The Crust
October 20, 2026 · Jay De Natale
I grew up in New Haven eating pizza out of coal-fired ovens. Ernie's was the neighborhood spot. The crust had char on it. Dark spots, crispy bottom, chewy pull. I didn't know it was a style. It was just pizza.
New Haven has a legitimate claim to some of the best pizza in the country. Pepe's, Sally's, the coal oven is what made them. My current favorites when I'm back are Zuppardi's and Modern. Both understand what the crust is supposed to do.
I don't have a coal oven. I have a Baker's Pride gas deck oven on Abbot Kinney. So the question was always: how do you get there without the fuel?
The answer is the biga.
A biga is a pre-ferment. Flour, water, a small amount of yeast, that develops over time before it becomes dough. Mine is a two-stage, 48-hour process. The long ferment produces more natural sugars in the dough through fermentation, not anything we add.
I'm not a chef or a scientist, but I've spent years researching this because I needed to understand it to get the crust right.
Those dark spots, the leopard spotting on a Neapolitan pie, the char on a New Haven slice, come from something called the Maillard reaction. It's what happens when proteins and sugars hit high heat and bond together, creating new flavor compounds. Same reason a seared steak tastes better than a boiled one, or why the heel of a good sourdough is the best part. It is not burning. Burning is carbonization, a different thing entirely. The Maillard reaction is controlled browning, and it's where the flavor lives.
Coal and wood ovens run at 900 degrees. It happens in 90 seconds. My oven runs lower, so the biga compensates. More sugars in the dough, more for the reaction to work with. The result is concentrated dark spots in the thinnest parts of the crust, slightly bitter and complex, balanced by the salt and fat from the cheese.
That's the leopard spot. That's what I'm chasing.
We've worked with the staff to develop a range, light to dark, and we can adjust to preference. When I'm in the shop I pull toward mid to dark. We throw out a lot of pizzas chasing this. A couple seconds over and it's too much. Every pizza gets checked before it goes out.
It's not going to taste burnt. It's going to taste delicious. Trust me.
- Jay