Popular bakery café Blanchflower is promising to revolutionise pizza every Friday and Saturday night with Pizza Rivoluzione. But is it possible to ‘re-invent’ everyone’s favourite flat food-stuff any further?

What started as a humble street food is now truly global, with a million possible flavour combinations joining the original Margherita pizza toppings of tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and basil – designed to reflect the colours of the Italian flag and still a staple on almost all pizza menus.

“The dough is then rolled out thinly into a Romana-style base to create a satisfying crunch”

Popular bakery café Blanchflower is promising to revolutionise pizza every Friday and Saturday night with Pizza Rivoluzione. But is it possible to ‘re-invent’ everyone’s favourite flat food-stuff any further?

What started as a humble street food is now truly global, with a million possible flavour combinations joining the original Margherita pizza toppings of tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and basil – designed to reflect the colours of the Italian flag and still a staple on almost all pizza menus.

The pizza base has undergone many a transformation too. Sure, you can still get authentic, slow-proved Neapolitan sourdough crusts with those distinctive ‘leoparding’ charred bubbles, but you can also get anything from crusts with cheese stuffed inside to convenient frozen pizzas to stick in the oven for when you don’t have much time.

But what has all this got to do with Blanchflower, Altrincham’s all-day bakery and popular lunch spot? Well, it’s no secret that owner and head baker Claire Howells is obsessed with dough craft and pastry perfection. Customers start to queue early for her morning bakes and straight-from-the-oven crusty bread. Midday onwards, they’re back for one of the sourdough sandwiches, or a hunk of fresh bread to dip into the seasonal soup of the day.

Claire and her team decided it was time to use their baking skills to develop something new for Blanchflower’s weekend evening menu, and recently they revealed their pop-up Pizza Rivoluzione to their Altrincham fan base.

Although Blanchflower’s new Friday- and Saturday-night menu – currently chalked up to run through until September – looks accessible and simple enough, much time has gone in to making sure Pizza Rivoluzione is absolutely the spot-on recipe for sharing with friends and family, and for sharing with an exceptionally good glass of wine or three.

Start with Italian olives, abundantly topped bruschetta or grazing boards of fish or meat to share, then head onto the pizza Romana. Based on a sourdough focaccia recipe and slow proved, the dough is then rolled out thinly into a Romana-style base to create a satisfying crunch with every bite – the menu does claim #romadoesitbetter.

Each element of the toppings has been lovingly prepared, to be both rich and generous. That Margherita (or in this case Margarita) is here for a tenner, with tomato, mozzarella, sun blushed tomatoes and basil oil. Other takes on veggie classics include the Florentine – spinach, mascarpone, Parmesan and egg (£11) – and truffled wild mushroom, parmesan and rocket (£12), unusually piled high with chopped mushrooms. Vegan-wise, there’s a pepper-packed pepperonata and olives number sprinkled with rocket and drizzled with roast garlic oil (£10).

Meanwhile meat-eaters – and spice-lovers – are in luck with chorizo, manchego, jalapeno, sriracha and tomato (£12.50), and Claire and her chefs have also been playing with some more experimental specials for their Pizza Rivoluzione adventures – Asian pulled pork, for example, or king prawns with chilli, charred courgette, tomato and mascarpone (£13).

Desserts, if you still have room, involve home-baked goodies, such as apricot streusel and chocolate and salted caramel tart. And of course, weekends – especially summer nights in the Altrincham continental café-inspired pedestrianised town centre – are likely to involve a drink or two. No problem – the wine list (from £4.90 a glass and £19.50 a bottle) for Pizza Rivoluzione at Blanchflower is as carefully thought-out as the food ingredients, and includes Italian white, red, rosé and fizz, alongside pours from France, Spain, New Zealand – and a Portuguese bottle called Confidential 2015. Now that, we can’t ignore.

Pizza Rivoluzione at Blanchflower, 12-14 Shaw’s Road, Altrincham WA14 1QU