Leaning Ladder Olive Oil, located next to Vincenzo's and Foxtale Bookshoppe downtown, is an artisan olive oil and culinary shop. Susan always had a passion for cooking and opened Leaning Ladder in 2013. In 2020, they opened their 1000-square-foot cooking studio.
Leaning Ladder holds several cooking classes every month, taught by experienced chefs. In August, they had a class all about how to make Neopalitan-style pizza, from prepping the ingredients and making the dough to launching into the pizza oven to knowing signs of doneness to look for and tips for removing pizzas from an 800°+ degree oven. And, of course, the class always gets to taste the fruits of their labor.
The class was taught by the enthusiastic and charismatic Chef Morris, who runs the local Atlanta pizza joint Ghost Pizza. In 2012, Morris started his journey as a chef when he worked as a line cook for Chef Matt Wallace at Graft, a farm-to-table restaurant in Grayson, Georgia. The desire to become a chef began to take shape. Morris keeps up his culinary adventures, mainly in Atlanta, Georgia, where he works as a caterer for the Frog Hollow catering team during the PGA Masters Tournament and at restaurants including Hi Life, Noble Fin, Iberian Pig, Bar Mercado, and GunShow. Morris started his entrepreneurial career in 2020 by starting a meal prep business, which later developed into HD Prep, one of Atlanta's best pop-up restaurants. HD Prep is now Ghost Pizza, where Chef Morris and his team craft beer-infused Neopalitan-style pizzas.
There is an acute art to pizza preparation. The work surface and pizza peel must be adequately floured. The dough needs to be consistent and have no holes. The toppings must be substantial but not too much so as to avoid weighing down the pizza. After the satisfying quick slide of the dough onto the peel, the dough gets "launched" into the blazing hot pizza oven. Chef Morris advised the class to look for "leoparding", which are small dark spots that appear on the pizza after a couple of minutes in the oven. That's a sign it's time to turn. Chef Morris demonstrated what to look for in a fully cooked pizza by removing it from the oven and lifting it slightly. If it bended, it needed to go back in the oven. If it was stiff, it was done.
Leaning Ladder hosts other classes on subjects such as how to make meatballs, green curry, and croissants, to name a few. Go to leaningladderoliveoil.com to sign up for a class, and follow them @leaningladder on Instagram.
Find Ghost Pizza and Chef Morris at ghostpizzaatl.com and @ghostpizzaatl on Instagram.
There is an acute art to pizza preparation.