What You Didn't Know About Blaze Pizza's Head Chef

One of the most interesting brands in the pizza space, Blaze Pizza, believes in showing extra commitment to its customers and the environment. It does this by focusing on things like sourcing real ingredients, avoiding harmful additives, using eco-friendly options to pack pizza and never compromising on quality. In fact, as the brand's website explains, Blaze Pizza takes its stuff pretty seriously. A description reads, "Our oven dome temperature can reach upward of 900F, while the floor temperature typically ranges from 600F to 800F. It's skilled work — and each pizzasmith manning our ovens is specially trained in how to properly rotate pizzas through these different heat zones." Phew. It just got really hot in here!

Blaze Pizza is headed by its extremely skilled chef, Bradford 'Brad' Kent. According to Entrepreneur, Kent is a talented genius who's been in the industry for a long time, decoding food and specifically, pizzas. He is a graduate from the renowned Culinary Institute of America and has spent several years studying pizza through experiments and by reading books on mastering the art of baking the perfect pizza. What really helps his process is that he's a self-aware perfectionist, who doesn't believe in compromising. He said, "I am a bulldog when it comes to ingredients." He gave an example: when Blaze Pizza first began its journey, he had to convince others to stick to extra-virgin olive oil and tell them that it was a worthwhile investment that would really add to the quality of their food.

Kent has an undying love for food. A passion that began when he was a kid, has inspired him to thrive as a chef in adulthood. In fact, he's quite qualified to come up with wholesome dishes on account of the fact that he studied food science and nutrition (via Zagat). Plus, he's highly experienced and has held down several gigs as a chef and has also worked with grocery giant Trader Joe's. 

He has also worked hard on his pizza eatery, Olio Pizzeria, coupled with preparing an extra special dough for his customers: a magical invention that is just the right blend of chewy and crispy. Commenting on his dough, the expert chef told Zagat, "We use some French techniques in mixing. We blend the flours together, which emulates French flour more than Italian. That's where we get the flavor, the fermentation...and a lot of that love." Clearly, when you're at Blaze Pizza and you know Kent's around, you can be certain that you're in safe hands.