Job Spotlight on Leo Dicesaris, pizza maker at Cerrone’s Brick Oven Pizzeria

A: I spent a lot of time in New York, pretty much every borough, learning under some champion pizza makers, some regional pizza maker champions, best-of-the-East Coast guys. I spent time up there just learning from several different pizzerias and pizza places, and incorporated that down here.

A: My dad was born in New York, and all of his family before him was in New York, although they originally came from Italy. We (he and Jonathan) were the first generation to be born and raised here in Columbus. Long story short, a military marriage brought my father down here when he was about 10 years old and we’ve been here since.

A: I took a lot of family recipes and mixed them with things I learned at the pizzerias in New York, and put my own twist on it, my own influence. I made it something of my own, but something that’s still authentic to the New York region. The goal was to create a pizza that stands to the caliber and quality of New York pizza, which is known to be the best pizza in the world, and doing it here in Georgia, in my hometown. That was really my plan.

A: It was something that we’ve always been passionate about. It (that pizza passion) has always been in my dad’s family. It’s always been in our family since we were kids. It’s something we’ve always wanted to do, seeking to explore. But every time we thought about doing it, there were always other things going on ... For me, I was involved in sports, and another career. But everything finally lined up to take a shot at it.

A: If anything, it was discipline. Working as a team is important in any job field and even much more so in a restaurant. And just the skills of leading, time management and the discipline it takes to stay focused on what you’re trying to accomplish.

A: Everything is time management, whether it’s getting a salad out before the pizza and other little things like that. Just making sure everybody gets their orders promptly.

A: I’m here Monday through Saturday, open to close. I get here at 7 or 8 in the morning and I leave at 11 or 12 at night.

A: It’s always great to step back and breath and see where you are and where you need to go, and take that time to develop the little steps we need to reach that goal. It’s nice to have those moments to plan things out instead of making rush decisions. You’re always so busy in this industry that you often don’t get the time to plan.

A: We follow pizza quite heavily and I’ve always had a real deep desire to know more about it. So from searching through magazines and Internet articles, I came to see this magazine, which is the biggest in the industry as far as pizza’s concerned. It’s called Pizza Today. Through that I had my mind broadened to different types of pizza throughout the country.

I went and started training under these guys in New York. They’ve won this event. They were world champion pizza makers or they won their categories several times or their regions several times — very influential people in the industry. That’s when my interest piqued and I thought, is this more than just a go-out-there-and-have-fun kind of thing. Those guys showed me their trophies and their accolades, and you get published in the magazine.

A: It’s the largest pizza competition in the United States, one of the largest in the world. They do a world pizza championship in Italy every year as well. That’s a big pizza competition.

This year it was cool because we competed against people from Iceland, Korea, China, Japan and Scotland, I believe it was. The Italian influence is heavy, especially in the Napoletana division. Italy’s broken up into regions, where you might not get so great a pizza in the north, but towards that southern region, in Naples, where pizza is supposedly originated form, that’s the mark of a great pizza.

A: It was March 7 through 11. The actual competition was over three days, and it’s broken down into different categories. They have a gluten-free category, a non-traditional category, which allows you the use of any combination of toppings. You can get as exotic as you want. And there was a traditional category which was based around using strict ingredients that allowed you to go out of the box a little bit. There was a specific dough and sauce you had to use. You could mix and match a couple of things, like your cheeses and toppings, but not get too crazy. Then they had the Napoletana, which all of the Italians like to come and participate in because that’s their forte.

A: We could produce it, but we just don’t. We’re more focused on being authentic to the New York region, so we have a standard pizza dough for the calzones and the pizzas. Now we are capable of making that style of pizza. Maybe at some point in time it’s something we’ll do, have both of styles of it going on. But we do have a version of that style now using that same type of cheese, the same type of sauce, the same ingredients, just not the dough.

A: All five divisions together, there were over 200 participants. Our division, the non-traditional, had 60 participants. I was 18 out of the total 60, which for a first-timer is great. People do this year in and year out and don’t even place. I was fortunate enough to place third out of the entire Southeast out of all of those competitors, which was really huge. The gentleman that placed first in the Southeast actually won the entire non-traditional category overall.

A: Brian Hall from Kentucky. We both did very similar pizzas. I used barbecue from Zombie Pig BBQ. They are a newer barbecue restaurant here … I wanted to keep my first contest something true to the South, something from our region, something that we do well.

A: You know, I was very surprised. I think it did, especially to take a product cooked fresh here and sustain it. I had to fly it on the plane in a cooler. It was a really interesting process. It was an eye-opening thing, so that next year I will be able to plan and coordinate better to have a greater chance of success.

A: It’s crazy. It varies. During our slow time, we’ve had days when we’ve only done a hundred pizzas. But in our busy times, we’ve done 3,000 or 4,000 pizzas a week.

A: They’re all enjoyable to make. They’re all so unique in their own different ways. They vary from cheese pizzas to pepperoni pizzas to out-of-the-box things, such as an olive vodka pizza, which is made with Belvedere vodka. We make it every day here in the house. So we have some exotic things and some simple things as well.

A: When somebody orders a lot of different toppings, or they order it in a certain way. They don’t want the pizza too burned or too soft.

It’s great because we focus around the customization of pizzas, as well as the set gourmet pizzas we come up with. It’s like anything, while pizza is very simple, like a hotdog, there are certain things that make it challenging. You can only put so much cheese, so much sauce and toppings on a pizza and have it bake correctly, the top and bottom, to that the overall product comes out like you want. It’s a fine balance.

Oftentimes with pizza we find that less is more, and what I mean by that is not throwing the kitchen sink on it. It’s about getting the right balances of flavor profiles, bitterness, sweetness, saltiness, the savoriness of it and how that all comes together.

A: The brick oven is a really incredible thing. It’s a high-temp oven. We cook at about 800 degrees. Our oven actually came out of New York. The stone itself was pressed and formed in Italy. The brick we got for it was out of Staten Island. So when we set out to do authentic pizza, we did it with authentic brick ovens. This one is a little more modernized because we got a rotating deck for it, which produces even heat around it. But the challenges with a brick oven … I’ll put a scenario out there. you might want a customer who wants a pizza extra crispy or not so well done. Well, when you’re dealing with temperatures like that, it’s a very fine line between extra crispy and too far. It’s really a skill and being able to manage that oven.

A: We can make 14 11-inch pizzas a one time or eight 16-inch pizzas at one time … Every weekend we fill that sucker up and at 800 degrees, once that pizza touches the surface, it’s only a couple of minutes before it’s coming out.

A: Like anything, it doesn’t matter what you do or how much you love it, a human body is conditioned to only take in so much of something before it asks for something else. But my favorite pizza is just a classic margherita, the Italian style baked on our New York pizza dough. It’s very simple with lots of flavor. You’re not eating 20 toppings and only tasting one of them. You get to taste the individual toppings, the basil, the fresh mozzarella, the tomato sauce, the crust. All of that complements each other. You get the individual flavors.