Friday Pizza Box 10/18/24
So long to the Slab
Hello from the Wordloaf Friday Pizza Box, an occasional roundup of links and items relating to everyone’s favorite flatbread. This week is devoted to some sad news in the pizza world, the closing of Portland, Maine’s Slab.
As you may be aware, I wrote of my years-long love for the Slab pie here a few years ago:
The Sicilian "Slab” pizza is justifiably famous in New England and beyond, especially for regular visitors to Portland, Maine. It was first created by Steven Lanzalotta, who for many years used to produce it in a little bakery set into the back of Micucci’s Grocery, an Italian specialty shop in the Old Port. My pal Liz Bomze once wrote a profile of Micucci’s-era Lanzalotta for Serious Eats—the piece has since been lost to time, but not before I saved it to my computer—containing this perfect description of what is so wonderful and distinctive about his slab slices:
The crust is surprisingly light, striated, and almost cakey with a pleasant chew—qualities that Lanzalotta attributes to thoroughly hydrating the dough (about 90 percent), using high-quality ingredients (King Arthur Bread Flour, SAF yeast, grey sea salt, water, and a particularly floral Portuguese olive oil), and letting the dough rise five times over the course of its three-hour fermentation. By the time it's ready for baking, the jiggle-y five-pound mass has risen a bit and formed a thin skin that keeps it from sticking.
As for the toppings, Lanzalotta keeps it simple: A thin coating of smooth sauce—crushed tomatoes, garlic, salt, and a little sugar that gives the finished product distinct sweetness—a few light handfuls of provolone and mozzarella, a drizzle of that good fruity olive oil, and a sprinkle of dried herbs. Once baked, the pie has what Lanzalotta calls a "geography" of primary colors: puffy red peaks, creamy chasms of white cheese, and charred black bubbles of crust.
Barely a year after that, the Slab’s creator, Steven Lanzalotta, died of cancer at the young age of 63:
Lanzalotta, 63, died Saturday, after years of battling cancer. In addition to being a baker, he was a woodworker, oil painter and author, as well as a father, business manager and friend.
“Basically everything he touched turned to gold,” said his daughter, Shaia Lanzalotta.
Emily Kingsbury, one of his business partners at Slab, said Lanzalotta was very private and didn’t want people knowing about his health struggles. When customers asked for him, Kingsbury would say he was out but would be back soon enough to make the dough. Even though he had stopped working at the restaurant four years ago, he still came in occasionally to make the dough, “just because he liked it,” she said.
By then, Lanzelotta had sold his restaurant to several of his employees, keeping his legacy alive. But the post-pandemic restaurant era has been hard on Slab, and as reported in the Portland Press Herald last week, they have closed shop:
Slab Sicilian Street Food announced Monday that it will close at the end of the week, making it the latest in a slew of recent restaurant closures in Greater Portland.
The Preble Street restaurant said in an Instagram post it will close effective Saturday.
“Since the pandemic, people’s habits have definitely changed,” Slab General Manager and Chef Christopher Bassett said in a phone interview. “Alcohol sales are down, and we were highly focused on that.
“Our takeout sales and our pizza sales have been good, and our frozen pizza business is thriving, but a large-format space like what we have here, with live entertainment and patios and a large event space, just don’t seem to be what people are doing these days,” Bassett added. “Things aren’t the way they were 10 years ago when we opened.”
Truly the end of an era, and a sad day. I’m grateful that I was able to get enough intel out of Steven to reverse-engineer his recipe, so it can at least remain alive in home kitchens:
I’ll be making some Slab pies this weekend for a party, and will be thinking of Steven and his legacy. Have a peaceful weekend everyone, see you all next week.
—Andrew
omg! how sad. yes, what a gift it is and will be to bakers that you wrote a slab recipe.
I saw on a previous post that the Slab video can be purchased through you, is this still available?