Big Sur Bakery Cookbook - Michelle Wojtowicz [43]
It’d be easy to get carried away, but since we were just fishing for our own dinner, it didn’t make sense to catch too many. Eventually we motored and rowed our way back toward shore and cracked open a few beers as Phil and Wayne cleaned the fish right on the beach, putting the meat into a cooler that we then pedaled up the hill.
Back at the Bakery, we threw together a tomato and avocado salad, sliced some fresh buffalo mozzarella, and served up the fish. That evening, faces flushed from the sun, still giddy from bouncing around on the water, we sat down to a fresh-caught feast.
Photographs by Sara Remington
Our Wood-Fired Pizza
We grew up with thin-crust, Neapolitan-style pizza, and our cheese pizza, our most basic pie, is a tribute to those we ate at our neighborhood parlors—crispy, with the perfect blend of tomato sauce and mozzarella. When designing our less traditional pies, we use the same approach we take toward the rest of our food: carefully pairing fresh, seasonal vegetables with complementary cheeses, sauces, and meats to create pizzas that are just as composed as the other items on our menu.
Our heirloom tomato version represents our love for Italian pizza, and our prosciutto and sage pie is our California-coming-of-age pizza. In August we like to take advantage of the local heirloom tomatoes, but the variety of local produce means that we can mix up toppings all year long. Instead of just adding things to a traditional cheese pie—the normal approach in every pizza shop in Jersey—we change the sauces to create pizzas that are more sophisticated. Our eggplant pizza has an eggplant sauce, dollops of tomato sauce, roasted eggplant cubes, and goat cheese, for example, and our long-cooked broccoli and broccolini pizza uses preserved garlic and oil as the sauce.
You can always just top a traditional cheese pizza with sausage, pepperoni, or the California favorite of ham, pineapple, and jalapeño peppers. But once you start experimenting, there’s no end to the possible combinations. We do a breakfast pizza year-round, and regularly feature seasonal toppings like chanterelles and squash (butternut goes great with Parmesan, mozzarella, prosciutto, and sage brown butter). Our suggestion: Make a couple of pizza doughs, check out what’s in season, and create your own.
Photographs by Sara Remington
Photographs by Sara Remington
Photographs by Sara Remington
PROFILE: FORREST/Poke Pole Fisherman
Photographs by Sara Remington
What do you love about living in Big Sur?
What don’t I love? The landscapes. The mountains. How easily you can find quietness and solitude.
Worst part of living here:
Everything’s uphill.
Why Big Sur?
My great-great-grandfather was John Partington—he pioneered Partington’s Ridge in Big Sur. Even though my family doesn’t have any land here, I wanted to come down and check out Big Sur because it was part of my heritage.
How many times have you been out of California?
Twice. Once to Idaho and once to Hawaii last year. That was my first plane ride. I didn’t like flying at all.
Total siblings:
Nine—there are five boys and four girls. I’m the youngest boy.
How long have you been fishing for rockfish?
Since I was a kid. We lived a block from the ocean, so I grew up fishing. I did twenty years of commercial fishing out of Monterey, working the Big Sur coast.
Why do you go poke pole fishing?
Lately there’s been a lot of restrictions on where you can and can’t go fishing. But poke pole fishing is allowed pretty much 24/7, even when there might be restrictions on boats.
Who taught you?
When I was young I saw an old guy doing it back in Cannery Row. That gave me the idea to do it myself because it’s a good way to gather food—you get mussels, crabs, abalones all at once down there.
Role at the Bakery:
Self-appointed daytime manager. I split firewood. I clean tables now and again when they’re busy, or start fires for them in the pizza oven. I landscape around the Bakery.
Yearly income:
It’s…unstable. Is that