United States Pizza Team

The United States Pizza Team is the national competitive team for American pizza makers. Founded in 2000 alongside PMQ Pizza Magazine, it sends working chefs and operators — not hobbyists — into culinary and skills competitions across the country, and to the World Pizza Championship in Parma, Italy, where American competitors go up against the countries that invented the craft. Membership is earned rather than bought. Applicants have to work in the pizza industry, and they arrive either recommended by a current member or carrying a win from a recognized competition. Applications go to a vote at the team's monthly council meeting. Members re-certify every year and hold their place by competing — showing up to an event counts for less than placing in one. More than fifty people carry membership at any given time, and across two and a half decades the team has taken hundreds of medals in culinary and acrobatic categories. What they are judged on is worth understanding, because it is the same thing a good oven is judged on. Culinary divisions score taste and bake above all else. Skills divisions put competitors on the clock for stretching, speed and consistency under pressure — the largest stretch from a 500-gram dough ball, five dough balls opened as fast as hands allow, freestyle acrobatics scored on difficulty and control. These are people who can tell you, from one bite, what a floor ten degrees too cool did to the bottom of a crust. Festa Pizza Co. is an official sponsor of the United States Pizza Team. The Festa Oven was built around dual-zone heat and an automatically rotating stone because bake consistency is the hardest thing to get right outside a professional kitchen — and consistency of bake is precisely what the team's judges score. Backing them puts the oven in front of people who hold it to that standard, and keeps Festa honest about what it has to deliver.