Pizza to Go

People are used to having pizza delivered. But when people want Peyton Smith’s pizza, he brings the whole oven and cooks the pizza on the spot.

Smith, who grew up in Winston-Salem and played soccer for Wake Forest, just started his new catering business called Forno Moto.

Forno Moto loosely translates to “oven on wheels,” and that is exactly what Smith has.

He found a company in Colorado to install an oven of insulated refractory concrete and vermiculite on a trailer that he can take to parties, weddings, festivals, any event that needs catering.

The oven has a 47-inch diameter and weighs 1,200 pounds. The specially designed trailer is about 6½ by 9 feet.

The oven burns wood and gets up to 900 degrees — hot enough to cook a pizza in less than two minutes, like the traditional ovens in Naples, Italy.

“As much as I can, not living in Naples, I’m reproducing Neapolitan pizza,” Smith said.

Smith came into the food business in a roundabout way.

His first inkling of a possible culinary career came in the summer of 1997 before his last year of college. He was working as a cook in Chapel Hill when he and some friends decided to throw a pig pickin’. “We put on a small pig pickin’ that turned into a party for 40 or 50. That experience was really neat for me,” Smith said. “It encapsulated what a social vehicle really good food can be.”

But with school and soccer still foremost on his mind, any idea of becoming a chef was put on the back burner.

After getting an English degree from Wake Forest in 1998, he worked a series of sales jobs, including ones in food service. He also taught school for a year at Kennedy Learning Center.

When his last sales job as a pharmaceutical rep didn’t pan out in 2007, he started to rethink his career path. “At that point I was looking long and hard at myself. What can I do? And how can I prepare myself to have long-term personal and professional satisfaction … with something I have a passion for?”

Cooking up a plan

He returned to the idea of cooking, and by fall 2007 had devised a plan for a restaurant with pizza and Mediterranean-style food, partly based on memories of a vacation in Italy.

“Pizza represents a really good deal for the operator and the customer. The food cost is reasonable. At the same time, I can sell it at a price that’s reasonable to the customer,” Smith said.

He visited New Haven. Conn., a bastion of Neapolitan-style pizzerias in this country. He practiced making dough over and over again at home till he got it perfect. He took culinary classes at Guilford Technical Community College. He did a stint as a cook at Noble’s Grille.

When the recession hit, financing became difficult. Even after Smith regrouped, he ran into delays finding a location. That’s when he changed his plans to put his pizza oven on a trailer that he could move around for parties and other events.

Smith also can roast meats, vegetables, breads and even desserts in his oven, but his focus is on pizza.

To make the pizza as close to that made in Naples, Smith is using the traditional 00 flour and imported San Marzano tomatoes. He doesn’t even make a sauce from the tomatoes, but uses them chopped or slightly crushed. “A cooked sauce with its concentrated sugars would just be bitter,” Smith said, because of the oven’s high heat.

Smith had his first trial with his new oven on Sept. 11 at a party of the Winston-Salem Adult Soccer League in which he plays.

The party went off without a hitch, said Scott Eisenbraun, a co-president of the league and friend of Smith’s. “The pizza is really unique. Peyton’s got strong opinions about how to do things. And he’s very determined, so I think he’s going to do well.”

Last Saturday, Smith got a true trial by fire, cooking and serving about 300 pizzas at the Rock the Block festival downtown. For $8, people could get their choice of an 8-inch pizza Margherita or pepperoni, made fresh to order while they waited.

Team work

Smith’s parents, Phil and Virginia Smith, who live in town, were there to lend their support. And his crew consisted of his three siblings who came from out of town to help: Steve Smith of Colorado Springs, Colo.; Geoff Smith of Westport, Conn.; and Megan Smith of Lexington, Ky. Megan Smith took orders while Steve and Jeff Smith assembled the pizzas, and Peyton Smith manned the oven. Megan Smith’s 12-year-old son, Cowen Shears, was assigned to slice the cooked pizzas.

Once an order was placed, Geoff or Steve would pat out a small round of dough by hand into an 8-inch circle. Peyton Smith doesn’t have a commercial kitchen or fully licensed food truck, so to follow health regulations he had the dough made to his specifications at Ollie’s Bakery.

The dough rounds were topped with a smear of Italian tomatoes. The pizza Margheritas were then topped with fresh buffalo mozzarella cheese; a drizzle of olive oil; and big pieces of fresh, locally grown basil.

In the oven, hardwood logs and coals of oak and hickory were lined up against the left side of the oven, producing a flame that arched across the domed top. Smith used a long-handled pizza spatula to slide a pizza onto the oven’s floor. It remained there but a minute before he picked it up with the spatula and held it up high near the flames to give the top a good char.

“I really like that char — almost burnt,” Smith said, “though it takes some getting used to.”

In fact, Smith offered a kids version Saturday without so much charring.

Even beyond the slightly blackened crust, this pizza is different from what people generally get in this area. The crust is extra crispy, but the bread inside is still moist and chewy. Devoid of garlic or oregano and with uncooked tomatoes, the pizza is quite light.

Customers at Rock the Block seemed to love Smith’s take on Neapolitan pizza. “It’s great. I want one of those ovens,” said Tim Doub, the owner of Flint Hill Vineyards, who tried the pizza while taking a break from his wine-tasting table at the festival.

Penny Allen of Lewisville said she loves what the wood-fired oven does to the crust. “The crust is what makes it for me. It’s so crisp,” she said. “And it’s not greasy.”

“What’s really good is it has these big chunks of cheese,” said another customer, Elizabeth Cobb, “And everything tastes really fresh.”

Cobb’s 9-year-old daughter, Sophia, and her friend Riley Bellias, were at least two kids who enjoyed some char on their pizza. Sophia said that this pizza also has one more thing going for it: “It’s really fast!”

Smith said that if Forno Moto works out, he may eventually open a sit-down restaurant. “I think this will be good to start on a small scale,” he said. “My business plan is to have the best pizza in North Carolina.”

Regardless of how successful the business is, Smith seems most happy to have found his calling at age 34. “It’s like soccer. I never really picked soccer; soccer picked me. That’s how I feel about food.”