There’s a shift happening in the pizza world. A recent surge in popularity favours a thinner, crisper and chewier style of slice, drawing from the New York, New Haven and even “London style” of pizza-making, which uses an electric baker’s oven instead of the traditional woodfired oven.
Popularised by hotspots such as L’Industrie and Lucia in New York, and Gracey’s and Vincenzo’s near London, Australia is also seeing this style on menus across the country. Pizza spots such as Lola’s in Fremantle, Madonna Electric and Pizza Elettrica in Melbourne, and City Oltra in Sydney are just some of the places going electric.
For years, the classic Italian Neapolitan pizza reigned supreme – no doubt influenced by the large number of Italian migrants into Australia in the early 20th century who drove the nation’s culinary repertoire. Although there have always been alternatives, such as the puffy “cornichone” (Italian for the edge or crust of the pizza ) with perfect leopard-spot-char, which set the standard for what we considered quality pizza in Australia.
“People here have an undivided love for Italy and Italian things,” says Harrison Peasnell of Lola’s. “Maybe 10 years ago a woodfired oven was necessary because the real only other option was crap conveyor belt ovens.”
What we’re seeing now is a hybrid pizza that combines traditional schools of thinking, fusing classical Neapolitan techniques with the more modern New York style. According to Vera Pizza Napoletana, the governing body for Neapolitan pizza globally, pizzas should be cooked in a woodfired oven at 430 to 480 degrees Celsius for 60 to 90 seconds.
The New York style opts for a longer cooking time, baked at a lower temperature in an electric deck oven at around 340 to 380 degrees for four to seven minutes, depending on size. This new style produces pizza with a more developed structure; a chewier, crisper texture; and an “anti-flop” factor.
The so-called “London style” favours the crisper, electric-baked methods of pizza-making, incorporating the elements of the New York style with big 16-18-inch pies that are blistered on the crust, or cooked “well done”, resulting in a darker colour, similar to the classic Neapolitan leopard crusting, but with further crunch.
This blending of techniques has given rise to a new wave of pizza, popularised across Instagram, Youtube and Tiktok, where the aesthetically perfect slice is beamed to one and all.
Andrew Winson, who with Ainhoa Barriola Fontana opened Pizza Elettrica in Thornbury, remembers being seduced by the stunning slices online. “I was following [UK venues] like Gracey’s, Vincenzo’s and Dough Hands, [and] their pizzas just looked amazing to me,” Winson tells Broadsheet. “The way they were carving their own niche with a ‘London style’, it gave me the idea that we could create something like of our own here.”
Ben Fester of City Oltra in Sydney describes how his move to using an electric oven was born of circumstance when they opened the shop. “We were limited by the space, it was inside Central Station, which is heritage-listed, so having a woodfired oven in here was just not possible,” he says.
This barrier forced the team to look to other options, and think about the pizza they all really enjoyed eating. “We wanted to have a bit of fun with everything, [and offer] something we didn't think we could get anywhere else,” Fester says.
Electric oven brands such as Moretti Forno and Pizza Master are often as expensive as a woodfired oven and have been purpose-designed for pizza. Similar to the ovens you’d see at the local bakery, they have multiple decks – effectively separate chambers – with a stone floor for baking and even heat distributed from above and below.
“I was looking for something consistent,” says Lola’s Peasnell. “Our pizzas need to be on the stone for a longer period – we’re cooking at around 330 to 340 degrees for five to six minutes – so it still caramelises and we can get the same blistered effect [as woodfired].”
As pizza changes texturally and visually, how is the nation taking to this new movement?
“I still think most people come in because the pizza is good and it looks different,” Winson says. “I don’t think customers really associate it with any specific style, they just see interesting-looking pizza and they like it.”
