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08/16/2005: "Pie in the sky"

(This Article Appeared in The Daily Pilot)
Six-time world champion pizza tosser performs at the county fair.
By Lindsay Sandham, The Daily Pilot

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie ... Teresa Acevedo was feeling the amore Sunday when she was lightly struck by a flying pizza at the Orange County Fair. The 5-year-old from Paramount giggled as the raw dough landed on her face, covering her with flour.

It was the work of Tony Gemignani, a six-time world pizza-throwing champion, who demonstrated his unique pizza-tossing style during four performances in front of Enzo's Pizzeria, which supplied Gemignani with the dough.

Although many fairgoers tried to cool off with ice cream and lemonade, pizza connoisseurs stopped to watch Gemignani juggle multiple doughs in time to such pizza-parlor tunes as "That's Amore." Like a basketball player, Gemignani twirled and tossed the doughy discs through his legs and behind him acrobatically before chucking them out to the audience.

The lucky audience members who caught the dough, like Teresa Acevedo, were asked to join Gemignani on stage. There they got a brief tutorial on pizza-tossing techniques and then competed against one another in a toss-off.

The winners, Teresa and 32-year-old Tim Quigley of Washington, D.C., shared a large pizza pie from Enzo's Pizzeria as their prize.

Dominic Palmieri, owner of Enzo's, said he first saw Gemignani at a pizza convention in Las Vegas five years ago and was impressed with his skills. He saw him again recently on the Tony Danza show, and had the idea to get Gemignani to perform at the fair.

Gemignani said he only does shows for pizzerias that make their own dough fresh everyday, like Enzo's. The dough must be fresh for tossing, he said, and it's good to triple the salt or add honey for elasticity.

"He puts out a great product," Gemignani said of Palmieri's pizza, adding that carnival pizzeria stands that make pies from scratch are a rarity.

Palmieri said the tricks Gemignani is able to do are the mark of a six-time world champion. But unlike Lance Armstrong, Gemignani said he doubts he will retire if he wins a seventh time.

Gemignani doesn't do much individual competing anymore -- in fact his last world-championship win was as part of a team performance.

"The big thing now is team acrobatics," Gemignani said. He works with acrobats from all over the country -- all pizzeria owners promoting their businesses.

Gemignani first started tossing dough about 15 years ago when he and his brother opened a pizzeria, named Pyzanos, in Castro Valley, Calif.

"I started doing tricks for the kids when they would come in the shop," he said. He competed for the first time in 1995 and has since made a name for himself with his agile pizza-tossing skills.

Gemignani has been featured on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Today Show, CNN and the Food Network, among others. He also teaches culinary workshops and hands-on pizza-tossing classes, and has worked with many celebrities, teaching them the art of dough-flipping. He even co-wrote the book on pizza, titled "Pizza," due out in September by Chronicle Books. The tome will contain 60 pizza recipes and a section on dough-tossing.

"Pizza to me is like pasta -- you can eat it every way," Gemignani said. "I used to eat it every day for probably 10 years. Now I probably eat it every other day. There's so many ways you can make it, you never really get sick of it."

Palmieri said he eats at least one slice every day.

"I call that quality control."