Graze Sourdough Pizza
We Bake Sourdough Pizza
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Iowa City has a hundred places that make pizza, but nobody is making what we consider to be Great pizza... like New York, New Haven, Chicago, Portland, Argentina or Italy...
We believe Iowa City deserves Great Pizza.
The Food Guru was born in Brooklyn, NY - he knows great pizza.
FG said - "If we are going to make pizza, it must meet these standards:
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#1 - It has to be "Great Unique Pizza", it must move the Iowa City pizza scene forward.
#2 - It must pass the "Travel Standard" because our food concept is designed TO-GO.
Neapolitan Style Pizza is Great when done properly - but it does not pass our "Travel Standard".
Our Sourdough Pizza meets the Food Guru Standard because:
Sourdough Pizza is Great Unique Pizza.
Sourdough Pizza Travels Well.
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Most restaurant pizza is cheese and frozen toppings on some type of store bought dough or crust... made as cheap and fast as possible.
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Think of Graze pizza as Great Sourdough Bread - with a great tomato sauce and fresh homemade toppings. Wow!
​​​​​​​​​​​​Hand Tossed & Baked Slow
Our Pizza is actually a thin crust pizza, it looks thick, not because of the amount of dough... but because it is so Full of Air and we cook at a LowerTemperature than most pizza places, once again, we take our time. ​
We hand toss our pizza to keep the AIR inside the dough...
Think about for a second - Places that use a machine to press their dough - knock all the air OUT of the dough at the most critical time, right before it goes in the oven - this is why some pizza crust is tough.
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The Goal is "Soft and Crispy & Light as Air"
We bake our pizza at only 500 Degrees so the dough can get extra oven spring and so the top and bottom get done at the same time.
We bake our pizza in a 30 year old Bakers Pride Y800 stone deck oven - because they just don't make them like they used to. This oven is over 7ft. wide, 5ft. deep and weights over 3000 pounds.
Don't worry we had the Iowa Hawkeye Offensive Line carry the oven into the building for us. Yes, those guys can eat a LOT of Pizza.
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Simply put - We are on an Epic Quest to make
The BEST hand crafted pizza that we can possibly make...​​​​​
Premium Ingredients
​​We use PREMIUM Ingredients to top our pizza:
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Alta Cucina plum tomatoes
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TomatoMagic ground tomatoes
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Grande Premium mozzarella
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Grande ricotta
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Liguria All-Natural Pepperoni from Humboldt, Iowa.
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House made sweet Italian pork sausage
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Evan's homemade Italian meatballs are made with beef pork and veal, eggs and a lot of Parmigiana Reggiano.
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Green Spanish Gordal Olives
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Black Greek Kalamata Olives
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House Pickled Red Bell Peppers
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Real Parmigiano Reggiano
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Fresh Basil from our garden (in summer)
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Extra Virgin Italian Olive Oil​​
​​​​​​​​​​​​​​This Section is for Pizza Nerds Only!
We are Pizza Nerds! We make sourdough pizza the old fashioned way because it is the very best way we have found to make pizza. The truth is we LOVE great pizza and are sick of eating toxic pizza from national chains - and we know you are too.
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The goal of Most pizza places is to make money by doing the easiest thing, their dough is made fast, so they can get it out the door, fast.
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Graze pizza dough is made with four ingredients, High protein flour, salt, olive oil and water. After three years of practice, we have found that 6-7 days of slow fermentation produces the deepest flavor and lightest crust.
The long fermentation does something else - it reduces gluten. Sourdough pizza has up to 70% Less Gluten than regular pizza.
This is because "Wild Yeast" and "Lactic Acid" pre-digest most of the protein. This makes our crust light and easy to digest. "Less Gluten means - Less Gas & Bloating." ​
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Our pizza is NOT gluten free... but many people find sourdough to be lighter, and easier on their stomach, this is because of the long fermentation time.
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Sourdough pizza isn't healthy because it's trendy, it's healthy because of the LONG fermentation time... Our sourdough isn't just fresh, our sourdough is - "ALIVE"
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The Food Guru Twist -
The Secret to Graze Pizza is our Crust.
The process starts with an old world starter called a "Levain". This is the magical element that separates our pizza from all others in Iowa City. Our Sourdough Starter was born on September 11, 2022. We picked that date, so we would remember it.
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Think about this... Why is it that mankind lived on bread alone for 6,000 years and only in the last 40 years do we see record high amounts of allergies and gluten intolerance. The Food Guru believes it is not the wheat or the gluten... but all the toxic chemicals the great American food machine (The Big Chain Pizza Corporations) add to their dough, that is the culprit.
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This is why we decided to go OLD - OLD SCHOOL with our recipe and process. We use only All-Natural high protein, un-bromated,
un-bleached, wheat flour with NO preservatives AND our top secret water filtration system - AND extra virgin Italian olive oil and a pinch of kosher salt... That's it. Simple and Delicious...
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We don't care what other people are doing... We are not following the herd... We are doing our very best, because this is who we are and what we do.
We hope you LOVE our Pizza..!!
Peter Harman, The Food Guru ​
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