Young Pizzapreneurs with the hottest pizza oven in town
Two friends with a passion for pizza started talking about foodie ideas for the future at the age of 10. Harry Henriques (Baz) and Freddie Hicks (Fred) had schoolboy notions of a mountain restaurant in a French ski resort; after university they experimented nearer to home but not very commercially, with steak sandwiches and rotisserie grilled meats until they discovered pizza. Both Baz’s parents are consummate foodies and Fred’s Dad is a property development whizz kid so they have grown up in a gourmet entrepreneurial environment.
Baz’s godfather the artist, sculptor and engineer Daniel Chadwick telephoned to say his chrome stainless steel model of a compact modern pizza oven was complete. Chadwick had previously made some clay prototypes reminiscent of early Peruvian artefacts but they did not do the job as to be perfectly baked pizza needs the air in the oven to be hotter (around 500 degrees centigrade) than the stone beneath. The Chadwick oven with a composite stone base is a masterpiece of design and functionality, shiny and sleek, with no coals necessary it sits on a gas burner and bakes perfect pizza in four minutes. This was the prompt for the young men’s foray into mobile pizzas for any event. The UK never tires of the everlasting appeal of pizza and these are arguably the trendiest and the most delicious as the flour, cheese and tomatoes grown in the ash rich soil of Mount Vesuvius (ash makes tomatoes sweet apparently), arrive direct from Italy and all the ingredients for the toppings are being sourced fresh from farms near their homes. Baz and Fred are now experts in dough making, trials and errors with a dough maker have been discarded in preference for proving the homemade dough for forty- eight hours in a cold temperature, giving the pizza a better flavour and texture. They have shelved the dough slapping of the Italians and introduced a theatrical dough twirling technique that makes a perfect circle and certainly catches the eye at events. Pizza toppings come in ten veg and non-veg options, Baz’s fav is goat’s cheese with caramelised onion while Fred likes the meatier Choriso with chilli.
Baz says “The other day someone asked me if I was bored of pizza. I realised that I had eaten over a dozen pizzas in the past week, hundreds in the past months and possibly thousands in the last few years, and was still not bored of it! That proves the point: Everyone loves pizza, and they always will.”.
Baz and Fred are looking forward to a busy summer with their wall of twelve pizza ovens catering for private hire wedding parties and public events like music festivals, as well as pop-up initiatives at London pubs and the new atmospheric “Street Feast” markets now blossoming in the east end of London that include live music, dancing and bars.
A sweet post script to this pizza story is when Chadwick first cooked nan in his oven for his Indian friend from Hyderabad, the friend was so overwhelmed by the perfect nan, just like his Amma used to make, that he wept with nostalgia.
The Chadwick oven with a composite stone base is a masterpiece of design and functionality, shiny and sleek, with no coals necessary it sits on a gas burner and bakes perfect pizza in four minutes. This was the prompt for the young men’s foray into mobile pizzas for any event.