When Rick Easton, renowned baker, pizza maker, and owner of Bread & Salt Bakery in Jersey City Heights, New Jersey, talks about Caputo Brothers Creamery, the Pennsylvania purveyors who supply his mozzarella, it's at once a lesson in the laws that govern domestic cheesemaking and a dreamscape. Indeed, much of the way Rick expounds on Bread & Salt's mainstay ingredients — namely cheese and tomatoes — is a practicum on sourcing the best Italian products, as well as an emotional homage to the sanctity of Italian tradition. As he says with a pinch of his earthy Pittsburgh roots: “You can be the best pizza maker in the world, but if you use trash ingredients, you're making trash pizza.”
Tell us about your Focaccia Barese and your current pizza offerings.
Americans want hot pizza, but during the pandemic, figuring out the limitations on customers coming in making sure the pizza was fresh and hot became difficult. Focaccia Barese came about in part from a customer whose family is from Molfetta, Puglia. I had begun talking about it, and I said, "You know this would be a great thing to do here!” And through his father they arranged for focaccia pans to be sent from Molfetta. It's a mix of grana duro semolina flour, white flour and potato in the dough, of course. We do ours naturally leavened and use copious amounts of olive oil when baking.
Before [the pandemic], we focused on the pizza al taglio style that I learned in Rome [with Gabriele Bonci of Paneficcio Bonci and Pizzarium]. We were known for having different varieties of pizza, and the toppings were changing by the hour! We relied on people from the NYC boroughs and deeper into New Jersey. So, I had to figure out what to sell to the people in my neighborhood. And I thought, “What Italian bakery products can function in this different context?”
Focaccia Barese from Bread & Salt. Photo: Rick Easton
Right now, we’re open two days a week. On Saturdays we offer Focaccia Barese, and on Sundays, we have Pizza Rossa, Pizza with Mozzarella, Pizza Bianca, and sandwich options on Pizza Bianca.
Who are some of the farms and producers you work with?
What makes Italian food so good in Italy are the raw materials and ingredients. I use fresh tomatoes when they are in season from Campo Rosso Farm [in Gilbertville, Pennsylvania], because they understand the correct mineralization of the soil. They also understand that tomatoes actually don't want any water! The plants need to suffer — like anything in life — to produce better fruit. That is a thing that tomatoes in Campania or other parts of Southern Italy have: a struggle. My favorite tomatoes are ones that there's an acidity level that makes the taste more complex.
And I have a relationship with Caputo Brothers Creamery in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania. They are the only caseificio [dairy or cheese factory] in the United States making pasta filata cheeses that are cultured; everyone else uses vinegar and citric acid to get the cheese to the right curd for stretching. One of the things that struck me about having mozzarella in Campania was you could taste what the animals ate. Growing up, you go to the Italian deli and you get these products that are milky at best — there's no lactic tang or that taste of grass, and the texture! Having this vivid memory of that cheese in its native habitat haunts me to this day.
Caputo Brothers do ferment their cheese, but at a certain point [because of U.S. laws] they arrest that fermentation with cold, then take that curd and ship that out. It continues to ferment in that time, and the pH gets lower. I stretch the cheese right before service. It's not a replica, but it's the closest you can get.
Pizza Rosso from Bread & Salt.
What tomatoes do you use on your Pizza Rossa?
They’re from Puglia, Molise, and Basilicata and are imported by Gustiamo. I use them for two reasons: deeply savory and the right amount of acidity, and for the cost. As insane as I can get about ingredients, and for the money I am willing to spend on them, I want to make sure that the food remains accessible to people.
Bread & Salt is located at 435 Palisade Ave. in Jersey City, NJ. In addition to pizza and sandwiches filled with Campo Rosso Farm produce and salumi offerings from Salumeria Biellese, Rick offers Italian provisions, pastries and cookies like Piemontese hazelnut laden Brutti Ma Buoni and Ciambelline al Vino Bianco made with Calabrian wild black anise seeds.