Soggy, squishy, and unsavory. All words that were formerly used to describe the cafeteria’s pizza each Friday. However, in light of a recent county decision to buy new pizza ovens for all middle and high schools, the script has flipped – the words melting, crusty, and crispy come to mind instead.
The new pizza ovens were installed at the beginning of the year by the cafeteria staff. With the recent installation of the new pizza ovens, the cafeteria has had a burst in popularity from the students and excitement from the staff as the culmination of a lot of hard work finally pays off.
“The pizza ovens have been in the works for about a year now. We have wanted to do something new and exciting for the kids, and the kids love the crispy crust,” cafeteria manager Beth Diloreta said. “We really lucked out because we’re the only school that has the pizza oven where the kids can actually see it coming out.”
The savory crust is met with excitement as Stone Bridge students enjoy the unique luxury of seeing their pizza prepared. Ms. Diloreta highlights the value of cooking the customer’s food in front of them, making the cafeteria experience more enjoyable for staff and students.
“I used to cook at the Wegmans seafood bar. Cooking in the middle of people watching me, I love that,” cafeteria worker Camille Mathew said. “Being able to watch us make their pizza instead of it just being kind of hidden and behind the scenes. It’s very exciting that it’s out in the open.”
Especially compared to past years, it is evident that the ovens have greatly increased the quality of each slice.
“The new oven cooks it evenly so now everybody’s piece is exactly the same,” Ms. Mathew said. “It’s actually calculated so that it’s three and a half minutes of cooking time…Since it’s not in a pan that has a solid bottom, the crust gets crunchy which didn’t happen before and sometimes it was a soggy mess.”
Despite the undeniably higher quality of this new pizza process, it’s always hard to tell what the reaction will be, especially considering gross lunch food is a staple of all teenager’s imaginations.
Thankfully, the new pizza has been met with positive reception so far.
“I think the pizza is a lot better because it actually tastes like pizza and it’s not just dough that tastes like cardboard, sauce, and cheese,” sophomore Alex Nystrom said. “It’s all put together in the right way. It tastes like pizza rather than those three separate ingredients just put on top of each other.”
Nystrom’s description of the former composition of the bygone pizza was mirrored by numerous other students. Although, if that wasn’t enough to prove the pizza’s prolific popularity, the numbers surely do.
“As far as the boxes go, we only used to make about six which is putting in three pepperoni and three cheese,” Ms. Matthew said. “Now we’re up to nine cases.”
It is clear that the students are loving and enjoying the new pizza and have even encouraged some students to try it for the first time. The new pizza’s success is a well deserved triumph for the cafeteria staff who regularly deal with less-than-empathetic teenage students.
“We went up about 150 slices the first day,” Ms. DiLoreta said. “We’re also seeing kids get lunch that have never had lunch before. It’s really exciting for us.”
