Why Traditional Pizza Is One of the Most Nourishing Foods You Can Eat

FoodEducation

Feb 9

Happy National Pizza Day to everyone!

If there is one food that truly defines our family, and Modern Stone Age Kitchen, it’s pizza.

We love pizza so much that Friday Night Pizza Night is the only night we’re open for dinner. That’s not a gimmick. It’s a reflection of how deeply pizza aligns with who we are and what we do.

We love pizza for several reasons. It allows us to take one of the most familiar foods in the world and make it as nourishing as possible. It highlights traditional food-processing techniques - especially fermentation - that sit at the core of our work. And it serves as a blank slate, giving us endless opportunities for creativity.

Pizza may look simple, but when done right, it’s anything but.

Making the Familiar Nourishing (and Delicious)

Billy clearly very happy with the pizza ;-)

Pizza has always been a staple in our house. Years ago, it was a weekly delivery-night ritual until we made a decision that changed everything: we were going to start making everything from scratch.

The kids were not thrilled.

I officially replaced the pizza delivery guy, and the revolt was immediate. It didn’t matter that I had built a wood-fired oven in our backyard. It didn’t matter that I was making mozzarella myself using raw milk that was, let’s be honest, illegally transported from Pennsylvania.

To be fair, the kids had a point.

I had no idea how to manage a fire in a wood-fired oven, so the pizzas often came out burned. I didn’t understand cheese chemistry yet, so the mozzarella didn’t melt properly. At times it was so bad that Billy flat-out refused to eat it.

Imagine a kid refusing to eat pizza.
It must have been really bad.

That experience taught us a lesson we still live by today:

Replacing familiar foods with more nourishing versions only works if they still taste, smell, and look good.

Health alone isn’t enough. If no one wants to eat it, it doesn’t matter how nourishing it is.

Everything changed after training at the Italian Culinary Institute- training the entire family participated in. Add years of cheesemaking practice after working with David Asher, and suddenly the pieces clicked. We learned how to cook pizza properly. We learned how to make cheese that behaves like cheese. And eventually, we learned how to make pizza we truly believe in.

Learning to make wood fired pizza at the Italian Culinary Institute in 2017

Pizza that tastes incredible.
Pizza that looks right.
Pizza that people actually crave.

Today, it’s pizza we’re proud to serve and pizza that’s being recognized, including Best of Annapolis and the Eastern Shore, which was a great honor!

A Living Example of Traditional Food Processing

Historically, pizza emerged as a fermented, working-class food born in Naples long before modern industrial shortcuts. At its core, pizza is about transformation, which is exactly why it fits so perfectly with what we do.

Fermentation is the thread that runs through nearly every element of our pizza.

It starts with our wild, long-fermented sourdough crust, a multi-day bacterial fermentation that maximizes flavor, improves digestibility, enhances nutrition, and increases safety. Flour doesn’t magically become food, it has to be prepared.

Billy now makes pizza for us at the MSAK

The cheese is fermented too. We use local milk from Nice Farms, A2 milk, low-temperature vat pasteurized, and make cheese using traditional approaches that mirror our own natural digestion. We also make ricotta the traditional way, relying on the whey left over from cheesemaking to extract the whey proteins.

Our meats follow a nose-to-tail approach, transforming local Langenfelder Farm pigs into Italian sausage and pepperoni.

Nothing industrial.

Nothing anonymous.

And when vegetables make their way onto the pizza, they’re often lacto-fermented, adding acidity, complexity, and living cultures. And always as seasonal as possible!

Using asparagus and tomatoes from a local farm

Because pizza touches grains, dairy, meat, and vegetables all at once, it has become one of our most powerful teaching tools. From kids to adults, we use pizza as a foundation to teach essential ways of approaching food: how to prepare it properly, how to respect it, and how to make it nourishing without sacrificing joy.

Gunston 4-Day Class that has students make all the components of a pizza and then enjoy a pizza on the last class!

A Blank Slate for Creativity

Pizza is also where we get to play.

It provides a foundation for creativity, allowing us to work with seasonal ingredients, explore new ideas, and highlight ingredients or concepts we want to dive deeper into. That’s why our pizza specials change monthly, giving our team space to experiment and our customers something new to look forward to.

For our team, pizza is a creative outlet.
For our guests, it’s a familiar food made exciting again.

Few foods offer that combination.

Why Pizza Matters

Pizza is one of the most foundational foods in modern family life. It can be a celebration of real ingredients, traditional techniques, and shared meals or it can be a mass-produced, ultra-processed product made from mediocre ingredients that slowly undermines our health.

The difference isn’t pizza.
The difference is how it’s made.

For us, pizza represents possibility. It’s familiar, comforting, and joyful and when prepared with care, it becomes deeply nourishing too.

So today, we celebrate pizza in all its potential.

Happy National Pizza Day!

Dr. Bill Schindler

Dr. Bill Schindler, author of Eat Like a Human, is an anthropologist, chef, and global leader in ancestral foodways. As the Founder of the Food Lab and Executive Chef at Modern Stone Age Kitchen, he transforms ancient techniques into modern practices for nourishing, sustainable eating. Bill’s research and teaching empower people to reconnect with traditional diets and improve health through fermentation, nose-to-tail eating, and other transformative methods.

https://modernstoneage.com