Kidman Park pizzeria Rocco Pizza makes their priorities clear in their quirky motto: “no ham and pineapple.”
The succinct statement––which is emblazoned on staff aprons, printed on their website, and repeated often by owner Rocco DeAngelis––makes clear the company’s rejection of superfluities and focus on the essential.
Pizza is served on cardboard; Guests cut their own pizza; There are no BS toppings. Instead, there’s a focus on quality ingredients––first and foremost: the sourdough base.
Now, Rocco Pizza aims to share their base, which is made simply with water, flour, and salt, with a larger audience by opening a sourdough tasting room.
The boutique tasting room, named San Rocco, will open on Grange Road in June. It will be an intimate space, where 20 people sit at a bar surrounding an imported Italian wood oven and try sour dough pairings. Visible through a glass window, there will also be a sourdough laboratory, which will produce around 2,000 bread bowls an hour.
Pairings will include a variety of sourdough combinations––bread with fruit, bread with cheese, bread with Nutella, bread with wine, and of course, the sourdough-base pizza. There will be cinnamon apple pie pizza, sourdough lasagna, sourdough bruschetta, and a range of alcohol to go with everything.
DeAngelis highlights the dish’s versatility.
“You’ll taste it sweet, you’ll taste it sour, you’ll taste it savoury. You’ll taste is with different meats and fruits, flat, puffy, and straight out of wood fired oven,” he says.
“We’re excited for people to try it and learn about the benefits of sourdough.”
The benefits are, according to DeAngelis, countless. Due to the food’s natural, simple nature and fermentation, it’s easy to digest, even for people with gluten intolerances or yeast sensitivities, like himself. He champions it as a healthier, more authentic version of the high gluten, high starch pizza we’ve come to know.
“In case we hadn’t noticed, we’re in the middle of a pizza pandemic with high sugars and under-fermented dough,” he says.
“The dough has to be fermented. Pizza has to be baked on stone.”
DeAngelis, an Adelaide native, learned his tactics and passion for his craft during his two years traveling through Italy. He hopes that soon everyone can try and understand the classic Italian method of sourdough making that he has brought to Australia.
“I want people to understand that this is something that has been around forever,” DeAngelis says.
“We’re not trying to be new and trendy; We make it this way because it’s authentic and because it tastes better.”
He wants other Adelaide pizzerias to get on board, too.
“We would love every pizzeria to use our dough,” he says.
“It’ll be available at a wholesale price for anyone who wants to use it.”
San Rocco will be located at 466 Grange Road, to open to June 1.
Find Rocco Pizza at 366 Find Road, Kidman Park.
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