“How hungry are you today?”
That’s the most important question Ted McKinnon, owner-operator of the Silver Lake Alfy’s Pizza in Everett, asks on a pizza tour at the restaurant.
The answer is a delicious process. There is a whole world to making pizza that I enjoyed learning about.
McKinnon starts his pizza tour by establishing the ground rules.
“First rule, don’t touch anything,” McKinnon tells the kids. “Keep your hands in your pockets or by your sides.
“Second rule, don’t push or shove. Take your time; you’ll all get a chance to see.”
When you walk into the kitchen, McKinnon points out the seven-pound cans of food and sauces used to make many of the pizzas. They are large, colorful and hard to miss.
Stacked all around are yellow pizza boxes. Each child gets a chance to build one of the bright boxes.
Then it’s off to the containers of soda pop where kids get to see how the soda goes through a hose under the floor where they stand and out to the soft drink machines in front.
The big hit with the kids is the super-sized pizza dough maker that can hold more than 25 pounds of dough at one time. Kids want to watch the dough mix (and probably also want to touch it) but it must be mixed for the proper amount of time, so the tour continues.
On the next stop visitors head into the walk-in refrigerator. The cold room is bigger than many bedrooms at home. Housed inside are cheese, soda, salad bar items and pizza dough in containers waiting to be made into pizzas.
Next is the dough station, where different sized screens are used to make pizza, from monster size to personal size. This is one of the most popular stops on the tour because the kids enjoy the dough shaping process, McKinnon said.
“The kids love the magic of turning a big chunk of dough into a pizza shape,” said pizza maker Brittani Telquist, who was shaping dough on the day of my tour.
Once everyone sees all the pieces and parts, the pizza making begins.
McKinnon holds up a large roller-like instrument with points sticking up and asks the kids to guess what it is called. After teasing them that it is a backscratcher, he shares the instrument’s real name: perforator. He explains how this instrument helps hot air get inside the crust while in the oven by making little holes in the dough.
Next he shows how pizza sauce is spread around the dough, except for the half-inch edge left unsauced to help create the crust.
Then it’s time for the kids to choose their toppings. Measuring cups are used to add ingredients like pineapple, sausage and cheese, while individual pieces are counted when adding meat like Canadian bacon.
McKinnon loves to ask the kids if they would like anchovies on their pizza just to get the pleasure of their horrified reaction.
Cheese is added last unless the pizza is pepperoni. Then it’s off to the oven.
McKinnon places the pizza on the conveyor belt that pulls it into the blower oven.
“Kids always want to wait and watch the pizza cook,” he said. “But it takes approximately 10 minutes so we go back to the dough mixer.”
The dough is mixed by now and McKinnon tempts kids as he picks up a large gooey piece that the kids on our tour were aching to touch, then breaks a piece off for each kid to feel, stretch and mash.
Now it’s time to pull the pizza out of the oven. McKinnon uses a pizza peel to pull the pizza out of the oven and onto a handheld round cutting board to remove the cooked pizza.
The pizza is then cut and put into a box or tray depending on whether the kids on the tour and their parents want to take it home or eat at the restaurant.
By the end of the 45-minute tour, kids are usually more than ready to eat the pizza they were part of preparing, McKinnon reports.
I know I was.
Alfy’s Pizza tours
To schedule your pizza making tour at Alfy’s at Silverlake, call Ted McKinnon at 425-338-2577. To find other Alfy’s Pizzas that offer tours, go to http://alfyspizza.com.
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