It’s miracle enough that Mark Bello’s pizza-making technique, which draws acolytes to his Pizza a Casa Pizza School on Grand Street, produces such amazing results with a home oven that gets nowhere near as hot as the professional kind. In just four hours there one Saturday, I learned how to make pie as good as I can buy, all using easily accessible ingredients and a home oven. To call it life-changing would be an understatement.
But even without enrolling in Bello’s (very worth-it) class, you can learn from the master in this video as he turns out pie perfection in mere minutes onstage at WNYC’s Green Room with Leonard Lopate, using an appliance about one step up from a toaster oven. He demonstrates his signature “DJ technique” for stretching the dough, how to use semolina like ball bearings to keep the pie from sticking to the pizza peel as he slides it into the “oven” and how to get the toppings right: nominal cheese, sauce on top, pecorino before baking, fresh basil afterward. You’ll pity the audience members who can only be educated and entertained, not sample.
