Miga Rossetti and Chris Hansen moved to Jackson in the mid 90's and found everything they loved in the Tetons. Well, almost.
Miga’s introduction to Napoletana pizza came early, during a family summer in Italy with relatives, and many years later, she was able to share her love of this great traditional pizza with Chris, who fell for it on their honeymoon in Tuscany. In 2010 Chris dove deep into pizza dough experimentation. After more than a year of improving and sharing with friends, the perfect high altitude pizza recipe was born.
Since the beginning, Pizzeria Caldera makes their dough and sauce in-house using local ingredients when possible (think bison and elk sausage), grates their own cheese and prepares everything from scratch in their small kitchen across the street from the Jackson Town Square. "We consider this the best pizza made outside of Italy, and will only feed our children, our community and visitors to Jackson Hole the best tasting food from the best ingredients. We hope you like it as much as we do.”
According to Wikipedia, a caldera is a large depression formed when a volcano erupts and collapses. During a volcanic eruption, magma present in the chamber underneath the volcano is expelled, often forcefully. When the magma chamber empties, it can no longer support itself. As a result, the sides and top of the volcano collapse inward.
The Yellowstone Supervolcano erupted 640,000+ years ago. The Yellowstone eruption caused the area to collapse, creating a sunken giant crater or Caldera 1,500 square miles in area. The magmatic heat powering that eruption (plus two others) still powers the famous geysers, hot springs, fumaroles, and mud pots of Yellowstone National Park.
Yes, for parties of 6 or more. Our dining room is small, so if you have a larger group, please plan ahead and try to be as flexible as you can with your timing. Large groups are more easily seated earlier or later in the evening. And sorry, no reservations on the deck in summer. You can call us at 307-201-1472 to book your reservation.
Our pizzas are made in the 12” size of a traditional Napoletana pie. The crust is crispy on the bottom, chewy on the inside and made flavorful by a long, cold proof. That said, we recognized early on that downtown Jackson was missing a good by-the-slice pizzeria. Based on the size of our restaurant, kitchen and oven, we’ve had to make certain business decisions around 18” pizzas.
We sell slices out of 18” pizzas from 11am through 4pm. But at night we can get very busy and our oven is often full with 12” pizzas. Putting an 18” pie in the oven at night slows down production and can negatively affect customer experience for everyone.
No. And yes. As stated above, we sell our 18″ pies by the slice and we only make enough dough for what we expect to sell by the slice each day. If you’d like to order 18″ pies, we consider that a catering order. There is a minimum of 6 pies per order and we need to know at least 24 hours in advance. When we’re not slammed, we can even deliver these orders!
Yes. We’ll sell you either a 12” or 18” dough ball. But if you want quantity, please order ahead. The dough we make today won’t be ready until tomorrow. But we recommend 12” dough balls for home because they’re easier to work with and will better fit in your home oven.
Not only is our dough the most important aspect of our pizza, and what makes our pizza so good, but like all good things, it takes time. Making a batch of dough only takes about an hour. But the critical aspect is that our dough needs to “proof” overnight. For this reason, we need to make sure we get it right every time. There is no making of a “quick batch” of dough if we run out, so what we call “dough management,” or planning ahead for the right amount of dough every day, is a critical part of prep every day at Caldera.