Alpine Bakery - Roswell Georgia

Alpine Bakery is probably known more for their cakes and bakery than their pizza. Their cakes are truly amazing. Just imagine red velvet cake about a foot and a half high by a foot in diameter. The apple strudel is also amazing, their cookies even better. All good stuff. Back on task (Pizza).

As the owners of Alpine are displaced New Yorkers and wanting to bring NY pizza to Roswell they opened a pizza section of the bakery a number of years back. Their reasoning as told to us was "who better to make dough than bakers"? Seems logical enough. Karyn (head of research and wife) and I tried it when they first opened but that was before Pizza Enthusiast was added as a title to my resume. We were in the area this weekend and thought let's swing by there and try it again as what has now become our weekend pizza hunt.

As with many NY pizza places the pizza maker at Alpine is out in the open for the world to see and of course I took a front row seat in observing the preparation. I asked if the pizza maker minded first (something you would not do in NY) as imagine some random person showing up at your work and watching your every move. Not exactly what you want on any given day. In this case we ordered one large cheese and one large white. The price was right $14 for a large 18" pizza.

Everything looked good during preparation. The dough, the sauce and the cheese all prepared and allocated in what appeared like the right proportions. Everything looked great until the end of the process. The pizza stayed on a metal tray when it went into the oven. Instead of sitting on the oven bed to ensure the right amount of char and crunch, the pizza sat on this metal air hole tray. This isn't the only pizza place to do this in Atlanta. I have started to notice this more and more. In NY the pizza goes right from wooden holder right into the oven. Why the tray I have no clue? I hope its not to keep the oven clean. That would be the WRONG answer.

Well the pizzas came out of the oven piping hot. Of course Karyn and I had to try a piece and since there is no seating and its take out only we stepped outside and ate in on the bench.

I risked burning the roof of my mouth as I needed my pizza fix. The sauce and cheese both good and a good amount of dripping oil. The crust as was to be expected wasn't right. It wasn't charred or crunchy enough.

All in all though a pretty good piece of Pizza. Karyn thinks its the best of the ones we tried so far. Maybe so...it was pretty good, the crust still the issue as is the case with so many pizza places in Atlanta. The consolation prize is the bakery next door. It really is the real deal and anything wrong with the pizza could be made better by a perfectly made black and white cookie. Not an even consolation prize but it does help.

Definitely worth trying the pizza. The bakery is truly amazing (and packed all the time). Enjoy.