We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Gregory Gillaspie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Gregory, thanks for joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I learned how to make pizza by eating a lot of pizza. Before I had even made a single pizza, I had a collection of my favorite attributes from other pizzerias to form a concept. I knew I wanted the combination of fresh and low moisture mozzarella like Lucali. I knew I wanted cheese all the way up to the edge to slightly burn and crisp up kind of like Buddy’s. I knew I wanted to eventually mill my own flour like Scarr’s. I knew even though it was a square, I didn’t want to par-bake it. I knew I wanted to go for a saltier dough and a sweeter sauce. I knew I wanted a layer of shredded basil to go on the pizza before it went into the oven, and torn basil to be placed on the pizza after it came out (shredded basil so it doesn’t crisp up and burn and torn leaves so they get softened by the hot steam coming off the pizza). But coming into something with a concept alone will only get you so far. I nailed my sauce pretty early on, but when it comes to dough there has been an immense amount of trial and error. I wish I had learned how to make bread before diving into pizza.

There is so much information out there on the internet, and so much of it should be ignored. I initially succumbed to the “pizza dogma” of using San Marzano tomatoes and 00 flour. I remember thinking I needed to use warm water to activate the yeast in my dough.

Since all that I have come up with a completely unique method that is uncharted territory. But it took many failures to learn what direction to go.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

I make pizza. GaGa’s Grandma Pies is the only pizzeria in the world that mills all our own flour and makes our own cheese. We ferment the dough for a week, and use as high quality ingredients as we possibly can. It’s about trying to create the best possible pizza, with as few compromises as possible. All that might not necessarily matter if people don’t like it. I designed my pizza to be something ideal to my own personal taste, and I’m extremely happy that other people seem to enjoy it too. Consistent feedback is something along the lines of “I mean this as a compliment, but this doesn’t taste like pizza.” What I’ve come up with using the basic elements of bread, sauce and cheese seems to be completely unique. I’ve never tasted anything else like the pizza I make, That means it won’t be for everyone, but I am proud of my creation.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I really believe in excellence. To be honest, I find it really disappointing that so many things in our culture are not about excellence. Taking food for example, the pizza in Nashville is only as good as it has to be. Nobody is setting out to make the best pizza in the world here, because they don’t need to to still make money. The same goes for the BBQ here. It’s a consumer driven mindset of doing the bare minimum to maximize profits. It’s not the way my brain works, and for that reason I may fail… But I’m going to go down fighting for excellence, as an expression of doing something to the best of my ability.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I’ve worked in film for over ten years. I have invested tens of thousands of dollars into film equipment and have spent so much time, effort, and energy obsessing over that craft. I moved to Nashville to embrace the music scene and pick up more music video work. When my wonderful, loving community was so encouraging of the pizza I was making as a hobby, it made me really question a lot of things. I have been talking about making movies since I was a child in kindergarten. So much of my identity has been wrapped up in film. People were calling me “pizza guy” and associating my identity with my hobby, which was so bizarre and was honestly off-putting to me. Over time I felt the chains of identity fall off me, and have truly embraced my identity as a child of God who loves to create like his creator. Film is so attractive to me because you are constantly creating. It’s the creation process I love. Creating my ideal pizza and a business around it gives me an immense amount of joy. However, my ideal life would allow me to be constantly creating. Now pizza, next… who knows?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.gagasgrandmapies.com/join
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gagasgrandmapies/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GaGasGrandmaPies/