Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Adam, we moved to Portland in January 2005. Thank you for coming in. It was a pleasure to finally meet you.

I enjoyed Little Star the one time that I had it back in January. If it was in my neighborhood, I would support them. IMO, however, I have had a lot better deep dish style pizza in my life. Even Zachary's in Berkeley, CA, was a lot better. But that is just my take from my one experience at Little Star. Your mileage may vary.

I am more perplexed why someone would just buy a recipe and open a pizzeria. I don't like the "silver bullet" approach, when it comes to any trade. I have worked hard to come up with my pizza formulas. I never worked at a pizzeria and it took me years of trial and error to finally come up with a pizza that, although inspired by other's creations, is a reflection of me.

When I lived in San Jose I used to go to Pizza and Pipes and Angelino's all the time back in the '70s. For a kid, these places were fantastic. Pizza, soda, silent movies and the organ player would take requests from the kids... so you would hear the Star Wars theme song about every half hour. When I moved back to Michigan in the late '70s, I was happy to see that there were organ style pizzerias there as well. I moved back to the bay area in the 80's and they were still around, but I never did go back... I wish that I had.

I had the fortune of living with Alan for a month, while working at a bakery in Santa Rosa, CA. He truly was one of the most giving and generous souls that I have ever met. I later returned to help Alan build two brick ovens. Upon returning to Oregon, I built my own oven from my experiences and I had a very special surprise visit from Alan, to show him what I created from his lessons. I am at a loss for words, as the man gave so much and asked so little in return. My thoughts are with Lisa and Nick and the rest of the Scott family. To know the man was really something very special and I will never forget what he did for me, and my family.

Flaksman,

We make enough dough to meet the demand of a complete 5 hour dinner service at maximum capacity. We generally finish making pizzas right around 10pm. If I made more dough, I would have to keep my doors open even longer, and at the moment, working 14 hours a day is plenty for me.

I am a little confused by your comment about standing in line for hours only to be turned away. The longest anyone has waited in line, before opening, was about an hour. On average, people start lining up for the first seating about half an hour before we open. After we open, those who have waited in line are sat and then there is no longer a line. If the restaurant fills up completely at opening, then people who come in put their name on the waiting list, and every one who puts their name on the list gets a pizza. If it is a busy night and we do pull the waiting list (we don't sell out of dough every night) it generally occurs at about 8pm, which is three hours after opening. That being said, I am curious to know what pizzeria you waited in line for hours, only to be told that they were out of dough when you finally got to the door.

Looks like a Dum Dum Mystery Flavor. They do flavor runs back to back and they end up with pieces that contain two different flavors and label it the "Mystery Flavor", which accounts for the two different colors in the lollipop above.

Freedom,

I tought a class here in Portland last Summer on using the broiler and pizza stone trick, which came to me while stressing over how to teach people how to acheive better results at home and it worked beautifully. The trick is to get some of the silicone wedges that are designed for keeping your oven door open, so that the oven broiler does not shut off. I had to give the pizzas about 15-20 minutes between bake, so the pizza stone would come back to temp (we were getting around 625 F in an oven where the thermostat topped off at 500 F) and using an infrared thermometer to monitor the temp.