Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from Rockefeller Center on New Stand Studios in the heart of Manhattan. Joined as usual witness Dacia. The hammer Lopez, how you doing? Good.
Yeah? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Your week's been okay so far? Yeah.
Yeah. Nice. Good. Uh got uh John here uh with me. How you doing?
Doing great, thanks. How's the customer service life? Is it just everything you'd always hoped? Super swell. Yeah.
Yep. Yeah. Get to run to Stamford later to go to offside storage and get some parts to mail to people. Oh snap. Indeed.
It's gonna be the best. Yep. Yeah. I haven't I well, quick side note on that, actually. I've been telling everyone who has an old school uh spinzall lid, the one with the clear plastic bubble on the top.
If you're having issues with that, reach out to me and we can get that fixed so that you don't rip the bearing out of the lid. Oh, nice. Cool. All right. Working the boards here.
We got Joe Hazen. How you doing? I'm doing great. You guys looking really smart today. You know why?
Because you loaned me your fancy reading glasses because I forgot mine. That's why. Uh and of course, uh working our international intercontinental uh engineering needs. We got Jackie Molecules. Hey, how's it going?
Um it's going well. I am excited, especially to have you. I'm always excited to have you, Jack. Even when you're just in LA and not in in in Mexico. Oh, by the way, were you back?
Oh, you're what the hell, dude? You uh you had to leave so that you couldn't like have fun during all the uh LA Super Bowl parties? Yeah, I'm doing radio stuff with the Line Hotel. So you sound excited to do it. I'm sure if they listen to this, they'll be psyched I'm doing radio stuff in the line.
Yeah. Well, it's sad to miss the Super Bowl, but I love no, I love it here. Yeah. CC's the best. Okay.
Uh, all right. Uh, you know, sure. All right. But the reason I uh I'm excited, and I'm I'm hoping actually that you that you kind of punch in with questions, Jack, because today you have you are in a privileged position to ask specific questions that I might not think of that other people might not think of. Because today on the on the program we have Francisco Magoya, who is most late latest, most late, latest project is Modernist Pizza, which came out, I don't know, how long ago did that come out?
A couple months ago. A couple months ago. And it's like a it's like a pamphlet on pizza. It's like a three-page black and white Xeroxed pamphlet on how to make oh no. No, it's like an 8,000 pound three volume with a kitchen set uh thing that comes in a in a you know, you know, a water jet cut metal powder coated box.
But it's it's like a a giant pizza multi-toned pizza thing. Francisco, thanks. How you how you doing? I'm doing well, and you're doing well. Doing well.
So uh we're gonna obviously have uh a lot of uh technical questions, but Jack did the editing on your modernist pizza podcast, right? Right, right. So I so first you want to just pitch pitch the pitch the uh the the question everyone wants to know why do I need three volumes that each one is like bigger than a presentation bible on uh on on pizza well, I mean, there's a a difference between need and want, right? I think that the uh the biggest uh pitch here would be that it's you know, when we were doing research for this book and we were searching for pizza books, uh first there's not a ton of them. Um most of them are geared for making pizza at home, which is fine.
Uh but when we're doing research, we're trying to find also books that are you know for professionals for people who make pizza at home and pizza, I mean sorry, in restaurants, pizzeria, and so forth. And I I think maybe there was one or two. Um mostly when you have a book on pizza, it's it focuses on one style. So either Think Crust or uh you know New York style or Neapolitan and so forth. So essentially this book, the intent of this book is to be uh all encompassing.
So every actual style of pizza that exists, um environment it can be baked or cooked in, um, all of those uh uh aspects were taken into consideration. And yes, it was you know, four years of research of of doing you know a lot of travel, a lot of you know, RD, a lot of experimentation to get to the results that you know, for those of us who are familiar or those of you who aren't familiar with our books may know, which is uh basically a deep dive into the world of pizza and the most popular food in the world. I think uh you'll find pizza pretty much anywhere you go. In the book, I believe you say arguably the most popular, because then obviously it's an argument. You don't have to prove it.
You know what I'm saying? Right. Um you I mean you have to maybe not everybody believes it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh I think that there's there's two countries, uh, and I forget where they are, but there's only two countries where there's like no trace of pizza.
Well, where's that? Yeah, you forget where they are, but like don't go there. Like, I mean, everywhere I've been, there's some pizza. It might be horrific. You might be, you might uh I had a uh I had a sweet durian pizza in Shenzhen once.
Oh no. Yeah, yeah. Like it was like it was like cafeteria style crust. You know what I'm saying? Like uh somehow like super doughy and yet also undercooked, like they left it in for a long time, but still somehow it was gummy, you know what I'm talking about?
And uh plus the durian, that's like the bonus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the durian on top, and I was like, oh, durian pizza. But it was like sweet, like sweet sweet. And I was like, this is not like I could have imagined a world, like I've had alternative pizzas, like I love the I I don't know what you think about it, but I love the pizza that comes with the bonito flakes waving in the breeze from the heat of the pizza cooling off.
Like I like that, you know what I mean? Like I'm open, I'm open to things. Uh-huh. But the durian pizza, I was just like, man. Plus, did you guys do p I don't remember?
Uh it I I read the I read the book uh a while ago. Did you do pizza in China or no? No, no, we did not visit uh nor do a like on the ground research in China. Okay. Uh but it's uh from what I hear, it's in in areas that's a little bit of a sort of like a fancy event.
It's not as casual as it is here in the United States. Like it's uh an event to go and have pizza. Well, I have had takeout pizza also in China, and I wanted to get your take on they you know the you know the like the gloves that they pass out at a crab boil in Maryland. Sure. Yeah.
So in China, with the takeout pizza, at least when I've had it, again in Shenzhen, it the you were expected to put on rubber, like not rubber, the those plastic, ill-fitting plastic, like polyethylene LDPE gloves to eat the pizza. And I wondered whether you'd ever encountered that and whether you also believe it's an abomination to eat pizza that way. I can't, I mean, I think the only purpose I could see for that is to just not get your hands messy, but it is there's other ways of accomplishing that that are not using those gloves. But uh I have not encountered that, no. What are your thoughts on uh on former uh mayor uh former uh mayor de Blasio who theoretically of Italian extraction, first day in office, eats pizza with it with a knife and New York style pizza with a knife and fork.
What are your thoughts on this? Oh boy, I mean, I think that you know, those are it's not something you need to do. Um, but I would say that you know, there are parts like in Naples where pizza comes from, you could eat pizza with the fork and a knife. No, that's where it comes from, and that's you know, that's that is where people will eat it with the fork and a knife. I mean, you can choose not to, yeah, but that's because can we start this now?
Neapolitan pizza is not you can't it fall if it it gets limp in the tip. Like you can't get around it, no matter how hard you fold it, the sucker's gonna get limp in the tip. I am not I appreciate a great, you know, DOP pie, but I'm gonna say it's not the be all and end all of pizza. I mean, I know you s obviously you wrote a million pages uh on it, but it's like if if I had to press a button and eradicate one of the famous styles of pizza, or I should say, if I had to could save only one, it wouldn't be that one. Right.
No, and I think that in the book, we don't necessarily say that, you know, this is the best pizza in the world. I think I don't think we really say that about anything. In fact, I because there isn't such a thing as the best pizza, right? When people ask me what is the best pizza, it's the one you like. Well, except for except for pizza.
You you say that people who like their own pizza, and this is I feel like the first hundred and fifty pages of the first book is paving the way for you crapping on New Haven pizza. That like honestly, like as a guy that lived in New Haven for, you know, years, like I feel like the first maybe 150 pages. You literally say, you have a there's a section of the book, people exaggerating a bit. Oh, there's a section of the book You are exaggerating. There's a section of the book called uh but what about the pizza I grew up with?
And in this section of the book. That's what you're you're you're you're validating that argument, but please go on. No, no, listen, listen. You lichen enjoying the pizza that you from where you come, right, to the Stockholm syndrome. You literally say, and and and I was like, he's talking about New Haven people.
I was like, he's talking about New Haven, and to some extent New Yorkers. Because New York pizza was, let's be honest, with a few exceptions, like straight garbage in the 80s. You know what I mean? Like, like it was like it was not, I mean, there were like the the the classic places were here, but it's like, you know, whatever. But it all goes down to you're you paving the way for crapping on Sally's and Peppy.
So so go ahead and let's get it out there. I like a burnt crust and I don't feel like I'm in Stockholm syndrome like area. Like just to have it out with me. You guys flew around the world, you're testing. One of the things that that is gonna be complicated about this conversation we're going to have right now is that let's pretend I'm let's pretend you're a Republican and I'm trying to convince you to be a dec Democrat.
It's just not gonna happen. But I'm gonna tell you how we came to this conclusion, and maybe you can hear me or maybe not. It's it's really up to you. Um I think that what matters most is that if I eat something that is burnt as a chef, whatever it may be, whether it's pizza or a piece of fish or a piece of bread, if it's burnt, if it's burnt, we call it what it is, burnt. But if you enjoy the taste of burnt, then that is fine.
We pref we prefer to not have a burnt pizza. Now there's dark, there's char. If you have a Neapolitan pizza, it has a little flex on it. Uh you go to some pizzeria like Rasa, you have these bubbles that you know got a little bit darker, which is, you know, it's completely delicious. But when you see this blackness in the crust, I don't particularly like it.
I also don't love when the crust is unseasoned. I think the dough should have salt in it. I think that it's a if somebody acquires a taste for a dough that is made with very little to no salt, again, that's fine, but it's always preferable to have about two percent salt in the dough. Um, we can all I agree with you, Andrew. We can all agree that Tuscan bread is the worst bread in the world, but go ahead.
Yeah. Right. Yeah, but the you know, there's a similar there's a s there's that spirit to most of the pizza doughs that are made in New Haven, which is that they don't have salt. Now, you're also going to have every top ten list of pizza, there's like a pizzeria in New Haven. Has everybody in this that writes these articles actually go to New Haven, or is it easier to just say, Oh, New Haven is great?
And to have a difference of opinion, it's like, oh, what the hell are you talking about? How could you have a different opinion from mine? But our opinion is not just like we like, we don't like. I mean, who are we to tell you to not eat it? I mean, there's there's other pizzas that are better seasoned that are less burnt that could be tastier.
And uh and you didn't like Sally's either, right? You didn't like Sally's or Peppies. Well, I mean, I think that there could be vastly improved. I mean, there was an interesting uh occasion where you know they brought a pizza to us, it would look perfectly fine, and then they're like, no, no, no, put it back in the oven, get it darker, and we're like, no, it could it would have been perfect at that point. Um, but you know, I think that you know, we can talk about New Haven and and how you know how much we dislike the pizza if you like, but you know, maybe there's there's other things we'd like to discuss when it comes to pizza, but it's it's not our number one pizza.
I think it's uh uh I don't think we spend 150 pages on it, but of time there. Again, the first thing I did was turn to I gotta be honest, and a lot of people the first thing I did was I turned to this section on New Haven and then went and read the whole book with what you said about New Haven in my mind the whole time. That's what it was. And by the way, I don't think they're the be and all and end all of pizza either. I agree with you in a lot of ways that um like one of the interesting things about certain American things, like American styles of things, like hamburgers, pizzas, certain extent, certain hot dog things.
Like a lot of the old school people make a point of not tasting other people's products. And so it's very hard for them to grow and to get better. So I, you know, I I agree. I'm just giving you a little bit of a, I'm giving you a little bit of a hard time for the old town's sake, all right? Come on, man.
It's all right. So uh you know, uh it's a bit of a sore subject here because the everybody does have an opinion on pizza, right? And it if people, there's like a very strong, it's like people on their sports teams, right? I mean, I don't know if you you find this, but it's people will defend the one style they like to the death, figuratively speaking, but there are there are very strong emotions associated with preferences of pizza. So dislikes too.
So what about uh I was interested because there's certain styles of the pizza that I've never had, even though they're only a couple hundred miles away from me. Like what's with this old forge? I've never even heard of Old Forge Peach before I picked up your book. I'm surprised because there's a sign at the entrance of Old Forge that says best pizza city in the world. So it must be.
And how could you not have been there? Umge is you know, it is baked on a sh like a, you know, typically baked on a full size sheet pan, aluminum. Um, you know, the dough is is kind of like white sandwich bread dough, so it's like soft, a little bit sweet. Um then uh most places will like put the sauce down on top of the dough directly, then like chopped onions and then the cheese. And then it's baked kind of pale, like there's very little browning.
So um that is and there's a bunch of them. There's a bunch of pizzarias down uh the street. Like I mean, I guess if it's by quantity of pizzeria, maybe it might be the you know, the per capita uh uh pizza capital of the world, but it's a slightly, you know, like what you would get in a like uh cafeteria, right? I mean, these are and and some people will love it and be fans of it, and it's uh it's a style. It's it's definitely a a type of pizza that uh numerous pizza people in Old Forge really have a liking.
Huh. And so and the aluminum pans are shiny. Is that one of the reasons why there's no crust development dark? It's not dark at all. It's like they use shiny aluminum pants.
Uh no, it's one of your your regular kitchen uh sheet pans, aluminum. So it'll also bend and warp as as it's baking, so you don't get like that nice uh crispy bottom underneath the pizza. Sounds delightful. It's uh it's yeah. So uh if you had to say what style of pizza let's assume it's not its own style.
Pizza Hut is what is it? I think uh Pizza Hut would call New York style a distant cousin, a relative that they uh don't see anymore. But they might have a uh maybe some DNA uh in common. Huh. So maybe maybe that.
But Pizza Hut used to be good. I don't know how old you are, but I know that there was a point where it, I don't know if you recall, or maybe it is that childhood pizza syndrome that, you know, it was enough cheese, enough, you know, uh, you know, big enough, it was good enough. But I I I seem to recall as a kid that it wasn't as terrible. We I grew up in Mexico City and we had Pizza Hut and it was like a special thing to go on your birthday to Pizza Hut. And maybe I have those sorts of associations with it, but it's it's definitely a very different uh animal at this point.
I mean I believe Pizza Hut like one of the things they do is grease the hell out of their pan so that it it like almost the bottom gets kind of fried and uh and they need to do that because they viciously overtop their pizzas. What do you what are your thoughts on viciously overtopped pizzas? You know I know some people like them but I think that the problem you have with that is that sometimes it steams whatever's underneath it and it doesn't really uh you know whatever you're having including the dough could get stay like gummy um so I don't know if you've had like Chicago uh stuffed crust um no I've had regular Chicago uh deep dish but I've never had this no I've never had the stuffed guy the stuffed crust is almost it's uh you wonder why they put the you know the the second layer of dough there because it almost it's it stays it doesn't it never really cooks and so it almost feels like it's more cheese but it's really raw dough. Again sounds delicious are the things that happen yeah right I mean we did encounter a few horrors on this trip. I had a banana topped pizza in Buenos Aires, and I only had it because I how could I not?
I mean, it's on the menu. We have to we have to see what this this banana pizza is, and it's as awful as you might imagine. But there were there were a few of those things that we encountered uh throughout the research. Well, so is that part of your Brazilian thin crust pizza, which I know nothing about. I'd like you to tell me a little bit.
I've never been to Brazil. So what's that? What's that all about? Uh so yeah, we went, we were on the fence on whether we should go to South America. Um, but when we started to see like the you know, the the the visual aspects of you know the characteristics of these different pizzas, we thought, you know, it's they look like they're actual styles that we need to see, document, learn about, and also figure out if if they should get a recipe in the book.
And uh uh Sao Paulo alone has 2,000 pizzeria. I mean that's uh uh it's a large city, yes, but still 2,000 of anything uh is is pretty remarkable. Uh it is thin crust. Um it is a it has you know, you can have like your average normal like tomato sauce cheese topped uh pizza, but uh as it happens in many places, you have uh sort of like an adaptation of toppings that uh you know, depending on what's available, people will put on pizza. So some of the things that we saw uh very frequently is like just canned tuna fish.
Uh we had uh you know hard-boiled eggs, there was uh hearts of palm, uh shrimp is a huge one, um like together on the same pizza. Like all of that together? All of that? Yeah, and yeah. Uh yeah, but then you also like another common one was like our pepperoni.
They call it calabresa, and it's like a similar sausage, so it's, you know, it's a it's a sausage that is is popular in in Brazil that they also put on a pizza and it's wonderful. But it's thin crust, it has its own rituals too. I mean, I think that that is another important important cultural aspect of pizza is that wherever you go, it has like different cultural uh you know aspects that are important to to talk about. Like it's a people only have pizza for dinner in Sao Paulo. Um there are a few places that are open for lunch, but it's almost out of the question to to have it for lunch.
But here's an you know, to the point of eating pizza with fork and knife, that's how it's eaten in Brazil. Um uh the newer pizzeria is actually encourage people to use their hands to eat pizza, but people eat it with fork and knife, and it's like table side, it's like a little fancier. So people like go have pizza, and the waiter brings you your pizza to your table and puts it on a tray on the side and will serve you slices as you're eating them. It's a little bit more uh there's a little bit more of a ritual around it that is is more of a special event. Uh but if you go to Buenos Aires, it's completely different, and it's a completely different pizza.
It's I would say that that one might be the most similar to Pizza Hut because it's baked in a pan that is oiled. Um it's a thick crust, and the amount of cheese they put on this pizza is insane. I mean, you cut a slice of a hot pizza, and there's so much cheese that it it just completely wraps the slice when it melts, and it just pours down and covers on top of it. But it's the sort of pizza you have one of one slice, and you're kind of done. Yeah, I don't like that.
I like a pizza that you could have two, two and a half slices. That's a more of a like preferred. Yeah. You know what I do? You know what I do all the time?
Since since I turned 40, I always put salad on my pizza no matter what it is. I always order a salad, throw the salad on the pizza, you it, shove it in my face. I don't know. I just like it. No, no, I I don't believe in health.
Uh but uh I don't know, something about I just like having the green crunchy. I I guess it started. Nastasi and I used to, when we went to Roberta's all the time, we would want to throw fresh arugula on our pizza and they would never give it to us, so we started just bringing it with us. You imagine going into a restaurant with your own arugula with your own arugula and throwing it on the rice though? Yeah.
Yeah. Because they would because you know why we did it? Because they had it in the restaurant but wouldn't let us buy it. Isn't that messed up? Anyway, so like uh yeah, we used to do that.
So that that's what I do. Um I'm a horror show. I also use an unconscionable amount of uh crushed red pepper, but that's enough enough of me. So how did this work in the book? Did you guys do the trip in the middle of writing it?
I mean, you could tell me. Like, like the way you started is you start like here's the styles and then here's the research, but you had to have done a lot of preliminary research before you did the trip, no. Yeah, we started uh the project towards the tail end of our bread book, which came out in 2017. So there was a period of time where uh the kitchen staff, including myself, were done with all of the material we had to turn in for the book. And so between that happening and you know, starting the new uh publishing the hard you know print of uh of modernist bread, uh we got working on on the pizza book.
So there was a good about year or so of uh RD and experimentation that occurred before we started going on trips. Uh, because the more we read, we also there were things that we learned about pizza that we didn't know, like you know, the fact that there is uh distinct styles of pizza in South America, or how fanatical people can be about Neapolitan pizza in Tokyo, for example, uh, you know, all of these things that you start to learn as you start to dig deeper and deeper. So uh so the trips occurred, uh I would say uh most the bulk of the trips were in 2018, so on year two of the project. Um, and those really helped either clarify the vision or fine-tune uh recipes or completely eradicate recipes and and basically rewrite them because the idea was to basically learn to go to different different pizzerias and pizzaiolas that were willing to talk to us and show us how they did their pizza. Um there were there was some a lot of of learning that came from that, including that there's no one standard way of making, like, you know, in in Naples, there's like the VPN, right?
But nobody really follows it. I mean, there's no if nobody follows it to the T, uh, but you sort of have to to get the certification, but everybody does it slightly differently or vastly differently. Uh there's many you know, changes that people do and adapt their their recipes to. Um, which we also mentioned the book, and you know, because there were different ways of making Neapolitan pizza in the US, you have like the long 48 hour, 24 hour cold proof. In Naples, it's overnight at most.
Um, and then there's a VPN version. So we have three very different uh Neapolitan style recipes. They're all like for a different purpose in a in a different use, but um those were the things that that we learned as we went and we just started to like insert them into the book um as we saw. So as a breadhead and a pizza head, do you think that the cult of hyper long fermentations is gone like overboard in this country? Like that it's like it's almost like remember like the cult of espresso where the espresso all of a sudden now is like only like 10 milliliters out of the out of the puck.
It's like you think that it's gone beyond like what you would need. Because like for me, I know I have a problem. I do a lot of whole wheat stuff. So like if I let my stuff go that long and get slack because I have too much, I have too many enzymes in my dough, so everything gets slack if I let it go that long. What do you think?
Mm-hmm. I agree. I think that there is a sort of like a sweet spot for cold proofing, uh, which is between 24 and 48 hours. But we did have a lot of uh, you know, pizza that are doing like seven two seventy-two hours. Um, you know, one guy that's doing Roman pizza, like he even advertises it on his menu.
The 96 hour cold proof. Um it's not it it I don't know that it makes things better. Uh I don't know that cold proofing is all that important, really, if if you're fermenting your dough properly. I think that it, I mean, it slows things down. Uh you have uh, you know, uh uh, you know, whatever activity would happen at room temperature happens in refrigeration too, just a lot slower.
Um, it does make the dough easier to handle. I mean, that there's there are some pros to cold proofing your dough, but I would cut it off at 48 hours. I would say that after 48 hours, you're really not gonna be seeing very much uh improvement on your dough. Um, but if you if you do like our master neopolitan pizza dough, is a 24-hour bulk fermentation at room temperature. It never touches the refrigerator.
So how hard is that to titrate them? How like the how how hard is it to get your yeast dosing exactly right to hit 24 hours at room temperature? Yeah, I mean, there's we had the precedent of what we learned from our bread book, which was uh you know, multiple experiments on percentages of yeast. You more or less, when you make a lot of dough, there's a point where you know what's you know, understanding a recipe by baker's percentage that you understand what uh percentage, how long it's going to take to ferment. Um from point one, the difference between 0.2, 0.3, 0.5, how long, how much time you have, it kind of becomes this uh I guess second nature understanding of of how much yeast is enough.
Um, but also because, for example, if you think of a preferment like pulich, if it's a if it's a preferment that you're gonna do, you know, 18, 24 hours ahead of time, use a minuscule amount of yeast. So then we thought, what if we just do this for the dough? And we didn't have to do a lot of tries to realize that that was just the right amount. Um, so you you rely a lot on like background work that you did beforehand to get to these numbers. And as a as a chef, as a cook, your go-to is what, SAF red?
I mean, you give exhaustive ways to like go back and forth between the different yeasts, but I mean, is there a reason for the average person, even professional, to use anything for pizza other than SAF red? FAF red is good because it's it's instant, and I think that you know SAF is the brand. And you know, for those of who don't know, if they they find other brands of instant yeast that'll work fine, but that's the important distinction to use instant versus active, uh, mostly because instant has more live yeast cells per gram than active does, because the process of producing active yeast is a little harsher on the on the yeast cells. So there's more dead yeast cells, which is why you have to use like hot water to kind of like wake it up uh and break through all the dead yeast cells to get to the living yeast cells. And so that alters your dough temperature.
So it's kind of a mess to use active. So don't use active if if you can avoid it. Fresh is fine. Uh for those who do not know, it's a it's basically it's yeast that is in a uh in a in a moist form in a in a uh uh like a cake, if you will. It's it looks like about a pound of butter, has a similar look.
Uh, but it's already hydrated. Uh the problem we have with with fresh yeast is that not every maker will put its expiration date, and you only really have like two or three weeks to work with it uh before it it starts to decline. Um so if you have a lot of production and you do a lot, sure, go ahead and use uh fresh you know, cake yeast. But if you're doing it every now and then or if you're not sure about the the shelf life of your least, just use instant yeast. Even in professional environment though, even in a professional environment, I mean, I don't really I mean, have you uh you've done the test, so you tell me any flavor advantage to fresh?
I don't think so. No, and that's but people will die on their sword on it, right? And so that's why we we wanted to make sure, okay, if we're gonna say it's instant, then we we need to back it up. And so we did numerous tests on, you know, flavor is very subjective. So that was the last thing we tasted, we tested.
Uh we wanted to see if it had an effect on the rheology of the dough, meaning how the dough, the integrity of the dough. Um, so we would make a bunch of different percentages of yeast with both instant and fresh with different flowers, different hydration proportions, and then we put it through uh a machine that's called an extensograph, which is a machine that is going to basically you put a strip of dough on on the machine, and it's got it's like a robotic finger that goes up and down. And so it basically pulls the the strip of dough up, and once it snaps, uh what it's gonna tell you is how extensible the dough is. You know, basically, how much can I stretch the stove before applying X amount of weight uh uh to it will make it basically rip. Um, and so we didn't see a lot of differences to to that would be remarkable that would say, you know, use this yeast instead of that yeast.
Um and the flavor part, I mean, like that is different from each person. You really would have to bake the pizza on its own without any sauce or cheese to be able to really tell the difference if there was a taste uh you know difference because um that's just the nature of pizza, it's bread with other stuff on it. But in our uh triangle tests, uh the triangle tests are tests that you do to get people's unbiased uh opinion on what uh they perceive from what they're tasting, whether there's a difference between one thing or the other, or no difference at all. Uh so we weren't were not able to detect, people were not able to detect um strong differences between pizzas made with one type of yeast versus another yeast. So, you know, there's there is something to be said.
If you've always used fresh yeast and it's always worked for you, then great. You don't need to switch. And if you've always used instant, don't feel bad that you're not using fresh. They're they're both can be used interchangeably. If you use them in the right quantities, you know, you need a lot less of the instant because it's dry than you do of the fresh because it has water.
So you just need to know what the conversion is from one to the other. And speaking of it, if you like conversions or if you like tests of things, you gotta check out the book. Because it's like it's all of that stuff. There's a there's a a page where you guys uh review all the different flowers. And actually, surprisingly, I'm surprised.
One of your main recommendations for a lot of styles is kind my standard kind of house brand, which is Hackers. You use a lot of Hackers. What uh what what draw what draws you to them? Uh so I started to use Hackers. Um, you know, one of the the uh the people that we learned uh a lot from is Tony Gemini in San Francisco.
Um and I took a few classes with him and worked at his pizzeria um to basically learn, you know, how he makes pizza. Um that's one of the ones that he uses for uh a specific style of pizza. He likes the strength that's in it. It's a really it's a a higher protein content flour uh that has a particular strength, but it also stretches nicely, right? So because you can have flowers that are very strong that you're trying to extend, and it's just like a rubber band that pulls back, right?
So uh an ideal flower is gonna have a dough that's gonna produce a strong dough, but it also can yield to pressure without ripping and tearing the dough. So um you may or may not know this, but heckers has another name, it's also called Sarasota. Um not spelled like Florida, not spelled like Florida, spelled with a C. No, yeah. Correct.
And it's the same flower. So if somebody can't find find Hackers for some reason, Sarasota is the one-to-one, it's made by the same company, they just have two different names. Why do they do that? It's like Hellman's mayonnaise and best made it's the same mayonnaise. What the heck?
So dumb. Why do you think I don't know? I don't know. I have no idea. It's a great question then.
So for my crew, because I'm gonna have to ask the questions in from the Patreon a minute before we run out of time, but for my crew, things like uh they're gonna they're gonna love things like uh vacuum, vacuum draining of the mozzarella. You want to describe things like that that my my crew might particularly enjoy? Yeah, you know, I one of the things that we were thinking is like when you buy fresh mozzarella, it comes in, you know, this ball form. It it's about I think a hundred grams ball on average. Uh, but every pizzeria that I know that utilizes that type of mozzarella, what they do is they have to basically cut it.
There's different ways of cutting it, and then they have to drain it, whether it's overnight, you know, in a uh like a some sort of straining environment or you know, cheese top, what have you, because there's too much moisture in it. Um and so you know, I I keep wondering why doesn't somebody already sell this cheese already pre-cut and pre-drained, so I can just use it. Um and the the thing is like you can do your own uh if you want to do there's different ways of doing it, but you can also uh you know, one of the ways to do it is to put like the fresh mozzarella, cut it in the shape that you want to cut it. Uh you know what works great for cutting fresh mozzarella easily is a French fry cutter. Really?
It cuts them into perfect, yeah. It cuts it into basically um even size pieces of cheese. You don't have to freeze it. No, no, it cuts the uh what I like to do is like I'll put two inside the the French fry cutter so that the one behind pushes the one in front and so forth. Um but you get these evenly cut pieces of cheese that what we like of that is that it'll melt, they'll melt at a similar rate.
Which which cutter are you using? Which uh which which size cutter? Oh, I'll have to get back to you, but it's the biggest one you can find. And then we found it. Can I say where?
Sure. Because it it's yeah, it's called the Websteron store. Oh, yeah, yeah. But those guys are evil, but yeah, sure. That they they have everything.
They're not that it's not that they're evil. It's not that we I'm sorry. I maybe I have nothing against them other than they've swallowed up a lot of business. You know what I'm saying? Sure.
I mean, the the the Bowery is the shadow of its former self. Yeah, well, well, if I was gonna say you might find find it in the Bowery. I mean, I don't know how far people uh live that live in your uh, you know, or listen to your show, but um the Bowery would you can certainly find it there. But it's a very restaurant specific piece of equipment that um you know it it's it's got these like feet that are like suckers so that it can really hold on to the table. Um but that's the one we use, and it cuts them to the same size.
But anyway, so you're using like a half inch probably, right? A 13 millimeter cutter. I think I think that's the biggest one you can find. Well, they they do a wedge, they do a wedge cut, but uh you're not using the wedge cut, right? You're using a square cut.
No, no. Yeah, yeah. So it's probably 13 millimeters. There's an attachment for a RoboCoup that you you can also do it, but a RoboCoo is really expensive, so maybe not everybody has it. French fried cutter, you know, it's it's something that it's it was less than a hundred bucks.
I mean, have you had luck with the RoboCo? Because it mutilates cheese when you're putting it into it. You know what I mean? It's a good thing. Oh, I don't love it.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't love it. I like to I prefer to use the French fry cutter for for cutting uh even shapes. Because you can hand tear too, but they also when you hand tear, it's a pretty nice look.
But the hand tear, there you have different pieces, different sizes, they're gonna melt uh at different rates. Even if we're talking about 60 seconds or even more, like because you can use fresh mozzarella on any piece that you want. Uh but uh if you have like very small pieces, very large pieces, they're gonna melt at different times. And also therefore brown at different times if it's like a longer, longer bake. Um but putting the you know, the cut mozzarella inside a caroback bag with uh clean paper towel, uh, you pull a vacuum, you have an instant strain.
Because sometimes you can forget, right? I mean, it can happen. You you have to plan ahead. Um and that's when we saw that we was like, well, people could just buy it like this. Why why why not be able to provide uh this sort of service if if you're selling uh fresh mozzarella, especially if you need to, you know, if you maybe you don't have enough people working in your kitchen, maybe you're short stuff, maybe you don't have a bunch of time.
It certainly is a convenient product that that could be sold. Right. Like I know some of my friends they they sell like an intermediate cheese, like it's like halfway between a mozzarella and a scomorza, but it's not the same thing as cutting it and draining it. You know what I mean? It's not the same product.
Right. Right. It melts differently, it has slightly different taste, sure. Yeah, yeah. Uh and one more question from me before I get to look.
I'm gonna get my head stabbed by John here for not getting to the proper questions. But this is going into bread, into back into bread bread head again, but as part of pizza. So you know how we all talk about uh hydration, right? But the hydration, we always talk about it on the on the dough side before it's cooked, right? And you know, you and I both know that, you know, protein is a factor, damaged starch is a factor, uh, whether there's bran, other inclusions that have uh that hold on to water as a factor, right?
And almost all of the research that I've read focuses on the the what the water does to the dough when it's still a dough, including up to like the size of the bubbles uh as it's raising, etc. etc. And you've done amazing work in modernist bread and here showing the effect of hydration on cooked on the cooked dough structure. But what does the high let's say that you could have uh two different flowers and you could get them rheologically identical. Again, rheology for those of you, but you know, is the is the is the the kind of texture and pulling and snapping of the dough.
You could get them identical at different hydrations. What effect would that have on the cooked product? I think that the most one of the the things that you're looking at on a on a cooked dough is that uh water is going to affect how long the dough is gonna take to bake as well. Uh, because there's something that occurs inside a dough while it's cooking that is extremely interesting. It's called a heat pipe effect, which is that once you put your dough inside the oven, uh, what's going to be happening is on the surface, the surface is what gets hot first, right?
Because it's in closest contact to to the hot environment. Um, and so what occurs is the water that is on the surface, the little droplets, uh they're basically going to get hot enough that they're gonna turn into steam. And then that steam has to go somewhere. Uh the heat pipe effect is a property of steam that what it likes to do is it likes to find a cooler spot. So once that dough starts to get hot on the surface, the steam is not escaping.
What it's doing is it's going, it's digging deeper and deeper into the dough. Um, so basically, when you look at the dough at a dough next time at a baked loaf of bread, you'll see you know, the crunch structure, there isn't a single bubble that will be intact. There is, they're all basically inflating with steam, they pop and then they go to the bubble directly below them or in closest contact to them. And then the same thing happens again. It expands and then it pops and it goes down again.
So steam is finding the coldest spot and it's always going to be at the core at of the dough. So once the temperature at the core of the dough starts to sort of equalize to what the temperature of the steam is, then the steam is going to start to escape from the surface. So the more water that you have inside your dough, the longer this process is going to take. Additionally, more water is gonna mean that the crust is gonna take a longer time to set. Uh so if you want a crispy loaf of bread, like you know, a nice crusty sourdough, if it's very high in hydration, it's always worth venting, meaning either cracking your oven dough a little bit longer, or if you have like an actual bread oven opening the vent for a little bit longer, so you can form a nice crust on the outside of your loaf of bread.
So it's it has to do with the duration of the bake and with uh formation of crust as well. Yeah, that heat pipe thing was my favorite thing from modernist bread, I have to say. It's great, isn't it? It's it's I love explaining it because when people first it's non-intuitive, right? At first you think, oh, well, heap is this heat is escaping, the steam is coming out as it's baking.
And it's actually it wants to go to where it's coldest. And that's it's a very interesting phenomenon that occurs. Well, and it answered for me a question that I had had forever. Why does banana bread take so long to cook? Right?
Why does banana bread take so long? Because it doesn't form that open structure on the inside. So that's why it takes an hour or more to cook a banana bread, even though it's cooking, you know what I mean? Because everyone's like, oh, it's because it's cooking at a low temperature. It's like, no, it cooks at a low temperature because otherwise it would burn in the length of time it takes to cook.
It's right. That's why. You know what I mean? It's always like, uh, to me, like as soon as I read that, I was like, you know, it was like uh I had the I hit my head and I said I could have had a V8. I uh I love that.
That's great stuff. Uh so I have a question. But also, you know, go ahead. No, no, I wasn't. The other thing is banana bread is really dense.
Banana bread is super dense, and so that that is it it's very comparable to like a a rye bread, right? These are breads that are very dense, they're gonna take long periods of time to bake. Uh a rye loaf of bread is uh, you know, rye can absorb up to 16 times its weight in water. So that these are why these breads they take so much longer to bake, but also why they last so long. They they don't uh stale as quickly as other breads might because of the the ability of water retention and the type of starch that you have in rye bread.
So anyway, that was just a quick update on density. Well, the thing about rye though, that's such a pain in the butt is that you have to wait so long after it comes out of the oven. It just takes so long to set. I hate that. Yes.
Well the other thing. No, because it's so fragile that you can't even vacuum speed it. Like if you're using like a high protein flour and you want to vacuum it, you can vacuum it, and sure, you might like rupture some of the stuff on the inside, but you'll just destroy a rye bread by throwing it in a vacuum machine to cool it. You know what I mean? Like just freaking ruin it.
You can't speed cool it. Um one more question on this. Do you have a trick? And I don't remember because it's been a long time. So like one of the issues that people, if they think about it, have with uh very high hydration products like whole wheat, like rye, is that they mold very quickly.
Um so like they don't stale, but they also they mold. So like is there like anything you have for that? Uh you know, I think the why do things mold is because they're sitting out in an environment that you know mold finds uh friendly, right? So I would say that being preemptive is probably your best solution. So if you have uh bread and it's been sitting out for you know an extended period of time, it's because you're not eating it fast enough.
So why not freeze some of it? Um I would cut the slices that I want, wrap them or putting in, you know, some sort of you know enclosed environment and freeze them. Uh, because once they're sliced, they're gonna thaw a lot faster. Uh and they'll also, if you're gonna toast them, they'll toast faster, and you don't have to cut this like frozen piece of bread. So I would say that that would be a way.
Otherwise, you're looking at adding uh certain ingredients to bread that uh are like for reducing mold. Um I don't know that I love adding that. Yeah, those uh you know like sodium benzoite, you know. Like I don't know if I want to add that to my because it'll kill the yeast too like there's all of these like side effects to utilizing those ingredients I'm with you and you can toast from frozen too. All right so listen can you put on your chocolate hat for one minute you bet.
Justin Sherrill writes in uh I've been buying deodorized cocoa butter for use in making chocolate bars. Uh most of what I have received has had some plasticish smell to it probably from storage or maybe from the deodorizing process or me I guess from not deodorizing it enough. Any chocolate I'm uh I add any uh anytime I add more than a little bit of this cocoa butter to the chocolate, it takes on that same smell uh especially in milk and white. I've tried several different suppliers with hit or miss results. It's not a strong smell, but given it's one of the three main ingredients, it matters.
Can I deodorize it further or is there some way to mask or overwhelm this I think that initially what you should do is uh probably get a different source of of deodorized uh cocoa beef uh cocoa butter. Uh the two that I would recommend is uh cocoa berry. You can and it it's very convenient because it comes in like these tiny like teardrop size pieces. So you don't have to like cut this huge chunk, you know, huge block of cocoa butter so it melts very easily. I've never had any problem with that uh with cocoa berry uh cocoa butter.
Uh and Marrona you can also get cocoa butter from them. Um so I mean these are re reputable sources. I have looked for you know deodorized cocoa butter for other purposes uh just like whatever brands to see what would be available that is is you know for you know most people they're typically not very good and they're not a hundred percent deodorized but these other two brands um I would recommend but can you stir like an adsorbent like uh bentonite and let it settle out will that do anything in a in a in an oil based thing or can you keep it hot for a while to flash off the volatiles? I mean is there any other thing that you know that works I don't know that it's I mean I would I would say that because it's if it's a fat soluble taste and aroma it's gonna be very hard to get rid of. Uh like if you were to infuse vanilla into like butter how do you get rid of a vanilla taste like completely.
Yeah you I think that the amount of time that it would take to do that. I mean these these are oils that merge into each other and can't really separate them. Uh so I would say you know use that cocoa butter for other purposes get a fresh bucket of of uh cocoa berry or valrona and you know we you won't have to worry about that problem anymore. And they come in like five kilo tubs or something it's like a good amount. So I wonder whether they uh stored the cocoa butter he's getting in PVC because PVC like uh you know PVC wrapping because you know how awful that stuff smells you know what I mean like yeah it could be and any fat that it touches like when so you when someone takes a nice piece of cheese and wraps it in that stuff and then the whole freaking cheese smells like that makes me so angry.
Right. Um okay uh uh Roger Chi uh wants you to know that you are sorely missed in Poughkeepsie and your awesome Hudson chocolates are sorely missed. Uh are there any plans for a modernist pastry? Uh I can't say yet um unfortunately, we are working on well I I I one because of the other. I I can't and therefore I won't.
Um because uh we're working actually on a couple of different projects right now. And it will all eventually, you know, come to light. But uh, you know, that um that's as much as I can say right now. And then uh um we have uh from uh Payne MJ also basically the same question, what's the next what what like what's next on your plate? Because as we know from reading your current book, you started that while you were still working on other ones.
So we know you're already working on something. I mean, yeah. Uh so you know they assume that you will not reveal what you're what you're gonna do. Uh and then link to that wants to know regardless what uh we on the show think you should work on. I mean, look, obviously, I mean, pastry is a big gap.
You haven't done cocktails yet. You haven't stepped into my into my little uh corner of the universe yet. But uh I don't know. Like what what you like aside from what you're working on, what are you interested in thinking about right now? I guess we'll put it that way.
Yeah, I think an interesting, you know, when when we finally reveal what this is, nobody's gonna be surprised. I can say that. It will be like, oh, okay, cool. Um but I think that you know, there is a an entire world out there of baked goods that uh require our attention. Um and it's something that has really interested me and therefore uh those of us who work here.
So I think that if we're uh working on anything in earn earnest, it's these uh this particular world of baked goods. So what do you think about the panotone explosion uh of the past two years? You know, I think it's great, mostly because uh whenever you or a baker would make them, let's say six years ago, seven years ago, what the general audience had them to compare had to compare them to would be the junk that you get at the grocery store that's made, you know, six, seven months ahead of time in some factory, maybe, maybe not in Italy. Um so they would say, like, why are you charging you know 20, 30 dollars for these things? When I can buy it for five dollars at my you know, local local deli or even my like stopping shop or whatever grocery store you have.
Um and it also like made people they dislike it so much that what they do is they'll toast it and dunk it in coffee. And you know, like that's to me is just wrong. Um so I'm glad that all of this pentatone explosion is happening. I mean, I think we need to, you know, basically uh the person to thank is Roy Schwartzappel in in California. I mean, he's single-handedly uh made this bread popular again, and he's made it popular to have not just for the holidays.
It's uh the year-round thing, right? It's like pie. Is is pie supposed to only be had in you know Thanksgiving, or can we just have pie year-round? Yeah, don't get me started on pie. Don't get me started on pie.
You like pie? Uh it's not that I like pie fanatics. Obsessed. A fanatic doesn't even begin to describe it. Yeah, yeah.
That's a good obsession to have. Well, in fact, I was gonna not get into it, but like the one thing about the the old forged pizza is they refer to it as a cut. And my favorite pie guru, my pie guru to end all pie gurus, also at time to time would refer to them as cuts, not as slices of pie. So I'm all for uh whatever. All right.
Starving vi starving violist writes in violist, violist, not viol, violist. Uh I'm looking forward just talking to you, Francisco. I'm looking forward to hearing you on cooking issues. I'm a devoted uh homes hobbyist cook and have invested uh what some would say is an insane amount of time and energy uh baking from modernist bread since it first came out. My question is about hand mixing versus machine mixing.
No matter how thoroughly I mix my bread by hand, the gluten development and resulting loaf volume never match the loaves that I make with a mixer. Even after adding additional stretch and folds and every trick suggested in in your book, the hand mixed loaves never seem to reach full gluten development. Am I missing something? Perhaps a temperature factor. Modernist cuisine and other reliable bread books claim that hand mixing is, if anything, superior, but my hands tell a different story.
Please help. I mean, there's a few things without having seen the process from beginning to end that I could uh make uh you know some assumptions on. Uh, the first is uh, you know, make sure that you're using a strong bread flour. I mean, that's that's number one, right? Um and the second would be that some things that could help is uh mixing.
If you're gonna just do folds, I would say do your initial mix first, try autolis, and by this I mean just mixing water and flour. Uh if you have a preferment, you can throw that in there. Uh let those ingredients like just mix them till they look like a almost like a paste, uh let them sit for half an hour, then add your salt and whatever other ingredients, and do a more thorough mix by hand. If you're just mixing in a bowl, uh that could slow things down. But you know, after you do that initial mix, put it on a wood table or a marble, and then knead it on that.
You're gonna get a lot more bang for your buck there with you know physical absorption. Um, and so mix it there until it starts to get some body and some some stretch and some elasticity with the kneading motions that we show in the book. And then something that could help develop your dough is that instead of doing your bulk fermentation uh at room temperature, if you do it in a warmer environment, that helps to strengthen the dough. Uh it also is good for fermentation, it's good for a bunch of other things. But if you can find a place to put your dough that's about 80 degrees Fahrenheit, uh this is going to have a really good effect on your bulk fermentation on the dough as far as strengthening and flavor development and tenacity.
Um, in reality, if you're not doing, if you're doing all the folds and that's not enough, just keep going. I mean, really keep going with the folds. Uh, if it feels like the dough is getting too bubbly and gassy, then at this point, switch it into a cooler environment. So you can basically uh determine the the how the fermentation curve is gonna go by how well you can control the temperature. If let's say you don't have a place to keep it at 80 degrees Fahrenheit, well, maybe you fill a bag with warm water and the tub sits on top of that uh for you know in between folds.
Uh maybe you have a like a you know, one of these like back warmers, right? People put them on on their back to, you know, uh if they have like sore muscles or whatnot, that could help. Um, you know, there's different ways of keeping warm environments that don't require like a ton of money. And if it's you need to cool it down, just put an ice pack on top of it, you know, and before you give it a fall so that the coldness goes disperses uh inside of it, uh, or maybe the tub is sitting on an ice pack, um, you know, just cooling down. So you're basically slowing down or speeding up the yeast as you see fit.
But I would say if it feels, if you've done six or seven folds and it's still not a hundred percent there, just keep going uh and control the temperature of your dough. So all of those factors should, I hope, uh help from getting the the right flour to the auto lease to doing a uh more robust initial mix by hand and then just doing uh temperature control between folds uh from start to finish until you reach um the elasticity you're looking for. Good tips. Lightning round, four questions, two minutes. Mood therapist, pineapple on pizza, thoughts.
Uh it's fine. I wouldn't order it, but if it's what's available, I'll have it. Uh and it's always better to use fresh pineapple than canned pannel. Oh interesting. We uh we don't have the time to get into it.
Uh from Frank Mosca, uh, longtime pizza, home pizza maker and enjoying Modernist Pizza Podcast. Also, shout out to Jackie Molecules. Something I have been curious about for a long time. It seems like the Italians are the only culture who specifically talk about digestibility when describing their pizza, and I find it quite common. This triggers nostasi as well.
She hates this. Uh as if a point of pride selling point or even a defining characteristic. I guess the point is that fermentation has an impact on how our bodies process. Oh, dude, I got 15 seconds. All right, what's the answer?
Uh the answer is that it's a little bit of BS, and there's really no way to measure digestibility because it's different for everybody. All right, and Quinn wants to know on the way, I guess it's the last one we're gonna get to wants to if you have any advice on the way out for people breaking into culinary consulting, especially when part of the value proposition is using modern and technical ingredients. He has a good ice cream book you should look at, by the way. Yes. Uh it's called Frozen Desserts, and I'm the author of it.
Nice, nice. No, but like uh nobody no say uh no, but uh how do you uh how do you get into the uh how do you get into this business? Of consulting? Yeah. Oh my god.
I don't know. LinkedIn. I mean you gotta meet people you have to go out and unfortunately meet people I don't know there's many there's many different approaches a great answer thank you well uh Francisco thanks for coming on check out uh the modernist pizza podcast uh edited by our own Jackie Molecules check out uh modernist pizza the book uh how much does it cost nowadays Francisco oh I don't know it depends on where you buy it uh but anywhere between 350 400 all right well it's a it's it's a lot it's a lot of work it's the only pizza book you need it that's definitely what's the only three puts pizza books you need anyway thanks so much for coming on I appreciate it cooking issues my pleasure thank you so much
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