The Stroy of Brown Dog Pizza - Telluride, Colorado

Pacific Street Pizza opened June 2001. After establishing our Pizza in the Town of Telluride and feeding many satisfied customers we moved to Main Street in 2004. Brown Dog Pizza is named after the owners' chocolate labrador retrievers, Phlounder (went to doggie heaven in 2007) and Boone (10 years old).

Brown Dog Pizza offers Classic American (round), thin-crust pizza, Detroit Square Pizza and Gluten Free Pizza. In addition, an array of hot & cold subs, burgers, chicken wings, salads, pastas/entrees, along with various daily specials.

Brown Dog is located at 110 East Colorado Ave. in the Historic Nunn Building. The building is over 100 years old and has housed several successful business, including L.L Nunn whom opened the world's first commercial-grade alternating-current power plant, . Brown Dog Pizza's atmosphere is family friendly with 10 HDTVs for your sporting enjoyment.

In 2010, owner, Jeff Smokevitch attended the International School of Pizza and has since assisted Tony in 5 more classes at the school. He studied with legendary Pizzaioli and Master Instructor, Tony Geminani. He learned that combining the best quality ingredients along with attention to detail makes the best pizzas. Brown Dog's new crust can be described as crispy, airy, chewy and golden brown. Also we now use the biga and poolish indirect methods for making dough. Brown Dog blends 4 unique flours and cold ferments its dough for up to 72 hours before creating your made to order pizza.

In the fall of 2010, Tony asked Jeff to be on the World Pizza Champions team. (worldpizzachampions.net.) The World Pizza Champions are the number pizza team in the world. Jeff will compete in baking competitions around the world. In his first competition in Las Vegas at the World Pizza Games, Jeff entered the Detroit Square and earned the sixth best score in the first round out of 65 competitors. On September 9, 2011 Brown Dog Pizza placed 2nd at the American Pizza Championships in Orlando, Florida. Cloverleaf Pizza in Detroit Michigan (home to the first and original Detroit Style Pizza) placed 3rd. "We are very proud of our second place finish" stated Smokevitch but our goal is to "JUST WIN". The next pizza competition is set for January 29, 2012 in Columbus, Ohio. Then the World Championships in Las Vegas on March 13, 2012

Come to Brown Dog Pizza and try our award winning Detroit Square Pizza. Our regular customers love the new addition to our menu; The pizza is made with a sweet tomato sauce, blended Wisconsin brick cheeses and your choice of toppings. It is baked at 525 degrees to perfection in a seasoned square pan made at a steel plant in Detroit, MI. Small (4 pieces) and Large (8 pieces).

Detroit-Style Pizza: An American Institution Since 1946

Nineteen forty-six. U.S. troops returned in droves, victorious from World War II. Industrial plants resumed manufacturing automobiles after devoting lines to M5 tanks, jeeps, and B-24 bombers to support America's war effort. Detroit was classic Americana in an era when laundry was still hung on wooden porch railings, children played stickball on brick-lined streets, and American ingenuity and patriotism were at all-time highs. It was the year Gus Guerra proved that Cadillacs and Fords weren't the only innovations to roll out of Detroit when, on the corner of Conant and Six Mile, he crafted the world's first Detroit-style pizza.

When many returning soldiers brought newfound tastes for European recipes to the United States, most restaurants answered by serving fish 'n chips. But at Buddy's Rendezvous, a Prohibition-era speakeasy (or “blind pig,” in Detroit-speak) that he had turned into a legitimate business, Gus Guerra recognized the soldiers' flair for cultural dishes for what it was: a hunger for something new and different. Thus, he was inspired to create a new type of pizza pie. He enlisted his wife, Anna, to prepare a special pizza dough borrowed from the recipes of her mother's Sicilian homeland. He lined the dough with a layer of pepperoni, a heaping layer of cheese, and topped it off with a thick drizzle of red sauce. The original and authentic Detroit-style pizza was born.

Gus Guerra's gamble paid off as Detroit-style pizza quickly became a favorite neighborhood treat shared between friends and families enjoying moments of future nostalgia – a longtime staple of Detroit's best cuisine. Today, dozens of pizzerias in Detroit and beyond continue to serve authentic Detroit-style pizza, a true slice of Americana.

Dare To Be Square

So, what makes Detroit-style pizza so unique?

It's Square! One of the first things pizza lovers notice is that Detroit-style pizza is square in shape. This is because in true Motor City fashion, authentic Detroit-style pizza is baked in square, blue steel automotive parts pans. Traditionally, deck ovens are used for baking.

It's Upside-Down! Detroit-style pizza is often referred to as “upside-down pizza” or “red top pizza” because of the way its prepared:

1. Start with a thick, chewy Sicilian crust

2. Line the crust with a layer of pepperoni

3. Mound plenty of cheese on top (traditionally brick and mozzarella) all the way to the edge

4. Heap any extra toppings on the cheese

5. Drizzle on a thick layer of signature red sauce that trickles through the bubbling cheese

Fantastic flavor! One bite of the true, authentic Detroit-style pizza says it all: its like nothing you've ever tasted before. The crispy-outside, chewy-inside crust lends a one-of-a-kind, mouthwatering consistency and the flavor is the reason why thousands have demanded Detroit-style pizza nationwide!

Spread The Revolution!

Thanks to customer demand, Detroit-style pizza is making waves across the United States. Historically, Detroit-style pizza hasn't received the fanfare that New York and Chicago enjoy, but that's rapidly changing as more pizzerias coast-to-coast feature authentic Detroit-style pizza.

Spread the revolution! As you savor each chewy, cheesy, scintillating slice, think of how you'll help tell the world about Detroit-style pizza. Tell your friends, tell your family, share it on Facebook, or shout it out with a Tweet! Detroit-style pizza is here to stay – every savory bite!

Learn more and join the revolution at DetroitStylePizza.com.

HISTORY OF DETROIT SQUARE PIZZA

Detroit's old-school pizza: It's hip to be square

BYLINE:SYLVIA RECTOR
SECTION: ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. 10Z
LENGTH: 763 words

It was 1946, and Gus Guerra was looking for a way to squeeze a little more profit out of the bar he had bought on Conant in Detroit two years earlier. Selling food looked like the way to go.

"Everybody else was doing fish and chips because the boys were coming back from the war, and that was very popular. But Dad didn't want to do what everybody else was doing. He thought he would try something a little different," his son, Jack Guerra, recalled last week at the family's Cloverleaf Bar & Restaurant in Eastpointe.

"So my grandmother -- she was from Sicily -- put together a recipe for dough, and she showed my dad how to make it," he said.

Baked under toppings of cheese and tomato sauce, it was pizza -- virtually unknown here at the time. The only other place making it, called Vesuvio's, did a round version.

But at Gus' place, Buddy's Rendezvous, they made it square. And that was the birth of what has become Detroit's signature pie: square, thick-crusted, topped first with a layer of cheese and then with restrained amounts of tomato sauce.

From there, the history of Detroit's old-school pizza reads like a series of biblical begats, as versions of the pies spread from one place to two more and to many, many others from there.

Here's a short version of the story, pieced together from Jack Guerra; his sister and bar co-owner, Marie Guerra Easterby; bar general manager Carol Corrie, and Louis Tourtois, son of longtime pizza-maker Louis Tourtois the elder.

After Gus Guerra and his wife, Anna, had a dispute over money with their business partner, Anna's uncle Gaspar Genco, they sold Buddy's Rendezvous in 1953 and went out on their own, promising new owners Jimmy Valenti and Jimmy Bonacorsi they wouldn't open a competing place within 2 miles.

They went across town to East Detroit and bought a little corner bar called the Cloverleaf. Genco opened a place in Warren on Van Dyke, which he called Sorrento. Both places started making the square pizzas.

Back at Buddy's Rendezvous -- changed to plain Buddy's -- the original pizza maker taught the elder Louis Tourtois, Valenti's nephew, to make the pizzas. Tourtois worked there 27 years "and perfected the pizza" and won a major pizza contest, says his son, also named Louis.

Then, according to the Buddy's Web site, "William (Billy) and Shirlee Jacobs visited Buddy's, fell in love with it and ... bought it."

The elder Tourtois and the Jacobses couldn't work things out between them, says his son, "so he went to Shield's, a corner bar with a fish fry on Friday nights. He took over the kitchen and put pizza in." Seven years later, the owner sold it, and Tourtois was out. He didn't leave the recipe with Shield's, but the workers knew generally how to make it, the son said.

Today, square thick-crust pizzas remain a signature item at Shield's, now with new owners and six locations.

The elder Tourtois then bought a place on Dequindre in Hazel Park that he named Loui's Pizza. At age 77, he still comes in to help his son run the place. And pizza aficionados still line up out the door for a fix of the thick, cheesy pies.

Scores of other metro Detroit places make square pizzas, too. And while not all trace their roots directly to Gus Guerra's pies, there appears to be no real dispute that he began the Detroit-style pizza tradition.

Cloverleaf, at 24443 Gratiot, burned in 1993, but the family rebuilt it, complete with a great old-time atmosphere and scores of old photos and papers framed on the walls. Its thick, aromatic pies are magnificently rustic compared with the more polished versions at Buddy's and Shield's.

Shawn Randazzo, who operates Cloverleaf carryouts in Clinton Township and St. Clair Shores under an agreement with the Guerras, believes Detroit-style pizza can compete with the best anywhere.

On a whim, he entered the pizza-making competition at the North American Pizza and Ice Cream Show in Columbus, Ohio, and took first place. His Cloverleaf Meat Supreme Pizza -- the only pie of its type in the contest -- beat out 58 competitors from all over the United States and Canada.

Now, Randazzo, 33, of Roseville is on a mission to raise awareness of Detroit-style pizza and its history.

"I've started talking to people and gathering facts. ... I've always felt that you hear about Chicago-style and New York-style, but I don't think Detroit has gotten its recognition," he says.

(Cloverleaf Bar & Restaurant is at 24443 Gratiot, Eastpointe; 586-777-5391 and www.cloverleafonline.com)