Cookin' with Karl
Wood-fired pizza
The only local restaurant in The Post’s coverage area serving up wood-fired pizza is Thyme 2 just south of Public Square in Medina. Photo courtesy of THYME 2
Cooking any food with wood fire is fascinating. You get the flicker of the flames surrounding the food, setting a mystical ambiance. You get the infusion of a smokiness craved by many. Let’s face it; fire takes us back to our very distant past and is embedded in our DNA as a good thing. And when you mix fire with pizza, you get an amazing pie.
The only wood-fired pizza that I know of in The Post’s distribution area can be found at Thyme 2 in Medina, just south of the historic Public Square. I fell in love with this wood fire pizza oven when I first stumbled upon it years ago, when Thyme 2 relocated to its hip new place.
The pizza oven sits as the centerpiece of the open kitchen in the lower level of the restaurant, the “T2 Pub” area.
I sat down with Chef John Kolar, a Hinckley native and Culinary Institute of America grad, to get some insight into his amazing wood-fired pizzas. John tells me the whole thing started when he was the executive opening chef of Three Birds in Lakewood many years back. He had just returned from Manhattan, where he had fine-tuned his craft with one of the masters of global cuisine, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and was brought back to Cleveland to open the highly regarded Lakewood restaurant.
It had a wood-fired oven and John knew then that when he opened his own place, it would have a wood-fired oven.
“The kitchen is designed around it. It is my baby,” John said.
John feels “there is something primitive about cooking with wood.” He wanted a specific oven, a Woodstone, for its wide opening and for its door, which many wood-fired ovens do not have. He uses a dual fuel oven, gas and wood. Gas to maintain the heat, and wood to get the added BTUs and, more importantly, the flavor.
The thing is, Thyme 2 is not a pizza shop. John knew it would be challenging from a fine dining restaurant standpoint to have a wood-fired pizza oven as a centerpiece, because you would have to have someone on it constantly. He solved that problem by cooking or finishing many dishes in the wood-fired oven, including pork chops, cedar plank salmon, a stuffed pepper appetizer and his “garage fries.”
The pizzas Chef Kolar makes are one size, basically a large personal pizza. He wanted to incorporate the New York and Manhattan thin style crust into his pizzas and creates the “Napoletana” style. The book from which he draws many of the recipes, “Pizza Napoletana” by Pamela Sheldon Johns, sits right there at the chef’s counter directly in front of the oven.
Kolar uses San Marzano plum tomatoes and the Caputo pizza flour imported from Italy. The dough is built for the long rise, resting a minimum of 8 hours, then gets knocked down, rolled into a ball and rests some more to achieve that light, airy, fermented flour taste that is so desirable. It is hand tossed right in front of you.
Your have many options, from the classics like cheese pizza, pepperoni and sausage (made by his family’s meat market in Cleveland, K&K Meats), to the specialty pizzas like the lobster pizza with vidalia onion, Manchego cheese, herbs and roasted garlic sauce, which is my wife’s favorite.
One of my sons is hooked on the sausage and four-cheese pizza with white garlic sauce.
Like many of Thyme 2’s dishes, they take the classics and put a twist on them. The Hawaiian has smoked chicken, grilled pineapple, bacon and teriyaki sauce, with cheese of course. The Mediterranean has braised artichokes, nicoise olives, tomato confit, four-cheese blend and white garlic sauce.
The portobello, my favorite, has roasted portobello mushrooms, caramelized onions, goat cheese, pine nuts and orange-honey drizzle.
While these are all very creative, and the freshness of the ingredients prepared by a highly trained staff certainly make these pizzas a must-try, the crust is what really sets a wood-fired pizza apart from the others. It tends to have a very crisp exterior, yet light, airy, yeasty interior. Bubbly, with a bit of char in spots, evenly baked on top and bottom. The bricks are in direct contact with the crust’s bottom, and the flame heat hits the top in a perfectly balanced dance.
If you truly love the art of a high-quality, wood-fired pizza, visit Thyme 2 and try one.
The only wood-fired pizza that I know of in The Post’s distribution area can be found at Thyme 2 in Medina, just south of the historic Public Square. I fell in love with this wood fire pizza oven when I first stumbled upon it years ago, when Thyme 2 relocated to its hip new place.
The pizza oven sits as the centerpiece of the open kitchen in the lower level of the restaurant, the “T2 Pub” area.
I sat down with Chef John Kolar, a Hinckley native and Culinary Institute of America grad, to get some insight into his amazing wood-fired pizzas. John tells me the whole thing started when he was the executive opening chef of Three Birds in Lakewood many years back. He had just returned from Manhattan, where he had fine-tuned his craft with one of the masters of global cuisine, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and was brought back to Cleveland to open the highly regarded Lakewood restaurant.
It had a wood-fired oven and John knew then that when he opened his own place, it would have a wood-fired oven.
“The kitchen is designed around it. It is my baby,” John said.
John feels “there is something primitive about cooking with wood.” He wanted a specific oven, a Woodstone, for its wide opening and for its door, which many wood-fired ovens do not have. He uses a dual fuel oven, gas and wood. Gas to maintain the heat, and wood to get the added BTUs and, more importantly, the flavor.
The thing is, Thyme 2 is not a pizza shop. John knew it would be challenging from a fine dining restaurant standpoint to have a wood-fired pizza oven as a centerpiece, because you would have to have someone on it constantly. He solved that problem by cooking or finishing many dishes in the wood-fired oven, including pork chops, cedar plank salmon, a stuffed pepper appetizer and his “garage fries.”
The pizzas Chef Kolar makes are one size, basically a large personal pizza. He wanted to incorporate the New York and Manhattan thin style crust into his pizzas and creates the “Napoletana” style. The book from which he draws many of the recipes, “Pizza Napoletana” by Pamela Sheldon Johns, sits right there at the chef’s counter directly in front of the oven.
Kolar uses San Marzano plum tomatoes and the Caputo pizza flour imported from Italy. The dough is built for the long rise, resting a minimum of 8 hours, then gets knocked down, rolled into a ball and rests some more to achieve that light, airy, fermented flour taste that is so desirable. It is hand tossed right in front of you.
Your have many options, from the classics like cheese pizza, pepperoni and sausage (made by his family’s meat market in Cleveland, K&K Meats), to the specialty pizzas like the lobster pizza with vidalia onion, Manchego cheese, herbs and roasted garlic sauce, which is my wife’s favorite.
One of my sons is hooked on the sausage and four-cheese pizza with white garlic sauce.
Like many of Thyme 2’s dishes, they take the classics and put a twist on them. The Hawaiian has smoked chicken, grilled pineapple, bacon and teriyaki sauce, with cheese of course. The Mediterranean has braised artichokes, nicoise olives, tomato confit, four-cheese blend and white garlic sauce.
The portobello, my favorite, has roasted portobello mushrooms, caramelized onions, goat cheese, pine nuts and orange-honey drizzle.
While these are all very creative, and the freshness of the ingredients prepared by a highly trained staff certainly make these pizzas a must-try, the crust is what really sets a wood-fired pizza apart from the others. It tends to have a very crisp exterior, yet light, airy, yeasty interior. Bubbly, with a bit of char in spots, evenly baked on top and bottom. The bricks are in direct contact with the crust’s bottom, and the flame heat hits the top in a perfectly balanced dance.
If you truly love the art of a high-quality, wood-fired pizza, visit Thyme 2 and try one.
