Serving on a street corner, this pizza joint has a pie with five pork toppings (get it)

Zach Johns was an insurance salesman when he built his backyard pizza oven. It was a lot of trial and error, half built from scratch and half built from a kit.

The oven was temperamental, but he learned how to stoke the temperature to get just the right char on the crust and speckles of blistering or “leoparding,” as he calls it.

It takes a lot of training to leap from backyard pizza baker to full-time pizza thrower. Johns found that training at the Pizza Expo in Las Vegas and the Wood Fired University in Denver. That and a lot of practice launched him from amateur to pro.

He debuted his mobile pizza business earlier this summer.

Three weeks ago, Fat Zach’s Wood Fire Pizza found a semi-permanent home flipping pies in a parking lot in downtown Puyallup. He serves from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays. He’s the first to serve at the Generous Corner lot which, if all goes as planned, will become a community center and centralized location for food trucks and food-based businesses.

Call his formula simple and straightforward with a five-cheese blend topping all but one pie and a choice of two sauces and about a dozen toppings on seven specialty pies. He developed the menu with his brother Ryan Johns, who is a chef. Zach’s wife Shanna also helps with the truck. She developed the second pizza sauce, a Ranch blend with secret ingredients even Zach doesn’t know.

Here’s a first-bite look.

The menu: Seven choices of personal-sized pizzas ($10 to $14), including a basic cheese ($10), a pineapple, Canadian bacon and regular bacon pie ($12), an extra pepperoni pie ($12), a vegetarian with roasted red peppers and mushrooms, black olives and caramelized onions pizza ($14) and a chicken-bacon-ranch pizza ($14).

The pizza concept: He sources his dough from a company in Sumner. His red sauce is simply hand-crushed San Marzano tomatoes seasoned with salt and olive oil. He blends five cheeses — mozzarella, provolone, pecorino-romano, parmesan and asiago — to top everything but his Margherita (topped with fresh mozzarella). Toppings include the entire gamut you’d expect, plus an interesting topping or two, including linguica.

Gluten-free: Crust available for $2.

The oven: A Forno Bravo heated to about 750-800 degrees exclusively using a blend of apple and cherry wood.

“It’s a 42-inch deck and can cook pizzas at 750 to 800 degrees. It takes about 90 seconds to cook the pizza when it’s running hot and really smooth,” said Johns. “The way the ovens are domed and the way the heat rolls onto the deck of the floor, it cooks the pizza very evenly and fast.”

On a first visit: Get the spin on a Margherita, a vegetarian pie blanketed with that simple crushed San Marzano tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and fresh basil ($10). The Fat Zach comes topped with five kinds of pork — Italian sausage, pepperoni, bacon, Canadian bacon and linguica — plus the house cheese blend and a red tomato sauce, but I highly recommend swapping out Shanna’s house-made buttermilk ranch for the sauce on that pie.

Seating: One picnic table, but diners can shuttle their pizza across the street and eat inside Anthem Coffee & Tea, which is also the food truck’s commissary. He’s working on covered areas, too. Tip — Anthem has an excellent beer and wine list.

Coming next: Additional pies and more topping choices on the way.

Fat Zach’s Wood Fire Pizza

Where: 203 W. Pioneer, Puyallup

Info: 253-328-3415, fatzachspizza.com, facebook.com/fatzachspizza

Hours: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays

Also serving at: Assorted community events and private catering

This story was originally published October 18, 2018 at 11:30 AM.