The Slab

Micucci Grocery, down the street from one of Portland's Coffee By Design cafes and around the corner from Rob Evans' little empire of Duckfat and Hugo's, is a brilliant little shop.

In the front, there's a deli counter, a number of freezers stuffed with pasta, and a few rows of aisles full of bottles of olive oil, jars of anchovies, cans of tomatoes, bags of dried pasta, packages of superfine 00 flour, and other Italian imports. Up a four or five step staircase - with a pretty good selection of wine on either side - you enter a back room with restaurant-sized goods: gigantic spice containers full of lavender, paprika, dried oregano, whole nutmeg, black peppercorns, and much more; humongous cans of olives; huge bars of dark chocolate; bags of heirloom beans and grains; big bags of dried pasta; and lots of other interesting stuff.

Beyond that room is where the magic happens: the bakery.

Micucci, currently run by Rick and Anna Micucci, was started over 60 years ago by Rick's parents, Leo and Iris. In addition to a wholesale operation, housed at another location, and the retail grocery, Micucci added a bakery in 2007.* The bakery is run by Stephen Lanzalotta, who produces some amazing food. While there, we ate the pizza - the Sicilian Slab, as it is called - and the Luna bread, which is the pizza dough untopped and baked.

Both were astonishing.

While thick, the bread is billowy and light, and the crumb melts in the mouth. "To eat the bread is one of those hackneyed religious food experiences. It (sigh, swoon) tastes like a cloud: it's light, ephemeral, pure, and, er, perfectly salted," wrote the editors of the Portland Phoenix back in 2009, when they picked Lanzalotta's as "Best (Seemingly) Useless Bread." They concluded, "Even if we're right in assuming that Lanzalotta's Luna bread is what the clouds taste like in heaven, we're glad to know his loaves would still make for a fine last meal." *

From what I can tell, the key to Lanzalotta's bread really comes down to two things: time and water. His dough is exceptionally well hydrated, I think on the order of something like 100%, which means that the ratio of flour to water is 1:1. This kind of dough is difficult to work with, but it can result in exceptional lightness and chewiness. As the bread bakes, all of that liquid water turns to gas, creating air bubbles and pockets. Lanzalotta lets "the dough rise five times over the course of its three-hour fermentation,"* all the while developing flavor and a structure that will support the airiness of the bread.


I've long been a thin-crust pizza devotee and have generally found thicker crusts gummy and gooey. Pizza is, after all, a flatbread with a few ingredients thrown on top. The test of a good pizza should be, in my mind, largely about the quality of the bread. Because the bread is so good, Lanzalotta's slabs are definitely - as hackneyed as it sounds - a revelation.