D. Palmieri’s Bakery
Eric John Palmieri doesn’t just make pizzas.
He makes masterpieces.
“I love doing it more than anything else in the world.”
The bakery is his studio, the dough his canvas, and the toppings his paint.
“Working here in this place makes it possible for me to do the pizza art. I have an endless array of ingredients that I can use. I have a space to do it in. I've got ovens. I wouldn't be able to do the pizza if it wasn't for this place, there's no question.”
And you can find this edible art and so much more at D. Palmieri’s Bakery.
Since 1971, D. Palmieri’s in Johnston, Rhode Island has been a neighborhood institution for everything from pizza strips and sliced bread to sandwiches and sweets. Eric is a fifth-generation baker carrying on this tasty legacy to customers who line up daily.
“Our roots go all the way back to 1905 up in Federal Hill. The original Palmieri’s bakery no longer exists, but my grandfather opened this place in 1971, and we've been here ever since. Some of these recipes go back 100 years.We’ve got bread. We’ve got pastries—cannolis, zeppole, different kinds of cakes, brownies, cookies, muffins, pizza strips. Of course, your traditional pizzas, calzones. We’ve got prepared foods. And quirky things like an Italian taco. You name it. We pretty much have it.”
But the food that made the bakery famous is the iconic Rhode Island pizza strip.
“I love that we've become pizza strip connoisseurs because it's the most simple, basic food item you could imagine. Essentially, it's just sauce and dough. The pizzas are cooked at a much lower temperature for much longer, using a lot more sauce. So what you end up with is this flavor-packed reduction of sauce that just knocks you off your feet. A perfect pizza strip is something that has a nice crispy bottom where the dough is airy and not too dense, and the sauce has that reduction element but is still chunky.
To me, that's the perfect pizza strip.”
If pizza strips aren’t your thing, don’t fret. At D. Palmieri’s, they have them in all sorts of shapes and sizes—from pizza crisps and pizza bites perfect for snacking on the go, to traditional and Sicilian slices.
And while making all that pizza is fun, when Eric’s job started to feel like a never-ending loop of dough, sauce, repeat, he decided to get creative.
“It can get a little monotonous making pepperoni pizzas all day. I am a creative person just by nature. I don't sketch anything out. I'm not an artist by training or anything. Basically, what I do is I get a picture that I want to go by, and I think, okay, what ingredients do I want to use for this and how do I want to manipulate them? How far can I take this? How much can I manipulate the ingredients and the toppings to create the most realistic-looking pizza art imaginable? Red can be pepperoni, red bell peppers, or roasted peppers. Green bell peppers are great. Spinach is great for green as well. Green olives make a great army green. Red onions I’ve used for purple. I recently started using spirulina powder with grated cheese to create blue. Yellow could be yellow bell peppers. Garlic powder is great for blond hair. Spices come in handy in a lot of instances. I don't use a grid or anything. I just freehand it. I get a lot of requests for pets, favorite athletes, musicians, comic book characters, stuff like that. The biggest piece of art I ever made was this lion. It was eight full sheet pans large. I have to do it in one shot. On some rare occasions I've had to abandon ship and start over the next day, but thankfully that hasn't happened too often and I'm able to adjust and make it work.”
While Eric’s custom creations keep the savory side exciting, the bakery’s sweet staples are just as hard to pass up.
There’s fluffy doughboys smothered in sugar, oversized eclairs—crispy on the outside with a creamy center—freshly piped cannoli, and of course, their famous zeppole.
But for Eric, inspiration always seems to come back to pizza.
“One of the things that always frustrated me about the zeppole is that they're kind of hard to eat. They're big, there's a ton of cream. So I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to try and make this into a pizza? So I take our pizza crust, cook it in oil and sugar with the cream on it, then add some of the zeppole pastry topping with powdered sugar and a cherry. It’s a great thin crust version of the zeppole that I think is easier to eat. It’s a sugar overload and it’s delicious.”
Of course, man cannot live on slices alone.
So D. Palmieri’s offers a lineup of prepared foods, from oversized sandwiches made on their fresh bread and poppable mini calzones to their signature root beer wings.
“We slow roast our chicken wings in oil and seasonings for over two hours, so it falls right off the bone. We add some root beer syrup during the cooking process, and they have this salty, sticky, sweet, savory flavor explosion. And it tastes like root beer. It’s amazing.”
And for Eric, the greatest work he’s creating isn’t just pizza art. It’s about carrying on a family tradition and sharing it with loyal customers.
“We care a lot about our customers.
The customers are why we're here. It's why we do what we do. We're a small family business, one location. Everything made here is made with heart and love.”
