Drew Watson knows he’s taking a huge risk, but he just can’t help himself, not when it comes to pizza. Because Watson, who owns Hops & Pie Artisan Pizzeria with his wife, Leah, is always thinking about pizza — how it looks, how it tastes, how it feels and how to make it better.
Thatap why, after more than 10 years of baking his much-loved, beer-based crusts in one specific way, Watson decided to toss the whole thing out the window and try something completely new: crusts made with notoriously finicky sourdough starter. Last month, he rolled them out — both New York and Detroit-style — completely replacing the old pizza foundations with the new ones.
“For me, it was all or nothing,” he said. “I wouldn’t have changed it if I didn’t think it was better.”
In doing so, Watson has joined a small but dedicated group of Front Range pizzaiolos who swear by sourdough, which is fermented with naturally occurring yeast in the air around us rather than the commercially available strains used by the majority of pizzerias.
That group includes Redeemer Pizza, Joy Hill Denver, Outside Pizza, Audrey Jane’s Pizza Garage, The Greenwich and Cart Driver. They’re part of a national trend toward sourdough that began before the COVID-19 pandemic began, but which has been fueled by a heightened interest in baking with sourdough that bubbled up during the year that the country was locked in at home by social-distancing restrictions. Many also feel that sourdough is easier on the stomach, while providing better flavor and consistency.
“We have the pandemic to thank for this. We had this renaissance of home bakers, and now, although they may not be baking at home anymore, people are looking for sourdough,” said Spencer White, who opened Redeemer Pizza on Larimer Street in July 2021.
But food trends go in and out of fashion, pointed out Dolores Tronco, who owns The Greenwich, a new-American restaurant that has become a go-to for sourdough pizzas. “We had the decade of Brussels sprouts, for instance, where everyone was making them. That is starting to die now, I think. But some things become popular, and then enduring, and then they become classics.
“So is this a stylistic choice that will be here for a while, or will it fade? Only time will tell,” she said.
More science than art
Watson spent five to six months creating his first pizza dough recipe. He’d make a pizza, invite his friends over to critique it, and then make another. Eventually, he settled on a formula that he’d use to open Hops & Pie in 2010, which included beer and flour and commercial yeast.
But over the years, he began experimenting with a sourdough starter that he’d been feeding in his kitchen and using to bake loaves of bread at home.
To make sourdough, bakers mix flour and water together and then let naturally-occurring yeast (and even bacteria) inoculate it to begin the fermentation process. To “feed” the starter, they add more flour — oftentimes heirloom, organic or other specially-grown varieties — and water.
Over time, and at the right temperature, that starter batch grows with the additions until there is enough to make dough. Since wild yeast takes more time to ferment than store-bought varieties, bakers often let it sit, shaping it periodically, for two to four days. Once the starter is made, it can be used forever, as long as it is fed and cared for, and different flavors can be brought out.
In 2019, Watson began experimenting with sourdough pizza crust, with plans to introduce it at Hops & Pie in 2020. The pandemic ended that timeline, but not Watson’s fascination with sourdough. “It was at the front of my mind every moment. I couldn’t wait to get back,” he said. “You can see the bubbles in the crust, and the structure. That’s actually my favorite part — being able to see it. It’s the first thing I look at.”
Watson’s starter is now 11 years old, and itap just getting better with age, he added.
Around the same time, Tronco, who’d made a name for herself in Denver in 2014 with Work & Class before moving to New York City to open a restaurant there, was planning a return.
“When COVID shut down everything, it was just a scramble. No one knew how long we would be closed,” she said about her New York restaurant, the Banty Rooster. The answer turned out to be permanently, so Tronco persuaded her head chef at the Banty Rooster, Justin Freeman, and his family to move west as well. Together, they opened The Greenwich in late 2021.
“Justin had been working on perfecting this pizza recipe for years,” Tronco said. He’d brought the starter with him from San Francisco to New York and kept it alive for years at each of the restaurants where he worked. So when the Banty Rooster closed for COVID, he took it home in a huge commercial kitchen vat and kept it alive on his counter in a small Brooklyn walk-up.
Later, when he moved to Denver, Freeman loaded his car with his family, pets, possessions and the sourdough starter, which he kept in the front seat with him for the entire drive.
“Baking is more science and cooking is more art,” she added, and at most restaurants, pizza is a part of the baking program. “These guys geek out on it. They geek out on the science.”
Time and temperature
“Are you a crust person or not?” Thatap the most important question, according to Audrey Kelly. “I’m definitely a crust person. I think for some places, sourdough is a trendy thing to do right now. But for the true baker, the true pizzaiolo, if that is what they use, then they are going to be absolutely dedicated to sourdough.”
Like The Greenwich’s Freeman, Kelly knows what itap like to love and travel with her sourdough starter. The owner of Audrey Jane’s Pizza Garage in Boulder has competed in pizza-making contests around the world, and she takes her starter with her whenever she travels.
“I have made all different styles of pizzas, but when I started, I gravitated toward sourdough because I’m interested in the time and fermentation aspects of it,” she said. “Itap such a pure form of bread making. Just two ingredients. Once I started I couldn’t stop.”
As the daughter of the founders of Moe’s bagels, Kelly has baking in her blood, and says she used to be in the kitchen at Audrey Jane’s 24/7. But then she had twins and had to teach another chef her tricks and techniques, something that was particularly challenging because Audrey Jane’s makes three different styles of crust: Sicilian, New York and Grandma, which is a much thicker pizza. “That was a transition. You have to know what you’re doing,” she said.
Like most sourdough pizza makers, Kelly lets her dough rise for 24-48 hours, or longer, depending on conditions like temperature. In the winter, she treats the dough differently than in the summer.
And just because itap called sourdough, doesn’t mean the sourness is going to be “in your face,” she pointed out. “Itap a little misleading … ours is more floral and more mellow.”
At Redeemer, the sourdough flavor is more pronounced, and thatap on purpose. “The tang is undeniable, especially when you get down to the crust” White said. “We wanted it that way because it lends itself really nicely to pizza, with all that fatty cheese.”
And while many sourdough pizza makers focus on Neapolitan-style pies, Redeemer’s specialty is New York pizza, which can be hard to stretch thin enough.
“To get that very traditional New York slice, most pizza makers say, “If it’s not broke don’t fix it,’ so they don’t want to stray from [using] commercial yeast,” White said. “And I get that. But we are huge bread bakers and we’d been thinking about this concept for a long time.”
Rising Star
Beyond the flavor, though, White believes sourdough pizzas have a lesser impact on the body. The lactic acid bacteria that comes along with the wild yeast, for instance, can break down gluten, which means that sourdough crusts may be easier for some gluten-sensitive people to digest.
At Joy Hill Denver, a neighborhood cocktail lounge at 1229 South Broadway, diners are starting to “make the connection between processed commodity products and gluten sensitivities and food allergies,” said co-owner Julia Ducun-Roitman. Joy Hill, which opened as the pandemic began in March 2020, serves woodfired sourdough pizza (and boasts a rooftop patio).
“It is the original leavening technique,” she added. “As that awareness grows, I think we will see people caring more about how their food is prepared and sourced.”
Hops & Pie’s Watson doesn’t claim to be a scientist, but he does know that he feels a lot better after eating sourdough pizza than after eating traditional pizza. “I need a nap after eating pizza with baker’s yeast,” he said. “With these, I don’t feel as full, which is something I think about a lot more as I get older. I can have a couple of slices and not need a nap.”
But those positives may also keep sourdough pizza from hitting the big time with chains or large pie purveyors, said Kelly of Audrey Jane’s. “Commercial yeast works so much faster. And sourdough is so temperamental, so it would be really hard to mass produce.”
“It would be a challenge to scale the sourdough up,” added White. “But thatap the beauty of it. Itap more of an artisan product.”
And one that people are gravitating toward. Before Redeemer opened its spot on Larimer, it hosted some popup events — and sold out within minutes. And when Watson held a soft launch for his sourdough pizzas in early September, there was a line down the block.
“We sold 200 pizzas in one-and-a-half hours, and the feedback was great,” he said. “I think the neighborhood was on board with this.”
