Steeled for success Altona fabricator’s stainless alloy baking gear the real deal, say a growing cohort of kitchen professionals By: David Sanderson Posted: 6:00 AM CDT Saturday, May. 4, 2024

ALTONA — A recent article in Food & Wine magazine carried the headline “This slab of steel will transform your cooking.”

The accompanying piece detailed the benefits of preparing foodstuffs with a commercially-produced, near-indestructible baking steel, described in the story as the “perfect mashup of a pro sheet pan, a luxury griddle and a fancy pizza stone.” Because baking steels are able to absorb and conduct heat far more efficiently than aluminum baking sheets or ceramic stones, those who use the culinary device can expect their pies, loaves of bread and pizzas to be “crispier, crunchier and just plain better,” the author wrote.

Nicole Friesen is the owner of Atlas Steel Co., an Altona-based enterprise that markets various sizes of baking steels, as well as stainless-steel pizza paddles, griddles and smash-burger stamps. A while back, she filled an order for a person living in Australia who was interested in a steel of hers billed as the Beast, owing to the fact it measures three-eighths-of-an-inch thick, tips the scales at 16 kilograms and has space for up to four loaves of bread at the same time.

“I don’t even want to tell you what she ended up paying in postage, but it was as much if not more than the steel itself,” Friesen says, seated inside an Altona coffee shop situated five minutes from where she lives with her husband Mike and their four children. “Plus, she was so concerned about it arriving safely, she had it shipped by boat versus air. It took over three months to get there but I guess it was worth the wait.”

Besides Atlas Steel Co., Friesen is also the owner of New Leaf, a massage therapy and sports rehabilitation clinic she opened in Osborne Village in 2012. Describing herself as a “go-go-go” person, she says she was practically bouncing off the walls four years ago, during the early stages of the pandemic.

Ordinarily, she commuted back and forth to Winnipeg for work. However, owing to the fact an April 2020 announcement from the province lumped massage clinics in with other businesses deemed to be non-essential, she was forced to close her doors and remain at home “for who knew how long.”

Being sedentary is not in her DNA, she continues, so she started to contemplate a side hustle, something she could perhaps make and sell online to alleviate the boredom she was feeling.

When she was a young girl growing up in southern Manitoba, Friday nights were always reserved for homemade pizza. She and Mike, who owns Elmer’s Manufacturing, an Altona operation that produces farm equipment, continued that tradition after tying the knot in 2017. One Friday when she was still stuck at home, she mentioned baking steels, which she’d been introduced to in 2019 at a sourdough class she took with two of her girlfriends. Since Mike had easy access to the metal, she suggested they make a few steels; first, for their Friday-night pizza dates and secondly, as a potential marketable commodity.

While the first one she designed with the assistance of AutoCAD wasn’t much to look at, it performed far better than the aluminum pizza pans they were accustomed to. The crust was of restaurant quality, she remembers, plus it took less than five minutes for pies to be fully cooked once the steel, which she seasoned with olive oil, was properly pre-heated.

Fairly quickly, family and friends started inquiring about a steel for themselves, too, Friesen says. “We sold a bunch to relatives that Christmas (2020) and officially started the business, which is named for our eldest son Atlas, in January 2021.”

Jared Ozuk is responsible for Winnipeg Bread, which offers online and in-person bread- and pizza-making lessons. He founded his carb-heavy venture in the spring of 2021, a few months after Atlas Steel emerged onto the scene.

Initially, Ozuk was baking bread with the aid of American-made products. His modus operandi changed after he tried one of Friesen’s steels, a 10-kilogram behemoth dubbed the Pro.

“I had reached out to Nicole after realizing she lived in Altona, and she dropped the steel off to me, saying if I liked it, I could keep it, free of charge,” Ozuk says. “The thing was, I ended up liking it so much that I demanded to pay for it, in case anybody thought I was using it and promoting it because it was a gift.”

Ozuk utilizes his Atlas steels, one of which is T-shaped and perfectly fits his backyard Ooni pizza oven, in a variety of ways, including grilling. He says they are also invaluable for anyone who has ever opened their oven door too soon, only to witness whatever is inside collapse in a heap.

“If you’re like me, and are always putting things in and out of the oven, you know that an oven loses heat every time you open and close the door,” he says. “But if you place a steel on your oven rack, it works as a heat-moderating tool, and the temperature inside stays consistent.”

Atlas Steel products are currently available in a number of retail outlets, including Sun Valley Co-op in Altona, the Potato Store in Winkler and both Luxe Barbeque Company locations in Winnipeg. Friesen often has to pinch herself, to believe she’s rubbing shoulders with cookware heavyweights such as Broil King and Weber.

“Through my massage clinic, I’m the chair of the Osborne Village Biz and I’m well aware of the negative effects COVID had on businesses. For that reason I feel blessed that I was able to start a company in the midst of all that,” she says.

A couple of months ago, Friesen entered into a partnership with Pennsylvania-based Jimmyhank Pizza to produce heavy-duty, stainless-steel pizza spatulas specifically designed for deep-dish Detroit-style pies.

Given that no less an authority than The Food Network has called the tool “incredible… glorious,” we couldn’t let her go without asking how she dresses her own pie.

“My go-to is bocconcini cheese with fig jam as a base. Then, when it’s fresh out of the oven, I add arugula and prosciutto and drizzle it with balsamic vinegar,” she says.

As for her four- and five-year-old kids — her and Mike’s year-old twins are still too young for ’za, she chuckles — it’s a bit of a different story.

“Mine looks a little too much like salad for them, so the only pizza they’ll eat is pepperoni-pineapple.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca

 

PEELS WITH APPEAL

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: if you want to be crowned Best Pizza Maker in Canada, you have to cook like the best pizza maker in Canada.

Thomas Schneider is the Tommy behind Tommy’s Pizzeria, 842 Corydon Ave. The oft-decorated chef, who has successfully competed at the World Pizza Championships in Italy, is a big fan of Atlas Steel Co., and routinely uses their stainless-steel, perforated pizza peels at his 86-seat locale.

“They’re super well-made and hold up really well, but what appealed to me even more when I first learned about them is that they’re produced right here in the province,” Schneider says.

It’s funny, he continues, because he went shopping for additional peels just last week, only to realize the ones he gets from Atlas Steel owner Nicole Friesen are different from what’s available at Luxe Barbeque Company, on Kenaston Boulevard.

“I was looking at them and then remembered the ones we get from her are custom-made,” he says. “The handles on the ones she sells ordinarily (44-inches in length) were too short for our oven, so she happily redesigned a few, specifically for us.”