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This week in Omnivorous I wrote about the Gruene Coal Company in Englewood, the last coal yard in Chicago. Gruene's only customers for their Kentucky bituminous coal are D'Amato's #1 Bakery and the best pizzeria in Chicago. The photo demonstrates just what coal can do for Italian bread. What you have on the bottom is a toasty, crusty loaf baked in Victor D'Amato's 100-something-year-old coal-fueled oven. On top is a softer, more elastic loaf baked at the other D'Amato's, operated by his brother a few blocks west on Grand.
I've always liked the bread from both bakeries, but it wasn't until I did a side-by-side comparison that I had to give an edge--no, a furlong--to the coal-baked bread.
Coal: D'Amato's #1, 1124 W. Grand, 312-733-5456
No coal: D'Amato's Bakery and Deli, 1332 W. Grand, 312-733-6219
the sauce is at best adequate , blending mid quality canned roma with paste, over herbed to where the the taste is reminiscent of the era of prego consumerism. as for the cheese , it is hard to call those terse wads of lackluster milk fat mozzerella, the olive oil, whose colour is that of soured chicago rain water, has no depth , no intrigue or length. though you are right , the bread is quite tasty with bite, proper tear from good yeast cultivation, and a nose redolent of char. it is by no means nepoletana. i quite like the establishment and the people who work there, but i humbly suggest that the reader be more aware of your culinary vocation, many read its uneducated voice like the bible
D'Amato's bakes their pizza as sort of a giant flatbread, using their base Italian bread dough (which, I was informed, is the dough used for all their breads, excepting the whole wheat, and their sourdough. Mmm, their sourdough...)
Ahem, where was I? Yes, they bake fresh pizza all day, full sheet pans with the base dough, a nice tomato sauce with Italian herbs, some small-curd scattered mozzarella (not thick and cloying cheese like many American-style pizzas), and you can get squares of it either plain cheese, with sausage or with pepperoni (both meats are quite tasty). I heartily recommend getting "edge" or corner squares that have a nice bit of coal-fired tomato sauce "char" on the edges. Really a nice taste dimension you don't get with the center squares.
Anyhoo, not your typical corner pizza, but it will grow on you quickly.
BTW: the sourdough isn't very sour, but for country loaf crustiness, great chewy crumb, and rustic goodness, they're the best artisan loaf of bread in Chicago. 1 lb, 2 lb boules, or a long baguette. Get em at 7 am, when they're still cooling from the oven. Yow.