Bella Nashville Pizzeria at the Nashville Farmer’s Market Gets it Right

Located at the Nashville Farmer’s Market, Bella Nashville Pizzeria is  little hike for me, but may explain why I’ve been spotted there twice in the last month.

Bella Nashville Pizzeria, we love you. It’s not a fluke. It’s not a dream. We have found a pizza place we adore! It’s not just the wood burning oven that makes this pizza so worthy. It’s the toppings, too.

Bella Nashville Pizzeria’s tag line is “local, traditional, wood-fired pizza.” They mean this. They seek out local ingredients, but they go a step further. They know how to put flavors together, like broccoli rabe with homemade sausage or the beet and bacon.

I’ve written before about our pizza dough passion and how seriously we take it. I’ve made my own dough many times and we’ve worked out a way to get that nearly wood burning fired oven pizza texture at home. We know the trials of snapping the balance of chew and crunch. An all crispy pizza crust is simply a cracker. A thick chewy only pizza crust is doughy and a failure.  But a just right pizza dough is crispy and chewy at the same time and light enough to be able to walk away after eating one of these pizzas and heading next door to the Sweet Stash for a cupcake.

But start first with a housemade lemon or orange soda or a refreshing herbal ice tea. I’m not one to drink soft drinks, but I make exception for their orange soda.

We were thrilled to see broccoli rabe as a topping. I went with broccoli rabe and an egg baked right on the pizza. Mr. St. skipped the egg and went with homemade sausage. Either combination was amazing. Not one bite was left.

 

Once toppings are on, the pizza goes into a 900 degree oven and is done in a few minutes, just the way they do it in a traditional wood burning oven in Italy. We watched them bake the pizza in mere minutes in their wood burning brick oven. I’ve seen a lot of places try hard to get the temperature and control right on these type of ovens and it’s not always easy. If not balanced correctly, the pizza can turn into a cracker. Bella Nashville Pizzeria have found a way to get it right! The pizza dough comes out crispy enough, chewy enough, charred a bit on the edges and light enough to eat the whole pizza without feeling overly full.

The beet and bacon pizza will awaken anyone’s taste buds. The salty crispy bacon against the sweet of the beets is amazing.

The kids pizzas are almost as large as the regular and I can tell you that kids are the best critics. They ate all of their pizza and I almost just bought one to share and that would have been a mistake.

They also sell homemade bread. We purchased the sour dough, and while it was a little heavy, it had body and flavor.

The back side of their menu tells you a lot about their ingredients and culinary viewpoint. We love this!

Bella Nashville is open every day except Monday. I know we’ll be back many times. Comparing Bella Nashville pizza to the pizza we ate all over Italy, it’s authentic. It’s delicious. It’s worth a trip to the Nashville Farmer’s Market, even if you live in Franklin.