Burning up: Fire and Dough features Neapolitan-style pizzas

Jacob Gonzalez knows what makes a pizza a great pizza: dough and sauce. At Fire and Dough, Gonzalez’s new food truck venture, he says he has just that.  

Fire and Dough is one of the valley’s newest food trucks, serving Neapolitan-style pizza at various locations. The pizza is characterized by its simplicity, baked in a wood-fired oven at an extremely high temperature for a short time. The result is a pie with a soft, thin crust with a puffy, leopard-spotted outer crust.  

“We do it because the passion starts with food,” Gonzalez said as he moved around the small kitchen during a weekday rush. “Food is a universal language. You can go anywhere, and food connects people together.” 

Originally from Florida, Gonzalez spent 11 years in the U.S. Coast Guard, moving to the Flathead Valley last year with his wife, Stefanie. Gonzalez has always loved cooking. While the pair lived in Oregon in 2022, Gonzalez welded a little pizza oven and cooked for friends and family out of his garage.  

With each sale, people begged him to open his own establishment. His barber told him to bring pizzas into the shop and that became a big client base, ultimately leading him to join a Sunday farmer’s market. He sold out every weekend. 

After retiring from the Coast Guard, he went on a road trip for a year and perfected his dough and sauce recipe. Then after moving to the Flathead Valley, he purchased the food truck.  

“This was a long time coming,” he said.  

The truck is a blue with wooden paneling. Inside is a pizza oven, a prep station and a cut station. It’s simple yet intentional, just like the type of pizza served.  

The menu features a range of hand-curated personal-size pizzas to order. From a simple Margherita pizza to a pepperoni pizza to a white sauce and spicy sausage pizza, each was curated with trial and error until Gonzalez perfected it, he said.  

While the menu features a set list of pizzas, Gonzalez noted that he is always mixing up different combinations and recipes to add to the menu or highlight as a special.  

Each pizza begins with a four-ingredient, handcrafted dough that is cold fermented for 72 hours and proofed at room temperature for another six hours before entering the 950-degree wood-fired oven for roughly only a minute and a half. Both Gonzalez’s oven and pizza press were made in Italy.  

The pizzas are around 10 inches and include mozzarella cheese, freshly grated parmesan, fresh basil and olive oil. Both the red sauce and the white sauce are made in house as well, with tomatoes sourced from Sarnese Nocerino, Italy.  

Each week, Gonzalez posts the truck schedule on Facebook, facebook.com/Fireanddoughmt/, ranging from places like Lowe’s in Kalispell and the Glacier International Lodge at Glacier Park International Airport.  

For more information, visit fireanddoughmt.com.  

Reporter Kate Heston may be reached at 758-4459 or kheston@dailyinterlake.com.

    Jacob Gonzalez, owner of Fire and Dough, prepares pizzas in his food truck. (Kate Heston/Daily Inter Lake)
  

    The Kick'n Pig pizza at Fire and Dough. (Kate Heston/Daily Inter Lake)
  

    Jacob Gonzalez, owner of Fire and Dough, prepares pizzas in his food truck. (Kate Heston/Daily Inter Lake)
  

    Patrons wait for food outside the Fire and Dough food truck. (Kate Heston/Daily Inter Lake)
  

    Jacob Gonzalez, owner of Fire and Dough, prepares pizzas in his food truck. (Kate Heston/Daily Inter Lake)
  

    Fires cook in an oven from Italy at Fire and Dough pizza food truck. (Kate Heston/Daily Inter Lake)
  

    Jacob Gonzalez, owner of Fire and Dough, takes a pizza out of the oven in his food truck. (Kate Heston/Daily Inter Lake)