Keep Clam Primo: You be the judge

Joseph Mucci (aka. Il Pizzaiolo) makes great pizza. We’re not just saying that because he’s the mastermind behind our contest-winning pie, the Keep Clam Primo. We’re pretty sure this guy has marinara coursing through his veins.

Growing up in an Italian family with a mom who loves to cook, Joseph has eaten more great pizza than most. His first clam pie was at Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana in New Haven, Connecticut, not far from where he was raised. His family always ordered this restaurant's signature pizza with bacon. Years later, after moving to Seattle and craving the pie of his boyhood, Joseph decided to replicate it at home. But, there was a slight problem. That pizza he grew up eating was cooked at a whopping 800 degrees.

“Eventually I figured out how to disable the lock on my oven door, so I could heat the oven to self-clean to attain the perfect crust,” says Joseph.

Do not try this at home, kids!

After perfecting his clam and bacon pie, he entered it in his family’s annual pizza competition where the men cooked and the women judged.

“In my note to the judges prior to the cook-off, I told them to expect the perfect brittle crust, gold and occasionally blistered black, yet with a profound resilience in every bite. The pizza stone has never been scraped, so the underside of my pizza is specked with burned grains of semolina, perhaps blotched by an olive oil spill where another pizza has leaked, all of which give my mottled oval a kind of reckless sex appeal that no tidy pie could ever match. My clam pizza was unanimously voted the winner.”

Our pizza recipe contest judges were blown away too, earning Joseph a free pie every week for a year. He says his friends and family are looking forward to lots of pizza parties.

Now, we’re letting you be the judge. Through October 1, order up the Keep Clam Primo and let us know what you think on Facebook!