Mama Mia, Pizzaria!

Amy Higgens

Add pizzazz to your pizza pies with some of these ideas and recipes.

Terrence M. Webb C.E.C.
Executive Chef
Ashland University
Ashland, Ohio

"We serve pizza all day and it's a big hit with our customers. Currently we are using a purchased pizza crust of the best quality and making our own sauce as a signature flavor.

"One way we try to make our pizza grab the students' attention is by giving it clever names. A few examples: the Fun-Guy (assorted mushrooms); Traffic Light (pesto with yellow and red tomatoes); Mario & Luigis (pepperoni and sausage); the Smoke House (smoked bacon and tomato); Down on the Ranch (fajita-spiced chicken with ranch dressing and Monterey Jack cheese) and Ugly Bread (a bread loaf-shape of pizza dough packed full of sauce, pepperoni and covered with rich, gooey cheese.)"

Stan Pasterczyk
Executive Chef and Manager
Prudential Financial and Eurest Dining
Woodbridge, NJ

"We offer at least eight varieties of pizza per day, twice a week. Among them are two or three vegetarian and several meat options including pepperoni, sausage and Buffalo Chicken pizza. We also menu specialty pizzas, such as Stuffed, Meatlovers,Three Cheese and Broccoli and Cheese.

"In our operation, meat pizzas are by far the most popular, with Buffalo-Chicken leading the charge.

"The pizzas are cooked in a woodburning, open-hearth stove. When it's fully cranked (about 750°F), it can cook a pizza in about two minutes."

Greg Schiavoni
Assistant Director of Housing and Food Service
Penn State-Harrisburg

"We recently opened a new foodservice operation named Stacks Market and one of our showpieces is a Woodstone brick oven.

"On average we serve about 40 pizzas per day, along with Stromboli and variations of baked pastas, garlic knots and cinnamon sugar knots.

"We offer more than 16 varieties of pizza on a rotating basis. Some of the more unique selections include Buffalo Chicken (very popular), Chicken Broccoli Alfredo/Chicken Spinach Alfredo, Cheeseburger, Taco, Chicken Brushetta, BLT and Hawaiian BBQ. Despite all of this creativity, the basic cheese pizza is still the one we sell the most of.

"Our pizza dough comes from the Penn Sate Bakery located at the main campus in State College. It is fresh frozen and delivered twice a month. We use a canned premade sauce but are still experimenting with different varieties.

"We just started selling a pizza for the low-carb group that uses a Portobello mushroom in place of a crust. The mushroom cap is marinated in Italian dressing and then held in a food warmer. Once ordered, we dress it like a pizza with sauce, cheese and toppings of choice, and then bake it in the brick oven for 2 to 3 minutes. It's very low in carbs and has proved to be a very popular specialty item."

Ginny Geer-Mentry
Associate Director
Campus Auxiliary Services
The State University of New York-Geneseo
Geneseo, NY

"We serve three basic pizzas everyday—Cheese, Pepperoni and Vegetable—and then rotate between the following specialty pizzas: Popeye (Spinach), Chicken Wing, Garlic, Kansas City, Philly Cheese Steak, Hawaiian, Meat Lovers, Spinach and Artichoke, and Breakfast Pizza. The most popular specialty pizza is the Chicken Wing Pie.

"On average, we sell about 1,000 pieces of pizza per week."