Dream Team in Sainsbury’s Market

A Somerset pizza dough roller working alongside a Wood Stone gas-fired, stone-hearth oven have proved to be the perfect pair in producing over 3,000 pizzas per week in the first of Sainsbury’s new style ‘markets’ in Pimlico, London.

Sainsbury’s Market is a new concept where each counter, for example, the charcuterie, the cheesemonger, the master butcher and the fishmonger’s is presented as a stand-alone market stall with produce banked on sloping shelves to replicate an outdoor market.

At the forefront of the store, the ‘Food to Go’ section offers roasted poultry joints, ribs, pork knuckles, deli items, and even, potatoes dauphinoise and made-up chilled pizzas for home-baking. In addition to optionally, handcrafted, freshly cooked, Italian-style pizzas, stone baked in the Wood Stone oven.

The system for fresh baked pizzas is simple. Ready made-up frozen dough balls are defrosted overnight, slipped twice through the Somerset roller, prepped up with a tomato sauce base and placed on a pizza screen on an adjacent table. Then, as ordered, the bases are moved to the ‘topping table’ for customers to create their own version or choose from standard Margherita, Vegetali, Pollo al Pepe, Meat Feast. American Hot, Hawaiian, Quattro Formaggio. Pizzas are then introduced by long handled pizza peel onto the hearth of the giant 5 feet diameter, gas-fired oven for between 3-6 minutes before being boxed and ready-to-go. The Wood Stone all-gas version oven was installed with finished décor of liveried matt black coating with steel piping up to the vented ceiling to invoke the atmosphere of an old Victorian street market food vendor. 

Lunchtime trade from nearby offices is brisk but ‘power hour’ is from 5-7.30pm especially on Fridays and weekends when ‘regulars’ order up to eight or dozen pizzas for families and parties. 10” pizzas retail from £4.99 and 14” from £5.99 and a choice of fresh salads are available from the adjoining Salad Bar .

Together, the Somerset roller and the Wood Stone oven form the basic core of catering equipment in this highly successful pizza operation. The ‘kit’ was supplied to Sainsbury’s Market and installed by Bakers Pride Europe Ltd.