Atticus Market: New Haven Has A New Pizza Contender

“If this is good, people might throw bricks through the window. It would be a badge of honor.”

The “this” that Brian Lance is referring to is the twice weekly pizza pop-up that goes down on Thursday and Friday at Atticus Market in New Haven’s East Rock neighborhood.

Lance—who serves as Atticus’ bakery manager—knows that taking on pizza in New Haven could be viewed as crazy, but he, along with chef Matthew Wick and their staff have created something that’s both current and pays tribute to the city’s pizza style.

Chef Wick works on the first pizza orders of the night. “I’ve always been around pizza,” he says. “I messed around with it on different ovens everywhere I went. I even had the chance to explore pizza in Italy.”

They also know if they were going to tackle pizza, they needed a stellar dough recipe.

“It’s New Haven and pizza is a real thing here,” Lance says. “We try to keep it in the New Haven style. It’s thin with an aggressive char. But our dough is upgraded. We don’t use any white flour. The wheat we use is grown in Maine (from Maine Grains) and is milled fresh for us. It’s not whole wheat. It’s sifted. We take out the bran and the germ, so it’s not white. You’ll see it’s still sorta brown.”

Lance, further explained that it’s naturally leavened with no commercial yeast, and they use the same sourdough starter that’s used in all of Atticus’ bread.

“It ferments for a long time,” he says. “It’s mixed in the morning, sits for a few hours, then we give it a final mix with the sourdough starter, then it cold ferments overnight for 24 hours.”

What’s offered in terms of pies is a marriage of old school New Haven meets new New Haven.

Wick, who cites Sally’s Apizza as his personal New Haven fave, is slinging a few of his riffs on their most popular pies. One of those is a white potato pie with Stracciatella, thin, fork tender slices of Yukon Gold potatoes, translucent onions, pecorino, and a fine dusting of black pepper.

Unlike the popular New Haven pizza joints, Atticus uses a coal-less oven. The electric PizzaMaster, cranked to the mid 600-degree range, cooks pies in 4-5 minutes and creates that familiar char.

The other is a classic tomato pie that’s made with Chris Bianco’s Bianco DiNapoli organic tomatoes. Wick adds extra virgin olive oil and salt to the tomatoes, blends it, and bakes it in the oven like Sally’s does to produce a thick, almost concentrate-like consistency to the sauce. Each tomato pie at Atticus has about double the sauce you’ll find at the legendary big three, with the addition of garlic sliced so thin you’ll think Paulie Cicero prepped it in the prison kitchen.

Saucy

New Haven nostalgia pies asides, Wick and the Atticus crew have occasional specials that have included a margherita and a white bean with escarole pizza. “The tomato pie is a New Haven pillar, so you gotta have that,” Wick says. “You can also select your own toppings and we’re playing with other specials. We wanna do a good job.”

OK, we know what you’re all waiting for…

Ordering!

Since the pizza program is new, it goes down on Thursdays and Fridays like I already mentioned with online ordering beginning at 4:30 p.m. with the first ones coming out at 5 p.m. and they’ll go until 9 p.m. if they’re not sold out.

Walk-ins are cool, too, if you want to take the risk that all of the 50-75 doughs aren’t all spoken for. If you go that route, order at the back counter and they’ll give you a time slot to come pick up your ‘za.

FYI: they have been selling out.

According to Lance, the future of Atticus Market’s pizza pop-ups should grow to include more doughs and more days. He even hinted at the possibility of patio nights when it’s not freezing outside and acquiring a liquor license.

In the meantime, order up, and please don’t throw a brick through their window. Like it says on their menu, they think the pizza debate in New Haven is something worth arguing about. Do that instead.

771 Orange Street; New Haven
atticusmarket.com