Happy Pizza Day from BFM and Four Star Pizza

Today is National Pizza day and I had the privilege of spending a couple of hours with Scott, who along with his wife Jamie, own 6 Four Star Pizza shops in North,South,East and West #Belfast as well as #Newtownabbey and #Carrick.

Scott told me that his love for Pizza grew from his various trips to the #USA where he learnt about pizza. He then came back to #NI and met Jamie and opened 1st store in East #Belfast in 1999 after working for another well known #Pizza chain. They've never looked back. They are both hands on and it's 7 days a week and long hours-they've about 150 staff!!

Four Star head office is in #Dublin and is owned by the #Fitzwilliam #hotel group. Running a pizza shop isn't cheap but I can say that each #oven is £25k and this shop has two. The pizzas and all other food takes 5 1/4 minutes to go through at 475oF. 

The big #USP is that Four Star have #doughologists. In Newtownabbey The doughologist is called Robyn and she is responsible for preparing fresh dough daily. They use strong wheat flour from Neill's, who are celebrating 150 years this year. Water and oil is mixed with salt, sugar and flour and then yeast and mixed for 15 minutes. The dough then proves for 48 hours before use. For #glutenfree there are rice flour bases.

All the other ingredients are freshly delivered by Musgrave so all ingredients are locally sourced and traceable. Scott was saying the menu changes four times a year and this year they are using a local relish Ballymaloe. 

I had the opportunity of making tonight's dinner!! I made a #pepperoni pizza (kids), a spicy #chicken on (for my wife) and a super hot #chorizo and #jalapeno pizza for me.....mmmmm

Finally Scott made me a "#flip" which is a thin base with sauce, #pulledpork, jalapeño and #sriracha and folded over and cooked-it is cheeseless. It tasted great!!!!

Big thanks to Scott and Jamie for arranging this. Also if you order online directly or call you will get better deals than if you use Just Eat. Scott and Jamie are also very good at helping local #charities.