Rhode Island bakery turns pizza into art with elaborate creations
JOHNSTON, R.I. – D. Palmieri's Bakery in Rhode Island is offering up pizza that's unlike anything you've ordered before.
D. Palmieri's Bakery in Rhode Island
The Johnston bakery has been a place for families to go to for generations.
"So this establishment has been open since 1971, my grandfather opened it originally. But my family goes back to bakeries in Rhode Island to 1903, 1905. Somewhere around the turn of the century," Eric Palmieri said.
Eric Palmieri is trying something new with pizza art, even though he said it wasn't easy to convince his father to let him do it at first.
It started on July 4th nine years ago when Eric made an American flag out of pizza toppings.
"Some pepperoni stripes, some olive stars. It wasn't a huge time commitment. It made a lot of sense ecomomically to do it and people loved it for their parties," he said.
New England Patriots pizza
After Eric made a version of the New England Patriots logo as pizza art, his phone blew up.
"People started calling me and asking me, 'Can you make this, can you make that?' So then I really started pushing the boundaries of what I could do with it," Eric said.
Eric's pizza art has included an edible Garfield and Hulk Hogan. He's made Freddie Mercury from Queen and Lucky from the Celtics.
"If I'm doing Chewbacca, how do I create the effect of that long, stringy fur? Well I could take breaded eggplant and it creates the effect perfectly," Eric said.
Pizza art live streams
Eric is also doing live streams to share the pizza art magic.
"It's been the most fun aspect of anything that I have done with pizza art so far. Doing the live stream enables me to connect with people," said.
Eric is aiming to change the pizza game. Instead of going traditional for a birthday or anniversary, he wants you to think about ordering a "pizza cake."
"There's really no better feeling than making a Hulk pizza or an Ironman pizza for a 10-year-old's birthday party and the parents sending me the picture of them standing with the pizza and a smile on their face. You can't beat that," he said.