Our dough may be the best that we know!

(One for the musical lovers out there – do you get it?)

We make our sourdough on a daily basis, sometimes indeed to the ‘sound of music’, using our own special recipe, perfected over a long time by Simon.

Simon is our entrepreneur, our founder and ultimate pizza guru. A few years ago, he had an idea. He wanted to make pizzas.

He wanted to create a pizza that was as authentic as possible, adhering to the Neapolitan ethos of using simple and fresh ingredients, but also to modernise and revolutionise the taste. His aim was to devise and produce pizzas fit for an increasingly more food-aware, more discerning and savvy customer.

Our customers – yes, you, who we know appreciate quality way over quantity. Our pizzas are made with you guys very much in mind, and we thought that you’d like to know how we do it.

‘Natural’ does not always mean as nature intended

These days, with constant advertising and supermarket shopping, we have a plethora of choices and are often hood-winked into thinking that what we are eating is good for us. ‘Natural’ does not necessarily mean 100% natural. White lies may be told as long as there is a natural element, the word can be banded about, especially in cosmetics and food, although this is apparently being addressed. Click here for more info.

With information at our fingertips, never has humankind been more interested in what we are eating, wearing and putting on our skin. Not only that, but where it comes from and how it was made. Not since before the industrial and plastic revolutions, when natural, chemical-free and a low-carbon footprint was just simply the way it was, has there been a need for such knowledge and education.

Bleached flour is bad for you

Our customers can be safe in the knowledge that our pizzas are as natural as they can possibly be. For starters, we use unbleached flour. Bleached flour is highly-processed, chlorinated and very bad for you. The bleaching process can result in the unintended by-product called alloxan, which is a chemical poison and very toxic. Chemicals such as benzoyl peroxide are also used in the bleaching process, which amongst other things, is used to treatment acne!?

This bleaching process brightens and gives flour a longer shelf life, and although it may look like how we perceive flour should be, i.e. all white and fluffy, it is at the total expense of nutrition. It strips away all the nutrients of the wholegrain, along with the natural oaty colour.

Trapped gas?

We use non-bromated flour. You probably have no idea what this is, but then why should you? Potassium Bromate is a dough conditioner that oxidises flour so that it can ferment faster by trapping more gas. What you should know is that most countries have actually banned this substance’s use in food, but not all.

Three … it’s the magic number

Our pizza dough is no chemistry set, but the process is pure alchemy. We use three ingredients. Beautifully milled “0”  soft flour sourced from a family-run business that is known the world over for producing exclusive, 100% natural wheat blends, salt and North Devon water, which we all know is amongst the best quality in the country.

Our region’s water is slightly chlorinated by South West Water to stop us all getting sick, but at safe levels, and until we discover a natural spring on our farm, it’s the closest we can get to pure water without doubling, or even tripling the price of our pizzas. Most of our water here in North Devon is sourced from moorland rivers and reservoirs, contains no fluoride and is classed as soft, and soft water is much better for making pizza dough. We leave our water out for a day before using, to allow the chloramine to evaporate as much as possible, and it mostly dissipates whilst cooking in such high temperatures in the wood-fired oven.

A cultured start

We pre-ferment our dough and employ a natural fermentation method with the use of a starter culture. This starter culture is very much alive and active, where the yeast and bacteria are in an optimal state of activity. It is fed and nurtured by us to ensure incredible tasting dough with delicious, tasty crusts.

We don’t want to give all of our secrets away, but below is the latest batch of our starter culture affectionately known as Big Bertha. The bubbles indicate that it is active, at the right temperature and ready to bake.

One of your 5-a-day!

The resulting pizza is flavourful and healthy, and not only that, depending on your choice of toppings, you can count it as one of your 5-a-day! We are not, however, advocating the daily consumption of pizza here, but a bit of what you fancy, especially if it’s our pizza, at our place(s) … does you good.

This process does not refer to our gluten-free dough. We have done much research in this area too, and searched high and low for an equally tasty, quality and natural as possible dough, which we believe we have now found … until the day when we can create our own of course, but that’s another story.