Stephen Crivillaro believes he has what it takes to become a once and future pizza king in New York.

He is a graduate of Queens College, where he earned a degree in Labor Studies, and he has worked as a green energy consultant. But Stephen Crivillaro says that his long-range plans center on becoming an entrepreneur, and launching his own pizza business.

As he knows, the pizza business is a crowded field, especially in his native New York, where New York Style pizza is a legend and there are countless pizza industry veterans. Many of them are gathering at the Second Annual Global Pizza Summit in New York in January, an international event that Stephen Crivillaro says he will be following via the Internet. The Global Pizza Summit will feature presentations by some of the world's top pizza makers, who have raised the art of pizza making to a very high level.

About one hundred pizza restaurant owners and operators, along with food distributors and other industry professionals, will be on hand at the Summit, discussing trends in the industry such as gluten-free pizza crust. As a would-be pizza magnate Stephen Crivillaro knows there is a lot to learn. One of the things he is convinced of, however, is that the secret to a great pizza lies not in its toppings, but in its crust.

A great pizza crust should be crispy on the outside, but light and flaky on the inside, and full of flavor. Stephen Crivillaro has adapted his mother's pizza crust recipe and says it will be the foundation of the pizzeria he will be opening one day. There is a lot about his crust recipe that is a closely guarded secret, but he says that one of the things to watch is the flour that is used to make the dough. His mother always mixed bread flour and whole wheat flour, about a 60-40 ratio favoring just a little more bread flour than whole wheat. One of the things he says he'll be watching for at the Global Pizza Summit is the unveiling of a new Caputo pizza dough flour formulated especially for New York style pizza.

While he believes that a pizza stands or falls on the quality of its crust, Stephen Crivillaro also knows that he has to have a crowd-pleaser on his menu, so he expects to be offering a build-your-own pizza option that lets customers choose from a wide range of pizza toppings – from classics like pepperoni and green peppers, to more exotic toppings like pineapple and pesto.

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