Dough Pizzeria Forecasts August 9 Opening Date
(l to r) owner Keith Hall, chef Robert Proehl, founder Doug Horn, owner Brad Liles
Fancy mixer from France. Looks painful
ouch.
This oven was handmade in Naples. It will be fueled by post oak to 850F and can cook 7 pizzas at a time
dough founder and owner doug horn
bar area
Dough Pizzeria, the much-heralded VPN pizza palace in San Antonio that has been praised by both ends of the culinary spectrum (the ever-insightful Pat Sharpe of Texas Monthy and freaky Guy Fieri of TV’s Food Network), forecasts that their Dallas location will open in about three weeks.
“The oven is in, the ventilation is in, the mixer is here, and now we’re just getting everything ready to open,” Dough founder Doug Horn told me during a visit yesterday. The Dallas sibling will be owned and operated by Brad Liles and Keith Hall, who convinced Horn to expand to Dallas with Liles and Hall as the licensees. The group is penciling in an August 9th opening date.
“Keith, Robert (Proehl, the head chef of the Dallas location) and I have spent weeks at the San Antonio Dough, learning how to do everything exactly the same as they do it there,” related Liles. “There’s no better Neopolitan pizza than the ones there, which is why we wanted to bring Dough to Dallas.”
Liles and Hall formerly operated Chocolate Angel Too in the space at Preston Road and Forest Lane that now houses Dough.
Horn says the oven, like the one in San Antonio, was handmade by artisans in Naples, then shipped to Dallas for installation. The brick and clay oven will be fired with post oak and cook up to 7 pizzas simultaneously in about 90 seconds — at a temperature of 800-850F. The dough is mixed in a special mixer designed specifically for bread dough, left to rise overnight, then hand-stretched to order.
In the Dallas outpost of Dough, the owners have replicated the look and feel of the original location, with warm earthy colors, wood counters, pendant light fixtures and dark floors. A large bar (serving an Italian-heavy wine list and from-scratch cocktails) runs along one long wall, while the pizza oven, a mozzarella bar (where cooks will hand pull mozz from curds), and the pizzaioli station occupy the opposite side. Dough will seat 100 people in the dining room.
VPN pizzas are distinguished by their production technique, their use of a wood-burning oven, and incorporating only four ingredients in the crust: flour, water, salt and yeast. In the Dallas area, Jay Jerrier’s Cane Rosso and Irving’s Cavalli are VPN certified. The San Antonio Dough sells about 600 pizzas a day.