Mercurio’s gluten-free pizza gets national turn

A Pittsburgh-area pizza pro will be presenting to a global pandemic pizza program on Wednesday and she is not playing.

In five days of practice last week, “I have probably made four dozen pizzas,” said Anna Crucitt, a co-owner of Mercurio’s Gelato & Pizza restaurants in Shadyside and O’Hara. “I want to make sure I can give people an accurate — well, not a review.”

But she wants them to feel like they’re getting their money’s worth for the $25 they’re paying to watch her at 3 p.m. Wednesday in the Meet the Makers series sponsored by Breville.

The Australia-based company launched the series spotlighting pizza makers around the world as a way to support them during the COVID-19 crisis. The restaurateurs split all the proceeds with “virtual tour guide,” pizza expert Scott Wiener, who runs Scott’s Pizza Tours in New York City and who’s donating money to his Slice Out Hunger charity.

Breville gets to plug its home pizza oven. It sent one to Ms. Crucitt’s home in Sarver, along with a tripod and lighting. She will stream her demo from her kitchen.

The series, with eight episodes so far, has showcased styles of pizza ranging from New York slices to Chicago Deep Dish. Ms. Crucitt is going to show viewers how to make a gluten-free porchetta pizza, a specialty at Mercurio’s, which was started by her parents in Kittanning and now is run by her and her brothers, Joe and Michael.

Joe won second place with gluten-free pizza and Michael won first in Neapolitan-style at the USA Caputo Cup Pizza Competition in Atlantic City in 2018. Ms. Crucitt made the gluten-free one for the competition the next year and took second-place again. That helped get her noticed and picked to be a female ambassador for Orlando Foods and its “Women in Pizza” movement. That, she says, is how Breville found her.

The company also is sending her a gelato maker so she can demo, for dessert, hazelnut gelato. She’s been practicing that, too, which her three daughters do not mind.

Her Wednesday online presentation should last for about an hour and a half, and then she’ll field questions, joined by her brothers. Also there will be her mom, Linda Mercurio, who was the star of Mercurio’s segment in last year’s video series on American ice cream shops by Carpigiani Gelato University.

Ticket holders to the pizza series will get the recipes and also will get a link to the video to which they can return as they try to replicate the recipes at home.

The series continues on July 10 with a “stop” in Los Angeles, where Chef Joe Sasto will demo Red Fife Whole Wheat Pizza.

Ms. Crucitt has watched all the previous episodes, which she feels gives her a leg up.

“I’m not nervous right now,” she said on Friday. “It’s what we do. I know what I’m talking about.”

Learn more and buy tickets via Eventbrite.com (search“Crucitt”).