by Tony I » Mon Sep 01, 2014 2:29 pm
Matt, the pizza style actually evolved from our family lifestyle.having been raised in the food business ,grocery/meat market, if nothing else we always ate well. Meals were ...well lets just say we ate well.
Benny was the only one who had any pizza experience --Mario's, Fun City., neither of which had much in common with what was to become Impellizzeri's, With Benny's experience and alot of siblings to taste test, we did a lot of "try this and that" using recipes from our family as a starter and tweaked them all until we found something we all liked. When we first started the pizzas were built on the wooden pizza peels.That was the way it was done at Fun City. The problem with that method was Benny being very creative wanted to make the pizzas bigger (read HEAVIER).So we would flour the peel, build the pizza and put it in the oven.Sounds easy. FAIL. The pizzas took so long to build that the pizza sauce would bleed through to the peel and the only thing that made it to the inside of the oven was the toppings,the dough remained on the peel. Hence pizza screens.We made a lot of bad pizzas before we made any good pizzas. But To answer your question,
the pizza style was due to Benny's creativity. Making it work took the family's dedication. My fathers business insight, moms recipe input, our sisters cutting vegetables by the buckets, me baking all the pizzas ,(nobody else wanted that job), and the extended family and friends that all had a passion for making something special. 35 years later, its still our passion.
Tony Impellizzeri's
5170 Charlestown Rd.
New Albany, In.
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