Bear Country Pizza and Pastry, Chittenango

Follow Route 5 through Fayetteville, travel a few miles past Green Lakes, in to Madison County, and you’ll come to Bear Country Pizza & Pastry on Chittenango’s western edge (it’s “Bear Country” because that’s the Chittenango school mascot). There is minimal seating. When I visited on a Saturday evening, very few baked goods were displayed. I took home a medium supreme (your choice of 5 toppings), with sausage, mushrooms, olives, onions, and green peppers. At $15.99 for 14″, it was just a little more expensive than average. Crust thickness was about 1/4″.

Bear Country uses a large conveyor oven, with pizza baked on a screen. I think it is a little more common for conveyor baking to be done in a pan, which essentialy fries the dough in a little oil. So, you might think that using a screen in a conveyor oven would make for a crispier, drier crust because moisture could escape, but not so in this case. As you can see in the photos, the crust appears well-browned and looks good. However, when biting into it, I found little or no crispiness, and dough that flattened and squished into “goo” when pinched. “Poofy” is another word that comes to mind. I’m no oven expert, but I’m going out on a limb to guess that moisture from the gas heat prevents a good, hard crisping of the crust. On the other hand, stone-lined ovens that heat the dough by contact tend to provide crispier crusts. Aside from the oven and crispiness questions, I’d say that the crust on this pizza generally lacked personality, which is likely a function of the flour and how the dough was fermented.

Now that I’ve gotten my gripes out of the way, it is smooth sailing from here on out! The sauce was nearly perfect, with an excellent, slightly chunky texture (some bits of tomato peel were visible), mild spice load (with visible spice flakes and garlic chunks), and excellent fresh tomato taste that was slightly acidic and not salty. Also, it did not soak in to the crust or cheese. As I said, it was nearly perfect sauce! The cheese was excellent as well: soft, white, not oily, not browned, and not salty. Toppings were fresh and tasted great. While I would have liked a little more of some of the toppings, a five-topping pizza can get pretty soggy if you overdo the toppings.

All things considered, the quality of the sauce, cheese and toppings helps make up for the poofy, bland crust. I have no doubt that if you put this sauce, cheese and toppings on a better crust, you’d have a legitimate contender for a 4.75 or 5 slice rating! So, although it isn’t as good as it could have been, it was still a very tasty pizza, and the Pizza Geek gives it a rating of 4 out of 5 slices.

Summary – Pros: top-notch sauce, cheese and toppings. Cons: soft, poofy, bland crust.

What do YOU think? Have you tried Bear Country Pizza? Click the comment link below and tell us about it!

Crust: ***
Sauce: *****
Cheese: *****
Toppings: *****
Bang/Buck: ***
Overall:

Roma Pizzeria, Chittenango

Long before I started this pizza review blog, I was a frequent customer of Roma Pizzeria in Chittenango. It was close to home and reasonably good. Still, I knew there must be something better, and the search that is this blog was born. I haven’t had pizza from Roma in over a year, so I figured it was time to go back and compare it to the dozens of pizza restaurants I’ve reviewed since then. (I also have a sentimental attachment to the name “Roma,” because the very first pizza I ever had came from the now-defunct Roma in Ithaca, about 40 years ago!)

Like many pizza restaurant locations, this one has seen some “churn” over the years. I first remember Roma Pizzeria, then a new owner with Little Jack’s Pizza Shack, then a truck mishap where a raised dump truck hit power lines outside the restaurant, sending a high voltage surge into the restaurant, causing a fire and much equipment damage. If I recall correctly, the insurance settlement was delayed and the owner at that time couldn’t survive the delay while waiting for the money to finish rebuilding. Eventually it was sold again, and reopened as the Roma Pizzeria we have today. (If anyone has a better memory of the timeline, please post more info in the comments section.) There is a large dining area, and delivery is available.

I bought a 16″ large with peppers, onions and mushrooms ($16.25 plus tax), and brought it home. It was actually a more photogenic pizza that usual. But looks can be deceiving. I was expecting a relatively thin crust. However, this one averaged 1/2″ to 3/4″ thick, so I’ll call it a medium. It was well browned, but not at all crispy – actually rather poofy, leathery and soft, with a gummy layer under the cheese. And most unusual and unexpected, it was noticeably sweet. Not the subtle “sweetness” you get with a yeasty, well-risen and fermented bread or crust, but just plain old sugary sweet.  (Tasting tip: when you get to the crust edge, rip it open and lick the inside – what do you notice?  Salt?  Sweet?  Nothing in particular?)

The sauce was lightly applied compared to the thickness of the crust, and most of the moisture was absorbed, making it difficult to guage the taste of the sauce. A small amount of tomato solids and spice flakes were left behind. From what I could tell, the sauce was generally average, and not salty.  Now that I think of it, when I had this pizza before, I used to order it with extra sauce.  This is why.

One very happy thing for this pizza was the excellent cheese. It was nicely melted, without any trace of oil separation, browning or oranginess (click the picture to see it enlarged, in all its glory). And, it tasted good! The mushrooms and onions were fresh, but the peppers’ color and taste indicated they were either canned, or partially cooked before being placed on the pizza – not really a taste problem in this case, just more of an observation.

Overall, this pizza went out of balance with the sauce/crust ratio. It was thick, soft and rather dry. Either thinner crust or more sauce might fix that. Also, the amount of sugar in the crust was unusually high. Maybe the other pizza joints in town have thin, crispy crust, and they’re trying to distiguish themselves.  If it were up to me (and fortunately it isn’t!), a thinner, crispy crust and a little more sauce would make this a top-notch pizza. As it was presented, though, the Pizza Geek rates it 3 out of 5 slices.

Summary – Pros: excellent cheese, toppings. Cons: absorbed sauce; super-sweet and soft crust.

What do YOU think? Have you tried pizza from Roma in Chittenango? Do you know any of the history? Click the comment link below and tell us about it!

Crust: ***
Sauce: ***
Cheese: *****
Toppings: ****
Bang/Buck: ***
Overall:

Roma Pizzeria, 800 E. Genesee St., Chittenango – 687-7662