World's Best Pizza Contest-Pizza Expo Las Vegas Nevada

Scot Cosentino of the New York Brick Oven Company wins the Title

If you are in the pizza industry, you have probably heard of Pizza Expo by now. It is the Super Bowl of the pizza world with close to 10,000 people from across the world attending Pizza Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center on March 25th-27th.

 Anything involved in the business of  making pizza , delivering or selling pizza is represented here. The atmosphere is electric with characters from all parts of the US and the world involved in  buying, selling, lecturing, competing and most importantly-eating pizza. Representatives from all the major pizza equipment dealer such as Stanilsaus Tomatoes, Grande Cheese, New York Brick Ovens and Hobart Mixers will be in attendance. Then you have your pizza making contestants from around the world competing in spinning, stretching, tossing and making pizza in daily contests. If your shopping you can find ingredients, distributors, computer systems, signs and everything in between.

Lucky contest winners get the big check, acknowledgement from the pizza world and most important to future success: that priceless amount of press both locally and internationally. 

Andrew Scudera of Goodfella's Brick oven Pizza wins World's best Pizza!

Whether you are an owner, operator, manager or just an avid pizza fan you will enjoy this show and make some great connections and friends. Be sure to check out the New York Contingent of Goodfella's Brick oven Pizza, The Pizza 

School of New York and the New York Brick Oven Co. at booth 231 and say hello!

Thermal Mass, Revolving Brick Ovens and Fast Casual Pizza

Mass

What does thermal mass have to do with making brick oven pizza? Well, let's start with the definition:

Thermal mass is a concept in building design that describes how the mass of the building provides "inertia" against temperature fluctuations, sometimes known as the thermal flywheel effect.^[1] For example, when outside temperatures are fluctuating throughout the day, a large thermal mass within the insulated portion of a house can serve to "flatten out" the daily temperature fluctuations, since the thermal mass will absorb thermal energy when the surroundings are higher in temperature than the mass, and give thermal energy back when the surroundings are cooler, without reaching thermal equilibrium. This is distinct from a material's insulative value, which reduces a building's thermal conductivity, allowing it to be heated or cooled relatively separate from the outside, or even just retain the occupants' thermal energy longer.

So when you have a brick oven, such as The New York Brick Oven Company's revolving brick oven, that is dense and thick(several thousand pounds) you have a higher thermal mass than the routine pizza ovens which translates to having consistently cooked pizza and a more energy efficient design. Having a thick revolving deck aslo uses thermal mass to hold oven heat and cook evenly without hot and cold spots due to the continuous rotation. This was proven out in real world trials at the Iconic Goodfella's Brick Oven Pizza of New York when they replaced one of their fast casual pizza concept's 8 ft. interior surface standard brick ovens with a New York Brick Oven Inferno Series revolving brick ovens. This one change made for more consistent and faster production allowing them to realize about a $40,000 a year reduction in labor. The labor saving came from no longer needing to use the second 5 ft. standard oven for the rush and reducing the number of employees during non- peak hours with the revolving brick oven. Not to mention less fuel with operating a single oven as opposed to two ovens.