Coming to a Home Slice near you!
After a summer of perpetual 105 degree Groundhog Days and heat-induced apathy, fall instills a crisp feeling of newness, of fresh starts, of things to come. Not known to rest on our laurels, new things are coming to Home Slice.
We just debuted the newest additions to our patio, a bar and a ping pong table.
This Thursday, October 8th, owner Jen Strickland will be interviewed on KGSR 107.1 at 8:15 am. Catch her with your morning OJ or on your ride to work!
In a couple weeks, we will have all of our t-shirts, pint glasses, gift cards, and various wares for online purchase.
December 5th is our annual Carnival O’ Pizza, where we have games, performers, and tests of strength and endurance.
Last but not least, we have begun construction on a take out pizza business next door to our restaurant where you will be able to get piping hot pizzas to order and slices 7 days a week!
Rock!
Field Trip! Live Oak Brewery tour.
We recently had a tour at Live Oak Brewery, the only beer we carry that’s made here in Austin. Steve Anderson, the head brewer at Live Oak, was nice enough to accommodate Jessica and and I on a weekday and dropped a staggering amount of science on us!
I kept feeling like I should’ve been taking notes. In hindsight, I should have.
Before I get into the tour, a word on our beer list from one of the owners, Joseph Strickland, “The goal of the beer list is like making a great mix tape: you need some quiet/loud, some power ballads, some weird meandering shit, some ironic stuff but it all has to flow well together, woven into an overall vibe, which for our beer list means they all have to complement the pie in some way.” Nicely put, which is why we don’t have tons of beers, or many of the commonly popular beers. We aren’t trying to ruffle anyone’s feathers by not carrying their favorite beer, just as with the wines, the beers were chosen to compliment our food.
Live Oak is a small brewery located on Austin’s east side. Their year round brews are the Pilz, styled after the original Czech pilsner, Big Bark Amber Lager, a smooth Vienna style lager, and the Pale Ale. Their seasonal brews are HefeWeizen (spring/summer), Oaktoberfest (fall), and Liberation Ale (winter). You can tell by the sparkle in Mr. Anderson’s eyes as he talks about enzymes and temperatures, or, actually, any of the employees you talk to, that there is a deep passion for the craft in the folks at Live Oak. They LOVE beer. And consequently, as he points out, they have to, since they specialize in making lager beers. Lagers have a substantially longer brewing process, taking 4 to 6 weeks in most cases. A brewery could easily turn out 4 times the amount of beer in that time if they brewed ales exclusively, and make more money. But that is not the end all for these folks.
Neither of us having ever been to a brewery, or having an inkling about the beer making process, we were like kids in an alcoholic candy store.
“This one tastes like banana!” -Jessica, about the HefeWeizen
So, very very simply, this is what we learned: You start with 55 lb bags of malted barley from the Czech Republic, then you crush em up, but not too much, then they go into a big thingie called a 
mash tun where they get mixed in with hot water which breaks the starches in the malt down to sugary water. Right before the liquid is moved on from the mash tun, it’s heated up really hot to kill the enzymes that convert the starches to sugar. Then the sugary water gets drained through the “false bottom” which basically strains out the grains from the liquid.
Then the liquid, called “wort,” goes into the brew kettle where hops are added and they are boiled together. The hops are flowers that are used as the bittering agent in the beer. People talk a lot about the hops in beer, but water and malted barley are the biggest ingredients. Hops are just the squeaky wheel. If you’ve ever had an IPA or a true pilsner(i.e. Pilsner Urquell as opposed to Budweiser), that’s the bitter, hoppy flavor. 
Anyway, after that, my handle on the facts got a little fuzzy. There is only so much new science I can hold in my head at once. But, I’m pretty sure the hopped liquid gets spun inside the brew kettle so all the residual proteins and grain matter settle into a neat little pile on the bottom of the vessel, then goes through a magic cooling machine and into a big vessel where the yeast is added. In this vessel, the real fermenting action happens.
When the fermentation is done, you have beer. That doesn’t mean the beer is done, but it is technically beer. Lager, for instance, is stored for weeks at a cold temperature before it’s ready to be served.
Steve is extremely knowledgeable not only about the brewing process, but about the history of beer as well. He patiently answered all our newbie questions (is beer in green bottles supposed to taste like that?). By the end of the tour, we were ready to start our own brewery. It seems perfect; a job that combines math and science, grains and flowers, textures and smells, bubbles, no computers in sight, tall German men named Hans, and an end product you can stand behind and celebrate. A glamourous majority of the job, as Steve kindly informed us, is being on your knees and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. And then a pint of cleaning. Sterility between batches is of utmost importance to ensure quality and consistency of product. Another reason to love your craft; lots of sweat and hardwork, little glamour, but with the satisfaction that you’ve been getting people laid since since 1997.
Live Oak does tours on Saturdays at noon and they last about and hour to an hour and a half, you just have to call ahead to give them a heads up and let them know the size of your group. I highly recommend it, especially if you’ve never been to a brewery. There’s a great local brewery right in your backyard, take advantage of it and live a little!
Shout Out: The Good Knight
It’s 10:30 on a Thursday night. You’ve come to after a 5 hour Weeds marathon when you were only going to watch a few minutes before doing laundry, cleaning the bathroom, and going to return that fan to Target. Crap. You’ve been so entranced, you’re butt is numb, and now you’re hungry and the only restaurants open past 11, you don’t wan to go to. In fact, you feel so guilty about not doing laundry and all the other stuff you had planned to have done before you go out of town on Saturday, that all you really want to do is have a delicious drink to numb the guilt.
(Or something like that.)
Do I have the place for you! I almost don’t want to tell people about my favorite places, so I can love them and hug them and squeeze them and call them George all by myself, but this place is too great for me to be selfish.
The Good Knight is located on East 6th, at the corner of Attayac, just a few blocks east of I35. They are open until 2 and serve food until 12:00. The interior has a dark taverny feel, with dark wood tables and captains chairs and old family pictures covering the walls. And they are family pictures of The Good Knight’s owners and employees. It’s the kind of place that you walk into and you feel immediately at ease. All the crapola that you feel you have to carry around and worry about is left at the door. You could sit in the upholstered chair in the corner, set your drink on the end table next to the lamp and simply be. You could meet some friends and pick at the flammekueche (rustic flatbread baked with caramelized onions, crème fraiche and applewood-smoked bacon) while you sip on a June Rose (White Seedless Grapes, Basil, Bitters and Hendricks Gin) or a Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat on draft and talk about the trips you want to take together. It’s almost as if you are transported to another era where time goes a little slower (as long as you can part with your iPhone for an hour of uninterrupted analog interaction).
The bartender is a jolly, sincere, and an amazingly talented mixologist whose laugh can be heard above the Friday night din of a packed house. He truly cares about his craft and is always up to make you a custom cocktail. The following things I have had and are stop-you-in-your-tracks-and-moan-all-gross-sounding good:
The meatloaf. Not your mom’s meatloaf. Unless you’re mom is a cook at a 4 star French bistro. Angus meatloaf bacon wrapped with whiskey gravy and mashed new potatoes. Nothing less than an epiphany.
The desserts. Oh the desserts. I don’t even like dessert! The very first thing I had there was the good knight pot de crème chocolate and earl grey custard served with chantilly. The kitchen had just closed, so they were nice enough to serve me that tea cup of wonderfulness that made me clutch it to my chest like Golem and scowl unecessarily at my friend (sorry John) just to make it clear I wasn’t sharing. I am the type of person that when I find something I like, I stick with it, so it took me many months to try the (bruleed!) crustless coconut buttermilk pie with blueberry cardamom compote. I quite literally dream about that pie.
Clearly, I love food, but the cocktails are just as good. The bloody mary is really unique and made with fresh tomato juice, it makes all the difference. I could go on, and on, but I’m pretty sure Home Slice isn’t paying me to write a dissertation on The Good Knight, a shout out will suffice.
Want to WICKED impress someone on a first date, but don’t want to put too much pressure on the date by taking them to someplace fancy and stilted, yet have the quality of service and food and drink? TAKE THEM HERE.
The Cakemaker and the history of Home Slice cheesecake.
Home Slice is well known for our pizza, but our desserts are made with just as much love and care. If you’ve ever had our cheesecake, you know how wild people go for it. I’ve heard so many people say, “I don’t even like cheesecake normally, but this is unbelievable!” There’s a lot of lore surrounding our cheesecake so I recently sat down with Phil, our kitchen manager, to get the real story behind all the mystery.
Let’s take this journey all the way back to 2005, when Home Slice was being born. The owners really wanted to serve NY style cheesecake, but without a viable recipe and someone to make it, they were considering shipping it in from NYC. Ultimately they wanted to serve things freshly made, so back to square one they went. One day, Phil brings in a homemade cheesecake and Eureka! As it so fortuitously turns out, baking is Phil’s passion, among other things. In fact, Phil once employed a drill, duct tape and a 2 dollar whisk to make a cheesecake in the common kitchen of a women’s college to impress a girl. The man does not take dessert making lightly.
Our NY style cheesecake recipe came to Phil via Chicago via Houston. Phil, as a 12 year old boy and a son of New Yorkers, asked a family friend, Nicole Baker, to show him how to make her cheesecake. She treated him with the accountability of an adult and held his cakes, even at that tender and awkward age, up to the standard of her own. And thus the cakemaker was made.
As any true cakemaker will with a recipe, Phil sweated and toiled and whipped and baked and tweaked and zested and made the cake his own. When the cake became a part of Home Slice, the crust was changed from a graham cracker crust to a ricotta cookie dough. It took a lot of trial and error to bake our cake in a pizza oven and now the cake has really come into its own. It’s light and complex on the tongue with flavors of vanilla, cream, and lemon zest. Phil recognizes that food is sentimental, the smells and flavors that remind us of a love or a place or a time in our lives can be a powerful force and he treats his cakemaking with that reverence.
And it get’s better! It was discovered after we started serving our cheesecake that, as impossible to believe that it could be improved upon, the pairing of the cake with our Moscato Di Asti is about as heavenly a dessert experience as you can get. Save room, you will not be disappointed, and you just may be transported to the 7th level of bliss. To Phil, food is entirely sentimental and this cake is meant to be shared.
P.S. If you see Phil in the restaurant, chat him up. He loves to tell stories.
The cakemaker early in his career (above left), Unloading cakes from the pizza oven (above right)
Italian wines: everyday eats, not special treats!
Why wine? Why the heck not?! You see, pizza is fun. That’s undeniable. It’s born by being tossed in the air and getting all dolled up. You get to eat it with your hands without getting in trouble. A hot piping pie is brought to your table and you think, or say, YAY! Wine in Italy is the same. It is not reserved for cocktail parties and stemmed glasses and anniversaries. It is food. It is just as much a part of the everyday eating experience as bread or veggies. We chose to have an Italian wine list because our food is Italian inspired and our ingredients are primarily Italian. In Italy wine and food are made to compliment and enhance each other, and Italian wines have a great acidity that stands up to, but doesn’t mask or overpower, the rich flavors in the tomato sauce, cheese, and meats in Italian cooking.
Our wine menu changes fairly often because we chose to work with semi-small producers that make wine with our same philosophy. Wineries with a passion for quality ingredients with the real end product being a catalyst for pleasure and enjoyment for life and the people you share it with.
Wine is not pretentious, it’s just juice, man. Really well made, warm in your tummy, fuzzy around the edges, sexy, fun-times juice. Juice nonetheless. And food and wine paired are like Dan Akroyd and John Belushi, great solo, but unstoppably awesome together. Like how Catherine Zeta-Jones looks even more beautiful on the arm of Michael Douglas. Just think of Catherine as a slice of sausage and garlic pizza and Michael is the Barbera D’Alba that propels her to Super Star status. Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin? They are actually a meatball sub and a glass of Nero D’Avola. Don’t tell their publicists. So the next time you think pizza, and then think beer, think again and ask your server about our wine!
The pairings above are tried and true awesome combos. Don’t be fooled but the pink color of Rosé, it’s a dry, tart glass of cold heaven. It totally compliments the meaty Italian assorted sub. Prosecco and a Caesar salad sounds a little understated, but it’s a ridiculously delicious combo. The earthiness of the Montepulciano is a great bosom buddy to the saltiness of the pepperoni and the acidity of the pizza sauce.
This is how we do it.
Lot’s of people ask us what makes our pizza so good. What sets it apart? Despite the mystique and legend (and compellingly strong opinions) surrounding what makes great pizza great, it’s not fairy dust or luck or anything that obscure. The answer is simple, but born out of much hard work, effort and vision: recipes, quality ingredients, love and no compromise. Many of the ingredients that we use weren’t available from the local purveyors when Home Slice was still in the womb. It took much persistence and diligence to make the cheeses, meats, and toppings that we use available to us.
Periodically, Jen Strickland, owner and visionary (the queen of pies, if you will) of Home Slice and its recipes, educates the staff on what we use and why. We taste our ingredients side by side with what is widely available and pervasively used. The differences can be shocking. Take for example, one the most integral ingredients for pizza, shredded mozzarella. We shred our cheeses daily. However, the food industry, in an effort to make pre-shredded mozzarella easier to store and handle, coats the cheese with cellulose powder to prevent caking and preservatives to increase shelf life. And while this makes it more convenient for turn and burn pizza production, it does not make for good food.
Pizza is often viewed as a cheap, quick commodity. That is the opposite from how we treat pizza making. Pizza is not merchandise. Pizza is the satellite of love in the middle of a table that brings people together.
Jen dropping knowledge on us all.
Our cheesecake vs. frozen
Compare and contrast, with wine.
Organizations we support
A youth development program that uses sustainable agriculture as means to affect lasting change for youth participants, and to nourish East Austin residents who currently have limited access to healthy foods. On a 2-5 acre urban organic farm, our project will provide employment, life and job skills, and service opportunities to under-served youth aged 14-18 in East Austin. 15 farm interns, ages 14-18, are hired to work from February to July, growing 15,000-20,000 lbs of produce every year—donating 40% of that to hunger relief and selling 60% at farmers’ markets and farm stands run by the farm interns.
Eat Local Week, the winter fundraiser event, is an invitation to Central Texans to explore and celebrate the abundance of local food and to raise money for Urban Roots, a youth development program that uses sustainable agriculture as a means to transform the lives of young people and to increase the access of healthy food in Austin.
The Austin Community Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides stewardship for over seven hundred individual charitable funds. The Austin Community Foundation’s grants, whether from specific charitable funds or from the general fund, support health, human services, arts and culture, the environment, community development and community service, education and training, recreation, and animal-related services.
From their founding in 1997 as the Capital Area Homeless Alliance, they have worked to create practical solutions for helping people find their way home. Through shelter and permanent-housing programs, skills development, employment resources and more, Front Steps supports low-income workers, disabled and homeless individuals and their families to find lasting and affordable housing.
St. Andrew’s seeks students of character and intelligence from diverse ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds, and maintains a scholarship program to support that diversity. The school strives to help young people achieve their potential not only in intellectual understanding but also in esthetic sensitivity, physical well-being, athletic prowess and moral decisiveness so that they may lead productive, responsible lives, not only for themselves, but also for their community.
The Project is a statewide non-profit family law firm that is now in its 26th year of service! The staff is made up of top notch lawyers who employ cutting edge legal strategies to help victims who couldn’t ordinarily access the legal system. Their services are free, and they do not discriminate.
Workers Defense Project is a membership-based organization that empowers Latina/o immigrant workers to act collectively for racial and economic justice in the workplace through leadership development, education, organizing and collaborating with strategic allies.
Young Texans Against Cancer (YTAC) is a start-up, nonprofit organization comprised of young men and women affected directly or indirectly by cancer, who actively support the cancer community through the following efforts: Raising funds to help support research-based and small- to medium-sized organizations, increasing support for volunteer organizations, and educating our community about cancer research.
The art of pizza tossing, down to a weensy science.
Get this!
Researchers at Monash University in Australia have broken down the physics of the art of pizza tossing and used those mathematical principles to design teeny tiny motors called standing wave ultrasonic motors (SWUMs). Essentially itty bitty pizzas that never stop spinning.
The system’s dynamics explains why certain tossing motions are used by dough-toss performers for different tricks: a helical trajectory is used in single tosses because it maximizes energy efficiency and the dough’s airborne rotational speed, a semi-elliptical motion is used in multiple tosses because it is easier for maintaining dough rotation at the maximum rotational speed. The system’s bifurcation diagram and basins of attraction also informs SWUM designers about the optimal design for high speed and minimal sensitivity to perturbation.
If you want to get nerd mathy, check out the researchers abstract.
