From her love of baking as a teen, Liz Valenti, co-owner of Wheat Penny Oven & Bar in Dayton, Ohio has since refined her craft through several cities, states and restaurants. Raised in Chicago, she met her former (now retired) business partner, Elizabeth Wiley, while in college in Iowa, where the two shared a love of food. Her passion for learning more about baking led her and Wiley to San Francisco, where Valenti had the good fortune of working with two-time James Beard winning chef, Joyce Goldstein, and Judy Rodgers, the late chef made famous at Zuni Café.
“I did a lot of baking and bread baking in those years in San Francisco,” said Valenti. “When we decided to move to Dayton in 2011, it was to join a restaurant called Meadowlark, which is still thriving after opening more than twenty years ago. When we moved into our current location, I started making pizzas for customers to feed them during our long initial wait times. People just loved the pizza.”
From that simple gesture of passing out pizza to hungry, waiting customers came the beginnings of the idea for Wheat Penny.
“We decided to test our pizza concept on the night that Meadowlark was dark, and that was Monday night,” Valenti explained. “In the meantime, I spent time with Chef Tony Gemignani in San Francisco at the International School of Pizza and the International Pizza Expo learning more about pizza making.”
Valenti, Wiley and a third partner, Dave Rawson (who today co-owns Meadowlark and Wheat Penny with Valenti), decided they had the bandwidth to start an Italian-themed restaurant. In August 2013, Wheat Penny Oven & Bar opened. While the restaurant’s menu focused on pizza it also has many other menu options.
A recipe for success
So, what makes this independent restaurant so successful these years later?
According to Valenti, it’s a group effort between herself and her staff, along with her loyal customers who she feels are just as much partners in the restaurant as anyone else. She explains that they take a lot of pride in how they treat one another and how they treat their customers. Keeping menu items simple, but authentic, is also key.
“We have a commitment to doing things fully with integrity and with as much love as possible. We do not overcomplicate things. We do a lot of dishes, but many of them are simple in nature,” she said. “We make our own mozzarella for Caprese salad. We make our own brioche for our croutons for our Caesar salad.”
And, of course, Valenti and her staff also make Wheat Penny’s unique pizza dough from scratch — with the help of their Hobart HSL130 spiral mixer.
Signature dough with help from Hobart
On the hunt for the best mixer for pizza dough, Valenti first tested the Hobart HSL130 spiral mixer, which offers a 130-pound capacity, during a workshop with Gemignani at the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas in 2022 — to great results.
“It blew me away by how efficient it was and how the ambient temperature of my dough stayed so constant with that mixer,” she said. “The lack of friction meant my dough is so much livelier now than it was in a traditional mixer.”
With that experience in mind, Valenti knew that the mixer would be an excellent addition to the Wheat Penny kitchen for mixing their gluten-free and regular pizza dough.
Valenti explains that the dough is critical to their pizzas. It features a yeast that came from Italy in the 1880s and has been a live starter since then. Along with that the dough is a slow rise. If she or the staff mix the dough on a Thursday, they won’t shape it until Friday or bake it off until Saturday.
“We have a long slow rising process. The gluten structure is beautiful, and Hobart has contributed to that,” said Valenti. “I had a competitive mixer for many years, but now this spiral mixer has elevated our dough even more.”
Hobart’s pizza dough mixer tackles challenges
Hobart designed the HSL130 to provide the exact performance that Valenti and her staff need. The spiral mixer features a bidirectional bowl rotation to improve mix consistency. That rotation, combined with a spinning dough hook, helps combat temperature increases and provides the perfect amount of oxidation. Through fast, gentle mixing, the mixer keeps dough temperature lower and prevents premature yeast activation. The result is consistent dough with ingredients that are thoroughly incorporated.
“If we're starting with the dough in that 70-degree range, it's staying there — even in this prep room that can get into the eighties,” explained Valenti. “I mean, this mixer has really allowed us to have a better command of consistency. Much more than we ever have.”
In addition to its mixing performance, Valenti appreciates the ease of use of the HSL130 spiral mixer, which includes its electronic controls and two mixing speeds.
“This mixer has intuitive controls on it that are front and center. It’s got such easy visual cues,” she said. “Plus, the speeds are spot on.”
Speed one on the mixer is 100 RPM, speed two is 200 RPM and the bowl speed is 15 RPM. Hobart has included a 20-minute timer for the two speed settings that automatically shift from one to two, if desired. Hobart designed the mixer with a double pully belt driven motor capable of increasing torque for heavy loads of dough.
The HSL130’s simple, intuitive operation has simplified training for Valenti, who said she was previously the only person who made Wheat Penny’s pizza dough. Today she has four more staff members taking on the task.
“Because of how easy this mixer is to use, it makes it simple for somebody to really get the perfect hydration, in particular,” explained Valenti. "Because like all recipes, my recipe can vary a couple pounds in flour. We may start with 50 pounds, but we’re adding more at some point. And our staff do not overshoot or under hydrate with this mixer. “
Valenti and her staff also like the size of the HSL130 spiral mixer and its bowl. The machine doesn’t take up much space in the kitchen and the broad bowl, according to Valenti, is a benefit. It allows them to see how much dough they’re mixing and allows the yeast to bloom quickly.
“Another aspect of the broader bowl is that it is simple to remove the dough. Our dough batches are 74 pounds, so I can get it out in three big clumps,” Valenti said. “Compared to a traditional planetary mixer where I’d have to remove smaller pieces, I can be more efficient by removing around 25 pounds at a time.”
Making food with love
Valenti’s philosophy on food is that it needs “to convey care and love and an aspect of gratitude” and she’s proud to share that with her staff and the Dayton community.
“The food that I cook is often based on what was taught as a young girl, cooking with my mother, all my aunts, my grandmother. I do things the way that I was shown,” she said. “I think that if you can keep things simple with good ingredients, you can convey emotion and gratitude of life with that.”
She appreciates that Hobart is helping along the way.
“I’ve always used Hobart. Always. Every restaurant I have ever worked in has always had Hobart,” Valenti said. “I love that it’s an Ohio-based company. I feel like we kind of came home a little bit when we opened Wheat Penny here.”
About the Author
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Carolyn Bilger is the marketing director for Hobart – Food Preparation Products. She has been with Hobart since 2015 and sets the strategy for marketing and new product development for the full line of Hobart food preparation equipment. See all her blogs here.
