosciutto and more shaved Parmesan on top.”
Saul Good created a Kentucky Hot Brown pizza inspired
by the famous Kentucky open-faced turkey sandwich. It includes
a Mornay sauce, cheddar/Jack cheese, turkey, ham and bacon
and is topped with fresh tomatoes and a five-cheese blend.
