Search the internet for a list of “top U.S. pizza chefs,” and you’ll find names familiar to most people who love a primo pie. Anthony Mangieri (New York) pops up. So does Tony Gemignani (San Francisco, Rohnert Park, and Nevada). Chris Bianco (Phoenix and Los Angeles), Massimo Laveglia and Nick Baglivo (New York), and man after man after flour-dusted, tomato-stained man.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. There’s no question that these celebrity-tossed pizzas are excellent. Yet there’s something happening in Sonoma County that’s slicing a new piece of the pie. Our fiery ovens are being tended by more women, more LGBTQ+ folks, and more traditionally underrepresented chefs making magnificent pizzas.
Consider the diversity in our top local kitchens, with new, notable chefs including Leah Scurto of PizzaLeah in Windsor; Michele Querin of Gabacool Provisions (which pops up weekly at local breweries); Leith Leiser-Miller of Psychic Pie in Sebastopol; and Dany Cleland of Slow Co. Pizza in Cotati, who identifies as nonbinary.
Individually, the group has stacked up awards, won scholarships at acclaimed pizza academies, and founded a new educational program for other female pizzaiolas (the Italian title for a trained pizza maker). And they’re working together to support each other in the largely male-dominated industry, where according to a November 2024 statistic in Total Food Service industry tracker, of the more than 774,000 pizza makers currently employed in the United States, 39.8% are women, while 60.2% are men…