Sourdough Pizza? Yes!

Photo courtesy of Angelo's Pizza

Danny DiGiampietro has been a bread jobber -- a route-man delivering bread from Sarcone's and other bakeries to sandwich shops and other eateries (including Tommy DiNic's) -- for years. But his true love is the baking of bread and its sidekicks. For about a year he ran a small bakery in South Philly while maintaining his route, where he also toyed a bit with pizza-making. For a variety of reasons, the bakery didn't work out, though not because of any flaws in his product. DiNic's only switched to Sarcone's after Danny's closed shop.

Late last year Danny opened a new venture across the river in Haddonfield: Angelo's Pizza, 122 N. Haddon Ave. The menu is simple: pizza, cheese steaks, chicken steaks, fries, salads and escarole soup.

She Who Must Be Obeyed and I stopped by today and were blown away by the pizza. She went for the pepperoni, I opted for sausage. Instead of using crumbled meat, Danny slices the sausage in thin lengths to adorn the pie. The pepperoni is cut in the usual rounds. He uses fresh mozzarella and/or high quality regular mozzarella, depending on the type of pie ordered. And after coming out of the oven he tops most with a little fresh grating cheese.

The crust is thin, crispy and delicate and is made from sourdough. It's what Danny's pies are all about.

I never thought of fermented dough for pizza, but it works. Indeed, sourdoughs are hardly unknown in Italian baking. Danny takes it easy on the tartness, so the sourdough doesn't call attention to itself, but when you bite into the unadorned puffy crust on the pie's margins you will detect a slight tang that complements rather than competes with toppings.

What makes it even more unique is that Danny didn't begin with a commercial sourdough starter. He set out flour mixed with water and let the local Haddonfield yeasts do their thing. Works for me.

He's selling a lot of cheese steaks, too. Danny's picky so he uses prime beef. He's also cooking long hots, which can adorn the steaks or the pizza.

You can watch a cheesy video of Danny at work here.

(Full disclosure: I got to know Danny from hanging out at the Reading Terminal Market when he was making deliveries to DiNic's and consider him a foodie friend.)

Another Lunch Vendor Wants Market Stall

Mural at South Street pizza shop

Rick Olivieri of Rick's Steaks isn't the only hawker of street food who'd like to set up shop in the Reading Terminal Market. Lorenzo & Son Pizza of South Street also wants in.

Lorenzo's is among a backlog of businesses who have submitted applications to rent space at the landmark public market.

Neither Rick nor Lorenzo has much of a chance. By its own count, 31 of the market's 76 vendors are "food court" businesses, which are technically limited to no more than the greater of one-third of the number of vendors or one-third of the floor space of the market. Since the raw numbers show 40 percent of the merchants to be in the "food court" category, the market manages to stay within the guidelines only by virtue of the square footage numbers.

Even though Paul Steinke, the market's general manager, told me earlier this month that the market was well within these guidelines, he'd be hard-pressed to bring in another vendor dedicated to the lunch crowd. Steinke has to keep his focus on bringing in sellers of food for consumption at home if the market is to retain its 120-year-old tradition as well as public and political support. If the balance tips too far in favor of the food court merchants, the market would be a considerably less attractive place for thousands of shoppers like me who buy regularly from its meat, seafood, produce, dairy and other food product vendors.

The only types of businesses selling food for on-premises consumption that have a chance would be those offering either something now unavilable or that also devotes considerable space and effort to selling food for preparing or eating at home. Neither Rick's nor Lorenzo's would fit either criteria.

There's good reason why Rick's wants to return and Lorenzo's wants in: traffic. Last year's 6.35 million visitors translates to 122,000 potential patrons a week, most of them hungry tourists and Center City workers. With that kind of traffic you could make a considerable profit selling chocolate-covered dust bunnies. (I think Chocolate by Mueller does; if not, you could have bought a chocolate heart -- with aorta and veins -- for Valentine's Day at Mueller's.)

Of the five categories of merchants at the market the Food Court vendors showed the biggest sales gain last year, up more than 13 percent. The Purveyors (produce, seafood, meat, etc.) recorded the least growth at 2.3 percent. Pennsylvania Dutch merchants saw their sales increase 9.0 percent. Food Basket vendors (sellers of other grocery items, including dairy products, coffee, baked goods, spices) had sales growth of 8.3 percent, while Mercantile (non-food) vendors were up 8.0 percent.