Push and Pull of Hawaiian Pizza Dough

Companies started to bring in Pizza as a must have on their menus for the growing demand from kids to adults wanting it. In 1955, the Woolworth's at Hotel and Fort streets ran an advertisement. Italian pizza pie sold for Seventy-nine cents for cheap-convenience, not a restaurant price, so it was affordable. This is when popularization happened with the mainland chains coming up and the local pizzerias stepping up their game to fight against them. Sacramento-based chain Shakey's (1964) by Sherwood Johnson and Ed Plummer was one such operation that opened in Hawaiʻi (Waimalu, Kaneohe, Waipahu, Keeaumoku, Pearlridge). 

Around this time people Disco was Dead (1979) disenfranchised people from trying Hawaii's pizza and for a more fast-food recognizable option. It added to the fuel of people not liking Pineapple Pizza with ham, spam, and toppings that forgot about the crust. A particular topping that took away people's attention for a bit was Ontario-style "Hawaiian pizza" (1962) made from a Greek immigrant named Sam Panopoulos. Locals at this time didn't treat it like some sacred political debate, but just an option of ham and pineapple on a pie as just another sweet-and-savory option on a menu. While it would explode as an argument much later in the internet era, the attention of people would go back to the basics of the crust. While the rest of the world was thinking of the topping as a Hawaiian Pizza, people in Hawaii were looking at the dough to be the foundation of a Hawaiian Pizza.

People grew up watching the dough being tossed. Children would see a man who used to throw flour against the glass to make the kids jump named  Mr. Naipo. They would remember the visual performance of him throwing the dough into the air for each pizza being stretched out, one by one. This was when people were into that super crispy pizza crust, nothing abnormal for the time, so people grew up with this sort of mainland style pizza that led people into a large interest into California style Pizzas, which was perfect for California Pizza Kitchen (1987) who had opened its first location in Kāhala Mall. It was actually the very first CPK location to open outside of California, BBQ chicken pizza. California started to actually claim their dough to be California-style, a movement behind that sort of taste was making the round, people saw California-cuisine had owned this particular style that Hawaii had been eating for years.

After awhile people saw the crispiness as a California thing, people wanted something more local, people started to look for something that was already there. Hawaii and California had the same sort of crust, so eventually Hawaii Pizzerias looked for a way to differentiate themselves. There was a sort of identity crisis with the pizza, people who grew up with it, thought that Hawaii always had their own pizza style with the dough as well as the toppings. But as people found out it didn't people were at that point looking for something that didn't really change much, since its introduction, until a particular business owner brought what was known as Boston-style pizza to the table. 

So, as far as making the dough, it's about taking care of the dough and making sure that it has the environment necessary, but it's also about the taste of the water. Hawaii in particular had some really amazing dough because of the water, but at some point the water started tasting all the same, so that element of it was taken away from the customer and they noticed. The water would work with the yeast in a sort of magic and start to activate it over time. The yeast is something that makes the dough rise and there is a sort of science to it, it is almost like a pet too, because it bubbles and shows you that the dough is very much alive. The people who make pizza will have to decide between an active dry yeast or instant yeast and find a place to get that yeast.

Cane Sugar, White Sugar, Brown Sugar, are a few of the choices to give further flavor to the dough and allows it to strengthen.

Olive Oil, it is an important step that is often taken for granted in making a pizza. 

The shear size made people turn their heads at first, a massive, 19-inch, three-pound East Coast style pies. This was where Mike Bianchi would open Boston’s North End Pizza in Kailua (1994) and then Shawn Rubert who ran the Kaimukī (1995) location would evolve the toppings with his staff into Local flavors unseen before. It would be characterized with similarities to a New York style pie, some aspects of a Boston style pie, but it was different and Local. A thick, sturdy crust, a heavy-handed layer of garlic and sauce, and a cheese pull that meant business. And that's what thirty years of California crust had left people hungry for, a bigger pizza, a more filling pizza, a pizza for the right price. Not a gourmet pizza that was perceived as a better pizza, but a pizza that was from Hawaii. 

"A true Boston-style pizza dough is heavier, denser, yeasty, fermented. In Hawaii, its stretched out and less sturdy, it has a bread-like outer rim, foldable like New York, more fermented from the humidity, but not quite bostonian enough for me." -Longtime Bostonian Customer

Eventually people dropped the idea that a Pizza place needed salads as it was mainly a to go eatery. People dropped the idea of fried chicken with specialty shops popping up like Kentucky Fried Chicken and Popeyes. And even the famous submarine sandwiches due to competitors of Subway and Blimpies. For families hauling boxes up the ridge into Makakilo, or kids back from their way from school, Boston’s provided a distinct, garlic-heavy taste, that was something that was not that crispiness that was at all the other places. Boston's was going against the well established and at this point historical corporate California-style wave. And the more people compared them, the clearer it got that what was coming out of those ovens wasn't New York's, wasn't California's, and wasn't quite Massachusetts' either, but a Hawaiian Pie.