The Art of Manliness - The Secrets to Making the Perfect Pizza

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.920 pizza it's ubiquitous it's a fixture at parties and office break rooms and there's a good chance

00:00:16.280 you order from your favorite place for dinner every single week but there's one setting where

00:00:20.280 pizza doesn't show up very often and that's in your own oven having been made in your own kitchen

00:00:24.680 my guest today who spent decades pursuing the perfect pizza says you ought to be making your

00:00:28.820 own pies more often and will teach you the secrets of getting restaurant quality pizza at home his

00:00:33.000 name is dan richer and he's the owner and chef of raza new jersey as well as the author of the joy

00:00:37.500 of pizza everything you need to know we begin our conversation with what makes pizza such an awesome

00:00:41.920 go-to inexhaustibly delicious dish and how to overcome the obstacles that typically prevent

00:00:46.460 people from creating pizzeria level pizza at home dan then gives us his recommendations on sauce

00:00:51.060 cheese and toppings in order to create the perfect pizza pie including his take on that most burning

00:00:55.700 of questions does pineapple belong on a pizza after the show's over check out our show notes at

00:01:00.180 aom.is pizza all right dan richard welcome to the show thanks for having me all right well so you

00:01:17.100 got a book out called the joy of pizza and it's all about making your it's about your quest to make

00:01:23.940 the perfect pizza get as close as you can to the perfect pizza tell us what led you on this quest

00:01:29.160 to get as close as you can to pizza perfection as possible yeah so i mean that's that's like

00:01:35.020 that's a hard question to answer but the the gist of it is i was 26 years old i bought a failing

00:01:43.580 pizzeria i maxed out three credit cards and borrowed very small sums of money from a lot of different

00:01:50.160 people and i at 26 i had my own restaurant and it happened to have two wood-fired ovens and a really

00:01:57.800 bad pizza recipe and i recognized very early in my career that the restaurant business is a meritocracy

00:02:06.480 the better we are at our jobs the more people enjoy it and return and that's what makes a successful

00:02:15.620 restaurant we're good at what we do people are going to come back so i just really wanted to make

00:02:23.920 the pizza as good as i possibly could and i'm still doing that every day it's still not it'll never be

00:02:31.200 finished pizza is a lifelong quest it's it's a series of choices and techniques that we use

00:02:41.040 to put together a pizza which is seems so simple everybody understands pizza my four-year-old son

00:02:48.580 understands pizza but it's extraordinarily complicated when you want to put it together

00:02:56.600 in a way that you truly believe in so you you're the chef of a restaurant the raza pizzeria yes in

00:03:03.680 jersey city new jersey in jersey city new jersey like what kind of pizza do you do like what's your specialty

00:03:07.900 okay so we make american artisanal pizza that's the only way i can describe it it is it's not a

00:03:18.120 new york slice it's not a detroit style pizza it's not sicilian it's not neapolitan uh our fuel of

00:03:26.200 choice happens to be wood so we bake in a wood-fired oven we when i was coming up with the pizza of my

00:03:34.420 dreams i started writing a list of characteristics about pizza in general that i love and that i

00:03:42.780 wanted to recreate in my pizza i knew i didn't want it to be soft i knew i didn't want it to be wet and

00:03:48.780 soggy so i started with a list of maybe eight or ten characteristics and over the years and over the

00:03:56.240 decades at this point i've accumulated a list of about 60 different characteristics about pizza that

00:04:02.920 i think makes my perfect pizza and now listen this is my perfect pizza it's not everyone's perfect

00:04:10.180 pizza but it was a set of blueprints that i used for the creation of our pizza and it's it's a list

00:04:19.140 of characteristics that i use to teach my team and hold my team accountable and let them hold

00:04:24.400 themselves accountable for producing the product that is the raza pizza so uh give us the description

00:04:30.800 like what what is that what is your perfect pizza what are some of the characteristics that it has

00:04:34.040 so we have an idea yeah so it's everything from the structural integrity of it right it should be

00:04:39.440 able to be picked up with your hands and not have that floppy wet soggy thing it should have a crust that is

00:04:50.160 deeply caramelized it should have a crust that is light airy tender big open holes in the crust

00:04:59.900 separated by thin cell walls the flavors of the crust should be aromatic and floral fragrant it should

00:05:09.840 smell and taste like fermented wheat because that's what it is the tomatoes should have a balance between

00:05:17.500 sweetness and acidity the sweetness shouldn't be cloying like i added some sugar to my sauce we don't

00:05:24.240 ever do that tomatoes are a fruit and they should be sweet the cheese should melt and flow fully on

00:05:31.680 the pizza you know it shouldn't be little clumps of uh unmelted cheese yeah i mean there's there's so

00:05:38.540 many what makes pizza i mean it seems like you know pizza night that's a tradition i think in most

00:05:43.180 american families what makes pizza such a go-to food and like even mediocre pizza even pizza that's got

00:05:48.700 the floppy mess with yeah or the cardboard crust it's it's okay you're never like oh this is i've

00:05:55.800 never had a pizza i'm just like this is disgusting i'm like that was okay what is it about pizza that

00:06:00.520 makes it good like that such a go-to yeah so for me it's probably three or four things one it's

00:06:08.200 fundamentally delicious right it it satisfies on a on a very deep level melted cheese tastes great who

00:06:18.540 doesn't love melted cheese right it provides a little bit of protein fatty rich and then it's 0.98

00:06:24.680 balanced by a sweet yet acidic tomato you know an acid always balances fat right acid is kind of the

00:06:34.260 counterpoint to fat and sweetness is the counterpoint to acidity right so you have all of these flavors and

00:06:40.940 it's all baked on on top of a fresh piece of bread because fundamentally pizza is a flat bread

00:06:47.280 with condiments baked onto it so when you bake on something like melted cheese and sweet tomato

00:06:54.500 it's just fundamentally delicious there's also the affordability factor a pizza is not very expensive

00:07:03.060 in the realm of dining out it's accessible and approachable to everyone it's probably the first

00:07:11.860 food that i was able to buy for myself as a child and i'm dating myself a little bit but when i was

00:07:19.400 a kid a slice of pizza was a dollar so i knew that i could scrounge up four quarters nestled inside my couch

00:07:27.900 cushions and go to the store and buy myself a slice of pizza and that's that's childhood that's that's another

00:07:35.600 thing like pizza is deeply ingrained in a child's life it's at every birthday party after baseball

00:07:44.040 games and soccer games school events we had pizza night twice a week when i was growing up and it was

00:07:52.820 it was a way for the family to come together and there's that that equity portion that a kid gets

00:08:01.000 the same slice of pizza as as your parents there's just it's it levels the playing field and it brings

00:08:08.520 people around this communal dish and i i'm personally as a chef i'm obsessed with communal dishes like

00:08:16.040 paella is one of my favorite things to make so we'll make a big batch of paella and i'll take the paella

00:08:22.400 off the grill after it's done and i put it in the center of the table and we all share from one

00:08:28.420 communal dish there's just something so connected about that and that's one of the things that food

00:08:36.240 does in general but when everybody gets their own dish it's it's a little bit less special than when

00:08:42.100 everyone shares from from the center of the table so you you make pizzas for a living but your book is

00:08:48.180 about helping people make pizza at home and i was thinking about this the other day as i was reading your

00:08:52.240 book is you know pizza is a simple dish you know like you said it's bread with cheese and sauce

00:08:56.500 and some toppings on top of it it's can't get simpler than that yet people typically don't make

00:09:02.140 pizza at home like in our own family we've made pizza at our home in our own family before but it's

00:09:06.540 it's rare that we do that and i imagine there's a lot of people like me as well what do you think

00:09:12.040 hold people back from making their own pizzas despite being a simple dish i think pizza making is

00:09:18.160 a very difficult skill i put pizza making in the same category we're we're more similar to plumbers

00:09:27.080 and carpenters than we are to chefs where we have to learn like if i was a carpenter right i have to

00:09:33.840 learn the properties of of wood i have to understand the hardness and how walnuts different from oak and

00:09:41.340 maple and how to treat it slightly differently and then i have to learn the techniques for how to

00:09:46.140 join wood and put pieces put the pieces together to make the art right so i have to understand the

00:09:53.300 science and the technique in order to practice the craft and it's a lifelong pursuit it's not something

00:10:00.100 that you can typically nail the first time you try it i think i've over the course of 20 years of making

00:10:09.740 pizza the first 15 years i had awful success when i tried to bring the restaurant's dough to my house

00:10:17.100 and just bake it in my oven it doesn't come out the same the restaurant equipment is typically the

00:10:24.000 ovens are typically at a slightly higher temperature than your home oven can get so by using a store-bought

00:10:30.820 dough that was produced for say a higher temperature oven which most pizza dough is you're going to have

00:10:37.700 bad results what i did with my doughs in our book is i reverse engineered the dough to be to bake

00:10:45.920 properly in the home oven gotcha does that make sense yeah that makes sense yeah let's talk about

00:10:51.060 that how people can get closer to pizza perfection their home like equipment at your restaurant you're

00:10:55.800 using wood-fired ovens uh you know brick you know people have always seen those at different pizza

00:11:01.780 pizza restaurants do you need something similar in your own home to get a quality pizza

00:11:06.580 absolutely not and that that's one of the the biggest misnomers that prevents people from making

00:11:14.480 pizza in their house oh it's the oven it's not the oven you just need to tailor your dough around the

00:11:22.480 specific oven that you have so there are high temperature ovens now for the home like uni makes

00:11:28.120 one gosney has the rock box and dome there are it's a booming industry people are getting these cool

00:11:36.040 little home ovens to make a pizza that you need a higher temperature oven for but your home oven can make

00:11:43.620 equally as good if not better pizza than any of those high temperature ovens but you need the right

00:11:50.020 formula and that's one of the things that that we go in depth in our book is specifically tailoring

00:11:57.640 the dough recipe around the home oven because i'm not going to use i'm not going to use the same dough

00:12:03.000 like let's say i make one batch of dough i can't bake one pizza in the home oven and one pizza in my

00:12:08.400 wood-fired oven it doesn't work like that what is it about the dough i mean maybe we get into this

00:12:13.180 but like kind of briefly it's really yeah it's really just the water content of the dough is

00:12:17.960 different because water so water is a very good conductor of heat so because the heat is so low in a

00:12:25.520 in a home oven you actually need additional water in the dough so that the heat transfers to the to the

00:12:35.040 dough more efficiently now let's say i used a wood-fired oven my water content would be very

00:12:42.980 low because the heat is so intense that i want a low water content to prevent burning so if i used

00:12:50.980 a very wet dough in a very hot oven the water would aid in heat transfer to the dough too too efficiently

00:12:58.700 and the pizza would burn which is something it's like not common sense you know it's really like i i

00:13:05.880 had to study a bit of thermodynamics to understand how a pizza bakes properly in different environments

00:13:12.020 it's super interesting and that's the thing about pizza like it's yes it's a simple food but there

00:13:17.540 are tons of rabbit holes that you could go down and i like i just i really enjoy going down those

00:13:23.360 rabbit holes it's fun it's engaging it keeps me learning it keeps me growing it keeps my team engaged

00:13:30.020 and it's just it's it's endless in in what we can learn from such such a simple and understandable

00:13:39.700 food okay so the key to making good pizza at home is you got to raise the water level in the dough

00:13:44.800 and you got recipes in the book with exact ratios on that and it all depends on the type of oven you're

00:13:51.780 using but besides that is there anything else people can do uh to cook good pizza in a conventional oven

00:13:58.420 like for example do you recommend a pizza stone yeah so there's there are two main pieces of equipment

00:14:06.660 or tools that you absolutely have to have in order to make great pizza in your home oven okay one is a

00:14:14.420 scale okay for weighing your ingredients you have to weigh out all of your ingredients for these recipes

00:14:22.020 to work okay baking is it's all based on ratios the ratio of flour to water the ratio of salt to flour

00:14:30.660 the ratio of yeast to flour they have to be weighed out because volumetric measurements are not accurate

00:14:38.740 your cup of flour versus my cup of flour even if you try to scoop two cups of flour in a row you're

00:14:45.700 going to get different quantities of flour so you got to use a scale because 100 grams of flour is 100

00:14:51.940 grams of flour all around the world man so the other tool that you need is a pizza stone a pizza steel or

00:14:57.700 some fire bricks you have to build thermal mass into your home oven pizza bakes in a multi-directional

00:15:07.220 way okay it's baking from the bottom up okay it's called conduction it's that direct contact your pizza

00:15:14.500 sitting on a hot surface okay and it's cooking the pizza from the bottom then you have radiant heat

00:15:22.180 and convection where you have moving hot air and and waves of heat from all the other directions and that's

00:15:31.300 what's cooking the the rim of the pizza and melting the cheese cooking the toppings and making it all

00:15:38.260 come together so we really you have to balance those three types of heat and it's really the radiant heat

00:15:44.980 and the uh conductive heat that we're that we're trying to keep in balance okay your home oven has a wire rack

00:15:52.260 there's no possible way to get that conductivity that conduction to cook the bottom of your pizza so

00:15:59.700 you'll be left with a a pale white it'll probably be completely raw on the bottom and that's just not

00:16:05.780 delicious you have to build that conductive heat by inserting something into your home oven to capture the

00:16:14.420 heat of your oven and then then be able to transfer by conduction to your pizza okay so a pizza stone a

00:16:24.260 pizza steel or even fire bricks like every big box store sells fire bricks uh that you can just

00:16:32.820 get eight or ten of them put them into your oven close close together you don't want gaps in between

00:16:39.620 them preheat that thermal mass for a minimum of an hour two hours is better you want that heat from

00:16:51.140 your oven to be stored in that thermal mass to be available for conduction so if you don't have that

00:16:57.860 thermal mass don't even try to make a pizza it's not going to come out great we're going to take a quick

00:17:02.500 break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show okay so you make your dough like the

00:17:10.500 thing i think i think it might intimidate a lot of people is like shaping the dough into a pizza shape

00:17:13.940 it's like how do you get it to that you already had that that rim of crust and it's not too thin in

00:17:19.220 the middle because every time i've tried to stretch a pizza i'm like ah this is way too thin in the

00:17:22.580 middle what where do people mess up there in the the dough shaping part they tend to exert themselves

00:17:28.260 onto the dough and touch the dough too much you just have to be very gentle touch the dough as

00:17:34.900 little as possible keep the dough dry with you know dry hands and uh and extra bench flour but

00:17:42.660 honestly gravity is one of the best stretchers of pizza out there just hold it up and it'll it will

00:17:48.740 stretch itself my six-year-old daughter can make a pizza start to finish and she you know if she can do 0.97

00:17:56.100 it anyone can do it how big a pizza do you go for usually we do 12 inch pies because that fits great

00:18:03.860 in a home oven i also like the smaller size because i can make more varieties right we can start with a

00:18:11.380 margarita then we can do a mushroom pizza then we can do you know anything else that we picked from

00:18:18.020 our garden or we happen to have uh leftover sauteed broccoli from the night before i can chop it up and make

00:18:24.740 a broccoli pizza right so i like having a smaller pizza so i can make more of them plus as we're

00:18:31.780 making pizza in my home kitchen everybody is gathered around our center island they're in our

00:18:38.180 kitchen my wife my kids my son gets a chance to stretch one of the pies and and top one of the

00:18:44.020 one of the pies my daughter gets a chance my wife even gets a chance and by having that smaller pizza 1.00

00:18:51.140 it's just a little bit more fun it makes a night out of it and and we just we love that because it's

00:18:57.140 it's again it's a bit about connectivity and being together and teaching skills and there's so many

00:19:04.020 things we can learn about pizza that i can teach to my kids that we try to make a night out of it

00:19:09.860 it's special all right so you got the dough that's the foundation the next part important part of pizza is

00:19:14.340 the sauce and you keep things really simple with your sauce tell us about your approach yes so my

00:19:20.340 approach to all ingredients is buy the best raw materials and treat them as simply as possible

00:19:28.500 if you if you have a great tomato or a great butternut squash you don't have to do anything

00:19:34.900 to it they're perfect as is so that and that's why i like i feel like i'm not i'm not really a chef

00:19:42.500 because i i just let the ingredients do the talking but when you taste my tomatoes

00:19:49.060 it would be a crime to add garlic oregano basil sugar it's it's just a crime they're perfect they

00:19:56.740 were grown very well they were canned very well and you know it it would be it'd be sad to to for

00:20:05.860 that tomato to lose its sense of self okay so you don't you don't add anything to it you just

00:20:11.140 it's like pretty much raw and like also the thing you don't do is you don't pre-cook it

00:20:14.420 before you put it on your pizza right yeah so 90 i'd say 95 percent of all pizza sauce is

00:20:22.100 is uncooked and when i say uncooked it's actually it's been cooked once right when fresh tomatoes are

00:20:28.420 put into a can and sealed they have to be pasteurized so they take the can they cook it

00:20:35.060 so when you open a can that tomato has actually been cooked one time already right right that's

00:20:41.700 why a canned tomatoes doesn't doesn't look the same or taste the same as a fresh tomato we are

00:20:47.140 spreading such a thin layer of tomato sauce we're talking two to three ounces of tomatoes for a 12 inch

00:20:56.020 round pie this the sauce is such a thin layer and it's going to be in your oven anywhere between two

00:21:03.460 minutes and four two minutes and six minutes depending on your oven of choice in that time

00:21:08.900 that sauce is going to cook if i cooked it and made a you know a pasta sauce out of it first it would get

00:21:17.700 overly reduced and thick acidic pasty it's just not not very delicious the the only time we do use a

00:21:26.740 cooked tomato sauce is if we're gonna put it on after or if i'm making a square pie or like a grandma

00:21:33.060 slice if you if you're familiar that i would use a cooked sauce but it's really just a small fraction

00:21:39.300 of the time the gist of the tomato situation is buy the absolute best quality tomato that you can find

00:21:46.660 and unfortunately the only way to know that is to buy about eight to ten of them open them all take the

00:21:54.980 labels off but mark the bottom of the can and do a double blind taste test and in our book we have we

00:22:00.740 have a we have an instruction sheet for how to taste these tomatoes and we're tasting them based

00:22:05.460 on their actual merits and their actual merits are positive flavor attributes negative flavor

00:22:12.180 attributes whether there's an abundance of seeds and skins the texture of them the color of them the

00:22:18.340 sweetness and the acidity that's what makes up a great tomato so these are canned tomatoes exactly

00:22:24.740 yeah because i would never use a fresh tomato unless it's in the peak of tomato season wherever

00:22:32.500 you're located and for us in new jersey that is july through the first week of october and that during

00:22:39.700 that time of year we're using fresh tomatoes and it's a completely different experience it's just it's

00:22:46.100 it's phenomenal it's so delicious but the rest of the year it's always canned tomatoes because they're

00:22:53.460 they're grown in their peak of season they're packed when when they're super ripe and then they're good

00:22:59.620 all year long are there brands you found that are pretty consistently good there are yeah the one we use

00:23:06.100 at the restaurant is not available retail there it's a wholesale only but at the restaurant we have we always

00:23:13.220 have about four or five different tomatoes in the restaurant at all times and we use them in different

00:23:19.140 methods we have a yellow tomato tomato from southern italy that is just mind-blowing and we make a

00:23:25.540 yellow margarita out of it and when you see this pizza it looks like a pizza it doesn't look like a

00:23:31.860 margarita but if you close your eyes it tastes like a margarita and these tomatoes are just glorious we also

00:23:38.100 have a tomato from the southern part of new jersey which is where i live so that kind of tells a story of

00:23:45.300 time and place and we use it on a pizza that we call the jersey margarita because we're located in

00:23:49.940 new jersey and we want a pizza that kind of tells a story of time and place right okay so sauce keep

00:23:56.500 it simple canned tomatoes you don't have to cook it uh again don't add oregano but taste yeah taste the

00:24:01.940 tomatoes before and use the best one that you that use the winner of your tomato tasting and use that all

00:24:08.100 year and and you know for me when i go to the supermarket i'm walking up and down the tomato aisle

00:24:13.700 looking for a new brand that i've never tasted before and if i ever do see a new one i'm buying

00:24:18.660 it tasting it up against what what i currently use and if it's better i'll switch to that better

00:24:24.980 tomato but tomatoes are a product of agriculture and every year they might be subtly different so just

00:24:32.180 because you bought this tomato from julia last year and it was phenomenal maybe you should taste it

00:24:39.540 next winter and see if if that next vintage the next season of it is the same because it very well

00:24:47.460 might not be especially if it's an italian tomato because they're they're canning technology is not

00:24:52.900 nearly as advanced as our canning technology here in in the united states and also the sauce like less

00:24:59.860 is more i think a lot of people be tempted just to slather the thing you don't want to do that

00:25:03.940 yeah yeah in in our book we each of the pizza recipes has a before before the bake picture

00:25:12.260 and then after the bake picture so you can see how much of the of each ingredient really goes on and

00:25:19.140 it's way less than you actually think it's human nature to just want to put more and more and more

00:25:25.860 on because you you spent a lot of time cutting that cheese and and you know making your other

00:25:32.260 toppings of course you you think it needs a little bit more than it actually does okay so let's move

00:25:37.460 to cheese uh what you go to is mozzarella your go-to cheese for pizza so mozzarella is my go-to we we

00:25:43.540 always have at least two different types of mozzarella but really any cheese is great for pizza as long as you

00:25:51.780 like it right i can tell you taleggio is the best cheese for for pizza but if you think taleggio smells like

00:25:58.580 feet and you are disgusted by it that would be the worst cheese possible for you so number one use

00:26:05.620 what you like but really look at cheese look at the cheese right if you're going to put the cheese on

00:26:12.740 before you bake it the cheese has to be a good melter and some good melting cheese are mozzarella

00:26:19.780 collegio scamorza any of the swiss cheeses like gruyere raclette there are great melting cheeses

00:26:27.620 out there so if you're going to if you're going to put the cheese on before the bake make sure it's

00:26:31.620 a good melter after the bake is a completely different story then you can use hard grating

00:26:37.300 cheeses like of course parmigiano reggiano grana padana pecorino romano but even if like let's say you

00:26:44.100 love goat cheese and want to make a goat cheese pizza well goat cheese doesn't melt at all it kind of just

00:26:50.420 stays put and gets crusty and weird so put it on after the bake right so just look at the cheese

00:26:56.900 that you love and decide if it's a good melter if it's a good melter before the bake if it's a bad

00:27:02.820 melter after the bake so how do you spread your cheese out in your pizza so you ensure adequate

00:27:07.060 coverage and you want that structural integrity so things don't just plop off when you lift the pizza to

00:27:11.860 your mouth yeah so the quantity is super important it's more important than the actual moisture content

00:27:19.700 of it so i do like a wetter mozzarella that will flow fully and completely but i tend to use much

00:27:27.940 less of it than if i was using a a dryer more processed mozzarella so quantity really is everything

00:27:36.660 here gotcha all right so let's move to toppings we got our we got the dough sauce cheese uh what

00:27:42.180 are you what are your go-to toppings for pizza this is the fun sky's the limit man sky's the limit

00:27:48.020 everything from uh you know so we have a little a sad little backyard garden that you know depending on

00:27:56.260 how much time and energy i have it grows great things or just sits there and does nothing but you

00:28:03.300 you know anything anything that that grows can make a great pizza topping like i said earlier even

00:28:09.300 leftover sauteed broccoli or spinach or really the sky's the limit you got a corn pizza you got

00:28:15.940 there's corn hell yeah biggest selling seasonal pizza all year is the corn pizza far yeah wait okay

00:28:22.660 so what do you use like a like a like a regular like margarita sauce on that like what do you do for

00:28:27.940 that no no no so that's a that's a white pie so we do fresh mozzarella a little skimorza cheese which

00:28:34.100 is a cousin of mozzarella it's a drier more aged mozzarella a little bit of shaved onion and in

00:28:42.820 season corn i would never make this corn pizza any other time of year except august september okay because

00:28:52.100 the corn is completely different when it's out of season we want it to be that glorious taste of

00:28:59.060 summer where you bite into the pizza and and each kernel pops in your mouth with with sweetness and

00:29:05.460 then we pair it with a little bit of fermented chili paste that we make to increase the the heat which

00:29:10.900 balances the the sweetness of the corn and listen i know you guys whoever's listening out there you're

00:29:15.780 gonna you're gonna think i'm nuts for putting on corn on a pizza but trust me follow me on instagram

00:29:21.060 watch the reactions to people when they bite into this corn pizza it sounds weird but when life

00:29:28.180 gives you lemons you make lemonade man and in august in new jersey we got corn everywhere and it is good

00:29:35.780 if it's treated properly so when you so a lot of your toppings are dependent on in season because you'd

00:29:40.980 like to use in season seasonal ingredients yes because a strawberry in the middle of january does not taste

00:29:47.300 like a strawberry have you put a strawberry before i know it was a bad reference because i would never

00:29:52.100 put a strawberry on a pizza but the gist of my topping situation is number one i i pick a star of

00:30:00.580 the show right i pick a a main character right so if if peas are coming in my garden and i have these

00:30:10.740 glorious fresh peas that i can only get really three weeks a year if i have those fresh peas i'm going to

00:30:17.140 pair them with something super super simple and complementary so complementary to a pea would be

00:30:24.100 something like a really delicate ricotta cheese maybe a little bit of guanciale or bacon we try to keep

00:30:34.100 that supporting character complementary and not overpowering i love meats on my on my pizza so

00:30:43.300 obviously pepperoni is like the world's favorite pizza topping besides cheese i love other cured meats

00:30:50.500 prosciutto spec i try to keep it really really simple when i choose my toppings it's kind of like being

00:30:57.220 the conductor of a symphony you're not really playing a role here you're just putting the pieces together

00:31:03.060 and making sure that they're all in harmony right and we try to keep them in balance with each other

00:31:08.820 well speaking of pepperoni like i i love pepperoni pizza but there's like particular type of pepperoni

00:31:13.140 pizza that i like i like it when it's cooked in a way where the pepperoni kind of curls up

00:31:18.260 and it's cuppers cuppers those i i don't like it when it's just like the big giant

00:31:23.060 lay flat i don't like that because it's all lay flat and there's cuppers i like the cup because

00:31:26.420 it's crispy on that edge and it's got it just exactly it hits nice is that is that your preference

00:31:30.660 yeah we're we're we're cuppers here what makes the what makes the pepperoni cupper or lay flatter

00:31:37.540 uh so if it's sliced to the right thickness cuppers are typically sliced a little thicker

00:31:45.140 and they're also in a natural casing and the casing i guess contracts faster than the meat and

00:31:54.180 you know you you get that cup when it you know once it hits a certain temperature i prefer cuppers

00:32:00.900 cut to a very specific thickness so for our pepperoni we actually have to slice on a deli slicer every

00:32:07.700 round of pepperoni that goes on our pizza so it's very labor intensive but for me it's a no-brainer

00:32:14.100 it's very well worth it i love those those two different textures where the rim of of the pepperoni

00:32:21.860 is a little bit caramelized and crispy but the bottom lays flat there's a little pool of pepperoni

00:32:26.980 juice yeah we actually shave garlic on top of that pizza like super super thin and when a slice

00:32:35.620 a really thin slice of garlic gets stuck in one of those pepperoni cups and and from the heat of

00:32:43.380 the oven it gets fried in that pepperoni oil that is my one of my favorite bites of food in all of

00:32:49.300 humanity that sounds my mouth's watering right now just thinking about that so it sounds like

00:32:54.260 you're taking away with toppings you're you're asking or you know suggesting people like to open

00:32:58.260 up their horizons when it comes to toppings don't just think sausage pepperoni bell peppers mushrooms

00:33:03.540 like there's other stuff you could try as well yes but if you are a simple person like i am right so

00:33:12.100 if i if i could make one pizza for the rest of my life it would be a margarita pizza like no questions

00:33:18.580 asked i'm when i'm at my house i always make at least one margarita it's kind of the my gold standard

00:33:26.660 it's it offers comfort it offers challenge it offers creativity like i said we have four or five

00:33:34.180 different tomatoes in the restaurant and if we change if we change one product on the margarita

00:33:39.620 it completely changes the experience of that pizza okay so here's the question does pineapple belong on

00:33:46.100 pizza i get that question all the time i know you do what's your take yeah uh okay so me personally

00:33:54.180 i do not make a pineapple pizza if my restaurant raza was located in hawaii or costa rica or anywhere

00:34:02.980 where pineapples grow down the street and there's a huge abundance of them i would put them on a pizza

00:34:09.540 granted pineapples have sweetness and acidity right that's what a pineapple is sweetness and acidity

00:34:17.460 so i would not add tomato sauce which also offers sweetness and acidity

00:34:22.820 that is not a good combination but i would do a white pie with a little bit of fresh pineapple

00:34:28.580 definitely never canned pineapple that's just an abomination

00:34:32.260 uh well you know speaking of like this right okay speaking of the like regional differences of pizza

00:34:38.260 this you just reminded me something i when i lived in mexico you know they had pizza down in mexico but

00:34:44.580 you know they would put like um jalapeno peppers on it but like fresh out of the can jalapeno pepper slice

00:34:49.620 but here's the weird thing a lot of people down in mexico at least in tijuana they get a piece of

00:34:55.380 pizza and they would they would pour ketchup on top of the pizza uh yeah yeah abomination yeah i've

00:35:01.460 never i i mean i i tried it because you know when you're in mexico you got to do what what the mexicans 0.67

00:35:05.780 do it was okay but it was i just thought it was it was kind of a weird thing that that they decided

00:35:11.460 okay you have this tomato based food you're going to put more tomato on top of it yeah yeah you're not

00:35:16.740 speaking my language here because i have i just i i can't stand ketchup i think it's i think it's

00:35:22.500 the worst condiment out there there's so many better condiments i don't like in the world than

00:35:26.900 ketchup yeah i've i've noticed i've kind of i've stopped using ketchup even when we have a burger

00:35:31.620 fries dude i don't dip give me mayo all day long mayo and i like mustard i like the the punch of it

00:35:37.300 and that's that's pretty much mustard yeah uh okay so pineapple okay so if you're in hawaii you

00:35:42.500 might put pineapple on a on a pizza yeah and but if if you like pineapple and if you grew up on it

00:35:50.100 and you have this deep connection to your childhood eating ham and pineapple pizza who am i to tell you

00:35:58.500 what you should like or dislike i'm nobody you should keep doing what you do and enjoy it okay

00:36:04.900 so how long do you cook these pizzas for you said like six to eight or was it four to six minutes

00:36:08.340 depending on the oven well so it depends on the oven in a wood-fired oven you're looking at

00:36:12.900 for my bake time and temperature we're looking at two to three minutes in a high temperature oven

00:36:19.540 in a home oven we're looking at six to eight minutes for a round pie about 20 minutes for a square pie

00:36:28.180 gotcha okay so i mean it's not that long that's another nice thing about pizza is it's fast

00:36:31.700 exactly get it fast when you take it out do you like do you like to let the pizza rest there's anything

00:36:36.100 you like to add to the pizza after it's done yeah so i always i always land my pizza out of the oven

00:36:41.220 on a wire cooling rack to let the steam kind of escape because if i put it onto a flat surface like

00:36:49.460 a plate all the steam would get trapped between the plate and the pizza and your crust would get a

00:36:55.300 little soggy so i like to land on a wire cooling rack for at least 10-15 seconds i'll add any other

00:37:03.060 finishing toppings like arugula or parmigiano reggiano cheese i'll grate that on while it's

00:37:10.740 cooling and then i move it off the cooling rack and slice and it's go time well dan i'm feeling

00:37:17.300 really really hungry right now this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn

00:37:21.700 more about the book and your work yeah so you can go to the the joy of pizza book dot com there's

00:37:28.100 also links on my instagram my personal instagram is at dan richer the restaurants instagram twitter

00:37:35.700 and facebook is at razzanj so that's r-a-z-z-a-n-j like new jersey dot com or not dot com but that's our

00:37:44.180 website too awesome well dan richer thanks for your time it's been a pleasure dude thank you and thank

00:37:49.620 you for all of the information you've given me through this podcast it's what you're doing is so

00:37:53.940 special and how you're doing it is is just really fantastic well thank you so much that means a lot

00:38:00.020 my guest here is dan richer he's the author of the book the joy of pizza it's available on amazon.com

00:38:04.420 and bookstores everywhere you can find more information about the book at his website

00:38:07.620 thejoyofpizzabook.com also check out our show notes at aom.is pizza

00:38:12.260 where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:38:14.740 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

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00:38:53.780 support till next time it's brett mckay reminding you not only listen to aom podcast but put what you've

00:38:58.100 heard into action

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The Art of Manliness - March 09, 2022

The Secrets to Making the Perfect Pizza

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