Left: Bartender Hailey Appie mixes a drink.
#Benchmark pizza full
The Swanson’s have ongoing relationships with local farms like Riverdog, Full Belly, Dirty Girl, Blue Heron, and Billy Bob, as well as with local olive oil and beer producers.
Mains, sides, and salads emphasized local seasonal produce, which has been easy with the Kensington Farmers’ Market setting up right outside the door on Sundays. Kids got their own menu of basic pizzas and pasta dishes, while adults found more sophisticated fare, including classic pasta dishes and handmade meatballs with polenta and braised greens. When the couple opened the first Benchmark Pizzeria in 2011, their idea was for a neighborhood eatery that would welcome children. It was while working at Oliveto in 1999 that she met the chef she would marry and start a family with. Later, as a budding journalist, she trod the path of many freelance writers and waited tables. Melissa Swanson grew up in Berkeley, where as a child she became a fan of dining out. His first taste of a fresh fig suddenly made sense of the Fig Newton, and on learning to make mayonnaise, he remembers thinking: “It’s egg yolks and oil? I thought it came from a jar.” Moving to the Bay Area, Peter took a job at Lark Creek Inn, where he had his first epiphanies about fresh produce and hand crafting.
But the young chef persevered and found his rhythm in the camaraderie and fast-paced energy of the line at kitchens in Vail and Denver, Colorado. When the time came to choose a career, Peter wandered into a fine-dining kitchen, where one boss told him he was slow (and worse). His vegetarian stepfather didn’t want meat cooked in the kitchen, so his mom bought her son a grill so he could cook it outdoors. It was as a 12-year-old living in Kent City, Michigan, that Peter got his start in cooking. The pizza at the new location is nearly the same recipe, although in Oakland, for whatever reason, it requires 200 grams less water. “It was so awful we almost moved to Mexico.” I couldn’t stretch it, and it was falling apart like crazy,” Peter says. When he finally had a recipe he was happy with, they opened the original Benchmark, only to have their meticulously crafted dough completely fail the first two nights. He says he’s still using the original starter he created at home in El Cerrito before Benchmark opened and guesses he must have made hundreds of batches of dough through the process, taking copious notes, weighing everything to the gram, and recording the day’s heat and humidity, how long the dough rested, and every aspect of proofing and fermentation. Peter’s nerdiness takes on real cred when you understand he’s on the 45th iteration of his dough recipe. That pizza first came about when a server’s friend passed along an abundance of fresh sage to Peter, who invented a use for it.
It has a convenient “stay on” feature that keeps the oven on and eliminating start-up time for high volume locations. The multiple switch configuration allows for separate top / bottom heater control, enabling it to be used as a salamander, baker or oven.
These multi-function counter top ovens come with either a 12” x 3” or 16” x 3” opening.
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