Howie’s Artisan Pizza Delivers on the Crust
It’s high and puffy on the edges, with airy, rolling caverns that provide great chew and crunch.
It’s thinner, yet still crisp, in the center. And when the wheel of a pizza cutter slices through it, there’s a distinctive “crack, crack, crackle” sound.
“The pizza talks to me now,” says Chef Howard Bulka of the just-opened Howie’s Artisan Pizza in Palo Alto’s Town & Country Village.
Indeed, it does.
After decades of running fine-dining restaurants in the Bay Area, Bulka has what he has always dreamed of — a top-notch pizzeria he can proudly call his own.
It may have opened less than two weeks ago, but Howie’s is already selling up to 250 pies a day now and packing in the crowds for his version of East Coast pizza modeled after Frank Pepe’s of New Haven, Conn., which Bulka worships.
But dough is a funny thing. It’s a living, breathing, finicky mass that can be as unpredictable as Kanye West.
“I’ve been cooking 30 years, and I’ve never been perplexed as I have been by pizza dough,” says Bulka, who invited me in for a taste last week.
He’s still making subtle tweaks to the bread flour-dough, which takes two days to mix and proof before being turned into pies that are baked in a gas-fired brick oven at 600 degrees for 5-6 minutes.
The crust is already a winner in my book. This is a pizza crust with real character. It has that nice fermented flavor of artisan bread, and there is a variance of textures that holds your interest bite after bite.
