Pizza good enough for an Eggfest Win!
Eggfests are events that do a great job featuring meat dishes. All kinds of ribs, pulled pork, pork tacos, hanger steak, and even seafood are served. Usually, we feel like we showed up to a gunfight with a pocket knife when we try to compete at an Eggfest.
Our usual team was not able to attend the 2022 Pensacola Eggfest. We even considered canceling at the last minute. This was the 10th anniversary and the eggfest that gave us our start in the business so we sucked it up.
Coincidentally, I got my hands on an Ankarsrum mixer the week before. My advice to every pizza chef is that you should never change a thing for your “event dough” because it introduces new variables to the outcome of your crust. I was excited to try the large capacity of the mixer (12 dough balls per batch!) so I tried it anyway. What is the worst that can happen, right? Check out the video of making this dough HERE
Transporting refrigerated dough is always a challenge because dough boxes only hold 6 formed dough balls. For this event, I decided to compact the storage and bulk-rise the dough to fit 50 dough balls into 4 dough boxes for transport. (this is another variable that I changed!) It turns out that 96 ounces of rising dough is a tight fit in our dough boxes. When we got to Pensacola I disposed of the blob portions and balled the dough and spread them out into 8 dough boxes.
Friday was warm and sunny in Pensacola. On Saturday it started getting colder and windy. By Sunday morning it was 45 degrees and clear but very windy. We set up our booth, tied as much down as possible, and lit the grill. Because of our location we were getting direct blasts of wind. It was so windy the semolina kept blowing off the peel before I could set the dough down! I was worried that the wind would affect the airflow in the Pizza-Porta, but the temperature stayed steady. We layered up our clothes and cooked. I had pulled three of the dough boxes out of the cooler so that they could start warming up. That was not happening in this weather. My hands were the only thing warming up the dough! The cold was another variable in our pizza cook that was unexpected.
Short recap - up to this point in the day we were not confident that the day would go well!
The Penasacola Eggfest is held in a minor-league stadium and there were 44 cook teams this year. It is a beautiful setting that always attracts a big crowd. The VIP’s and judges visit the booth in the first hour, and then the doors are open to the general admission ticketholders. With all of our cooking challenges, we told the judge coordinator to skip over us and we would just take a pass on the whole judging portion. He said that everyone cooking would participate so we were on. I tried to put our best foot forward by starting a special Fig and Pig and Roasted Chicken Pizza. The judges got delayed and by the time they came around, the pizza coming out of the oven was a Pepperoni that I had thrown together just to get some pizzas out for serving. We laughed and cut it up for the judges. Game over - we could relax now and just do our thing.
About 45 minutes later, one of the officials came by and handed us a ticket congratulating us for making the top 10! We were in total disbelief. We were then to deliver 11 samples of pizza at 12:44 to a different set of judges. We set our watches. Since there were only three of us at the booth, we were cranking out pizzas as fast as possible to the line of folks in front of our booth. We set the dough boxes in the sun and the dough began to improve as it got slightly warmer.
Top 10 finalist!
At 12:35 I began building a Fig and Pig pizza for the judges. I spread the ingredients evenly so each slice would have a full sample and made sure the proportions were correct. The Pizza-Porta was nice and hot at this point so it had a nice, even cook. I was a little behind on time, but I pulled the pizza, cut it, and scrambled around to find some way to carry it down to the judge’s tent. A dough box would have to work. I literally ran to the judge station on the infield - with only 20 seconds to spare. After a brief Q&A and some intense tasting scrutiny, I was thanked and dismissed back to our booth.
We worked on getting the last of the 50 pizzas cut and served to attendees. We met some great folks who really seemed to enjoy our pizza. When the last dough was served we had a toast with our friends from the Old Hickory Whisky Bar and put another Eggfest in the books. As folks began cleaning up, all the teams were called to go down to the infield for the awards ceremony. We cheered the top three teams winning the people’s choice awards, and then the third and second-place awards of the Judges’ awards were issued. I was standing on the infield and well, this happened.
We won the Judge’s choice among a huge crowd of great cook teams! The judging panel included three premier chefs, Mo Cason, and seven other folks from the community. I had to look up the spelling of flabbergasted because that is the best word to describe my reaction. We of course know that our pizza is great, but we didn’t know it could stand out among the meat samples at an Eggfest. I am thankful to my team (my wife and Dad on this day), the crowd that supported us all day, the judges, and the Pensacola Eggfest organizing team. It is not often that a pocket knife wins a gunfight -it sure was fun.
You too can make award-winning pizza in your kamado grill.