Pizza Around Back

New Beacon vegan joint already has a following
Despite running a pizza place, Mickey Dwyer is not sick of pizza.
"I don't get to eat enough of my pizza, actually," he said while sliding a sausage and peppers pie into the oven at Trixie's, the pizzeria he owns and operates. "I keep selling out and then I'm bummed that I don't have any left for myself."
Dwyer sells out despite a lack of advertising and his pizzeria being impossible to stumble upon. It's located in the rear of 144 Main St. in Beacon, next to a semi-secret soccer field. Its unlikely location keeps the rent cheap, which comes in handy since it took Dwyer and friends a year to get the former guitar repair shop up to code before he could open.

Trixie's, named after his family's late chihuahua, had a soft opening in April that went so well Dwyer's never had a chance to have an official opening. Pizza orders open online on Wednesdays in 20-minute slots for Thursday, Friday and Saturday pickup. They fill quickly; Dwyer can only fit four pizzas at a time in the oven.
"I like the time slots so I can tell how many pizzas to make," he said. "There's less food waste. And the pizza is just gonna come out better. I understand that everyone in Beacon wants to eat at 6:15, but if I made pizza for everybody at 6:15 then some are going to be undercooked. This way I can give every pizza the same amount of attention."
There's one other thing that makes Trixie's unique: Everything is vegan. "I can't use 2 pounds of cheese as a crutch to cover up 'mid' pizza," he said.
The sausage is made of a meat substitute; Dwyer adds sage, garlic and fennel. The mozzarella is cashew-based, and what looks like parmesan is a potato starch-based substitute that's not available in stores. Even the hot honey is vegan, made from apples and chilis.

If potato-starch cheese doesn't sound appealing, rest assured that Dwyer, who grew up in Wisconsin, is picky about cheese. "All the cheese that the New York pizzerias use is made in Juda, Wisconsin," he said. "You might not think we know a lot about pizza in Wisconsin, but we know a lot about cheese."
Dwyer himself isn't vegan but guesses most of his customers aren't either. "Vegans make up less than 6 percent of the population, so you're going to go under unless you make something that appeals to everyone," he said. Beacon's vegan doughnut shop, Peaceful Provisions, is an example of this. "Nobody cares that it's vegan - they just care that it's a delicious doughnut."
Before he had the Main Street space, Dwyer used the commercial kitchen at Peaceful Provisions to make 100 pounds of dough on Wednesdays. He said the Saturday doughs, with their longer ferment, had more complex flavors, although he admitted he may be the only one who noticed the difference.
With all the dough now made at Trixie's, the dough for each pizza gets a two-day cold ferment. "That means every pizza takes three days start to finish," he said. "Everybody thinks that pizza is fast food, but good pizza is slow food."
Dwyer began making pizza as a hobby soon after he moved to Beacon in 2016. Around the same time, he and his wife began eating less meat and dairy, and creating a vegan pizza that didn't taste like a vegan pizza recipe became an obsession. Dwyer bought an old coffee trailer and sold pizzas from his driveway.

At Trixie's, Dwyer is working on building a small outdoor patio and has applied for a beer and wine license. He's also finally with a food distributor so he no longer must drive back and forth to Adams and ShopRite for ingredients.
This month he hired his first employee. "She'll be taking orders and talking to people," he said. "I was spreading myself too thin. I'd be talking to customers and answering their questions, and the pizzas would be in the back, burning. Now I'll just be able to focus on the pizzas. I can make more, and I can make them faster."
Trixie's Pizza, behind 144 Main St. in Beacon, is open 4 to 9 p.m. on Thursday and 4 to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday...