All Pizzas are Not Created Equal Part II

Tomato bases
We start our award winning marinara recipe with grade ‘A’ premium quality crushed tomatoes that are bright red in the can, naturally sweet and full of lycopene which studies have shown prevents prostate cancer. We use fresh packed tomatoes, not from concentrate. There are grade ‘B’ through ‘D’ quality tomatoes available, which many pizza places use as a base for their sauce. Lower quality tomatoes are orange & sometimes even brown in the can. The increased acid makes them bitter to the taste, especially compared to the premium grade ‘A’ tomatoes. Many of these lower grades of canned tomatoes have plastic liners inside the tin cans because the acid from the tomatoes is so strong it will eat the tin and leach tin flavor into the tomatoes. Pizza places that use low quality tomatoes try to overcome the bitterness and orange colour by loading the sauce with sugar and red dyes to mimic a better quality tomato. I’ve tasted some pretty bad sauces, some that seem more like cheap ketchup than a pizza sauce.

Real cheese vs. fake cheese
A lot of places that sell pizza mix their real cheese with fake cheese. Non dairy products called ‘pizza mozza’ and ‘pizzarella’ are being used at many chains and low quality independents. Some of these fake cheeses are made from soy, others from oils. While I don’t have any issues with soy cheeses, in fact I’ve tried to source good quality ones for a segment of my customers, I do take issue with pizza places using these ingredients but not disclosing it to the public in an effort to keep their prices unrealistically low. Since the 1980’s two large pizzas with two toppings are often advertised for $19.99 (or less) and come with a free 2L? Everything and I do mean everything; minimum wages, dairy prices, wheat prices, fresh vegetables, top quality meats, real estate, and especially gas prices has gone up since then. But the math for mainstream pizza has stayed the same. More and more savvy consumers are questioning how that’s possible. Some people have found that they have allergic like reactions to these kinds of food like substances. Again, know what you're eating, know what it's made of.

I often hear from people in their 50's that they don't like pizza, to which my next question is, "Is it real-deal pizza, made with the best ingredients that you don't like, or cheap pizza made with stuff you normally don't eat or enjoy in the first place?". Taste the difference from an award winning, gourmet pizzeria.

Full fat cheese vs. low fat cheese
A lot of pizza places will use a full fat mozzarella, sometimes mixing it with low-fat or soy cheese. They do this because the full fat mozzarella adds a lot of flavour, (fat=flavour) and many people find it palatable, but then don’t feel well afterwards. Typically, pizza places that use full fat are trying to add flavor to a cardboard tasting crust and low quality meats and vegetables. Personally, I can’t eat pizza made this way. Rather, I can eat it, but my body doesn’t digest it well unless I chase it down with a big bottle of the pink stuff. And that’s no way to eat, much less a way to live.

Next post I'll talk about different flours used in making pizza.

The Most Expensive Pizza in the Land

We are definitely the most expensive pizza in the city, if not the highest price, then among the top 2. We might even be the most expensive pizza the country, although I thought I heard about a place that was putting gold flakes on their zzas and charging upwards of $100 for a small, 10” pie. Come to think about it, maybe that was one of those hoity toity places in New York.

Some think that our prices are so high just because we’ve won a few awards for our pizzas. (ok, like 5 “Best Pizza of the year 2005-2009”) While we don’t use inedible toppings like gold flakes or diamond studded earrings (now please don’t send me emails debating whether gold flakes are edible) we do use something almost as expensive; 100% Canadian dairy cheese.

Exactly why is Canadian dairy cheese so darn expensive? That’s a great question and I wish I could give you a simple answer but the facts are not stacked in my favour. Whatsmore, there is a 30% pricing difference between 100% Canadian dairy cheese that we use on our fresh pizzas versus 100% Canadian dairy cheese that we use on our frozen pizzas. WHAT?? You ask, that can’t be true – I made that up, you say~!?? Oh I wish it were so, but alas, no ‘tis true. Same cheese, different uses have different prices. That’s why our frozen gourmet pizzas are much, much less expensive than our fresh pizzas. That’s why all the frozen pizzas in grocery stores are so cheap. Nice of the big boys to compare their frozen pizzas to fresh pizzas from authentic pizzerias (like ours) every commercial break for every major game and popular TV show and not mention the built in price advantage, eh? (no, I’m not bitter). (ok, maybe just a little)

So then, how come there are so many pizza places selling fresh pizzas for $5-$10 for the last decade? AHA!! Well if you must know, they aren’t using 100% Canadian dairy cheese on those pies – they are using a substitute, an imitation, a mixture, a derivative of something else created to look like and kinda taste like real 100% Canadian dairy cheese, but cost a whole lot less.

Whether or not you can tell the difference isn’t the issue for today. Whether or not you care is. We are among the last of the holdouts for insisting on using 100% Canadian dairy cheese on our award winning, fresh pizzas. Canadian cheese prices are among the highest in the world – twice that of our friends in the USA. Is it any wonder that consumption of dairy products in Canada is at an all time low? We could use the same ‘cheeselike’ substances that our so-called competitors use and drop our prices, but we believe that our customers would drop us just as quickly. Still though, why can’t we use the same, 100% Canadian dairy cheese on our fresh pizzas that we use on our frozen pizzas? I mean, would the dairy police come and take us away in a milk truck? Would we be thrown in jail for using the more affordable 100% Canadian dairy cheese on our fresh pizzas and passing the savings on to our customers? It might sound silly, but no sillier than a 30% price difference for cheese because of the rules of engagement! It’s like having two separate prices for ball point pens; one higher if you use it on a notepads kept next to the phone, and one price lower if you promise to only use it on lined, legal size yellow paper.

Now I'm not an economist, nor a lobbyist, rather just a simple pizza chef with 20+ years of experience who knows quality ingredients and can say with a certain amount of confidence that giving all pizza makers access to the same low prices that only frozen pizza manufacturers currently have can only increase dairy consumption in Canada. Maybe this article from The Globe and Mail can explain our dairy system better than this pizza chef can.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/global-food/canadians-dont-know-the-price-of-milk/article1809689/