It started with Pepe.
Alan Balsamini grew up between two worlds. Yorkshire on one side, Italy on the other. The Italian side belonged to his godfather, Pepe — a quiet, patient man who could turn a bag of flour and a few tomatoes into something close to magic.
Pepe didn't write recipes down. He showed them. The hydration of the dough by feel. The smell of the tomatoes when they were the right ones. The temperature of the oven, judged by holding a hand near the door. "Watch, then do, then do again," he'd say. Alan watched a lot, in those years.
Then it came to Settle.
Years later, back in the Yorkshire Dales, Alan kept making the pizzas Pepe taught him. For family. For friends. For anyone who happened to be in the kitchen when the dough was ready. Eventually enough people said the same thing — you should sell these.
In 2021, Balsamini Pizzeria opened on Duke Street in Settle. The same '00' flour Pepe used. The same San Marzano tomatoes — the only ones, in Pepe's view, with the right balance of sweet and acid. Hand stretched, made with love. Mozzarella that gets cooked, not melted. Carefully chosen toppings for the pizzas that need them.
The difference is fifty years of practice."
Why only three nights?
Friday, Saturday, Sunday. That's it. Closed the rest of the week. There's a reason for that, and it's not a marketing one.
Hand-made pizza is hand-made. The dough takes 48 hours to prove properly. The toppings get prepped fresh. There's no shortcut to that, and there's no point opening seven days if it means cutting corners on three of them. Three nights, done well, beats seven nights done in a hurry.
If you're driving past on a Tuesday and we're closed, sorry. Come Friday.
What we care about.
Real ingredients. Hot ovens. Hands that have made the same recipe enough times to know when something's wrong before it shows up.
We're a small place. Collection only. No delivery, no app, no chain. If you want a pizza, you pre-order or you call, you drive over to Duke Street, you collect, and you eat it while it's still hot from the oven. That's the whole pitch.