St. Mary Magdalen Students Visit Award-Winning Pizza Restaurant

The eighth-graders in Samantha Nickrent's afterschool Cooking Class recently celebrated the end of the semester with a field trip to restaurant in Brentwood.

The cooking class is part of 's Extended Learning Program.  Students meet after school and learn basic cooking, food safety and table etiquette skills.

Recently named the by Patch readers, the restaurant, owned and operated by the Friedrichs family, hosted ten eighth-graders for an afternoon of hands-on pizza fun and knowledge.  The students created a batch of pizza dough from scratch and then used already proofed dough to create their personal pizzas.

Brothers Curt and Casey Friedrichs led the tour of the kitchen and explained to the students everything that's involved in running a restaurant and having a food-service career.  They demonstrated the proper technique for turning a dough ball into a perfect pizza crust.

The students then topped their crusts with their individual favorites and tossed them, from a pizza 'peel,'  into the 900° oven.  Two minutes later they were rewarded with a perfectly baked, custom pizza.

Samantha Rainwater at Saint Mary Magdalen Catholic School supplied this information.