Pizza Class

So, as many of you know I recently took a pizza-cation which basically consists of me taking a mini vacation for the sole purpose of eating tons of pizza. To conclude the pizza-cation though was a final stop at Frasca Pizzeria & Wine Bar in Chicago’s Roscoe Village. I’ll go into more of my pizza-cation in the next post but for now let’s focus on the pizza class.

Frasca literally meaning "branch" the frasca was identified by a wreath of branches hanging over a farmhouse door signifying the sale of food and wine within.  Frasca does a tremendous job of getting pizza lovers in for a wine sampling/pizza making class and they do this about every 3 months or so (join their mailing list on their website if you want the inside scoop).
http://frascapizzeria.com/

The experience is great, first of all the wine is poured and people unwind and start to relax. Then Josh Rutherford (chef & 1 of the owners) takes you through the entire process of making the dough for your pizza. In my opinion the dough is the hardest part; it isn’t as simple as just adding some ingredients into a bowl and whipping up. I am not going to dive into how it is done, sign up for the class if you are interested… seriously it is worth it. After a demonstration of how the dough is made, they go ahead and pass out a little ball of dough along with pizza ingredients on a plate for you. You go ahead and work that dough thinning it out and getting it ready on to add the sauce and toppings. At Frasca, I recommend pepperoni. I know where they get their pepperoni from and it is by far the best pepperoni on the planet!!!

So I got my dough ready, spread the sauce on (circular motion starting at the center), and now I come to a decision that needs to be made. Do I go pepperoni first or cheese first? I went pepperoni and I will explain why. When you put down the pepperoni first and then layer the cheese on top of it, it tends to stay moist when the pizza has been cooked. If you put down the cheese first and then the pepperoni it tends to heat up a little more and is crispier like bacon (a lady at my table did both and I was jealous I didn’t think of that idea).

Well it came out of the wood burning domed oven and I got a major fail for the way I worked my dough… yes I let to much air get in or didn’t thin it out evenly because it popped up a little to high but fortunately the taste was still there. The combinations of sauce, pepperoni, cheese, and that still chewy crust was amazing even with the way I rolled out that dough. I guess that even I can’t mess up a good thing here at Frasca. I would recommend this place to anyone for dinner & another reason why is that when I tell people I’m going there I always get the same response “That is one of my favorite places in Chicago!”. Check them out for yourselves… there is a good chance The Chicago Pizza King might even be there too.