The Secrets to Making the Perfect Pizza
Episode Stats
Summary
Pizza is ubiquitous. It s a fixture at parties and office break rooms, and there s a good chance you order from your favorite place for dinner every single week. But there s one setting where pizza doesn t show up very often, and that s in your own oven, having been made in you own kitchen. My guest today, who spent decades pursuing the perfect pizza, says you ought to be making your own pies more often. And will teach you the secrets of getting restaurant quality pizza at home.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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pizza it's ubiquitous it's a fixture at parties and office break rooms and there's a good chance
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you order from your favorite place for dinner every single week but there's one setting where
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pizza doesn't show up very often and that's in your own oven having been made in your own kitchen
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my guest today who spent decades pursuing the perfect pizza says you ought to be making your
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own pies more often and will teach you the secrets of getting restaurant quality pizza at home his
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name is dan richer and he's the owner and chef of raza new jersey as well as the author of the joy
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of pizza everything you need to know we begin our conversation with what makes pizza such an awesome
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go-to inexhaustibly delicious dish and how to overcome the obstacles that typically prevent
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people from creating pizzeria level pizza at home dan then gives us his recommendations on sauce
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cheese and toppings in order to create the perfect pizza pie including his take on that most burning
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of questions does pineapple belong on a pizza after the show's over check out our show notes at
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aom.is pizza all right dan richard welcome to the show thanks for having me all right well so you
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got a book out called the joy of pizza and it's all about making your it's about your quest to make
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the perfect pizza get as close as you can to the perfect pizza tell us what led you on this quest
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to get as close as you can to pizza perfection as possible yeah so i mean that's that's like
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that's a hard question to answer but the the gist of it is i was 26 years old i bought a failing
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pizzeria i maxed out three credit cards and borrowed very small sums of money from a lot of different
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people and i at 26 i had my own restaurant and it happened to have two wood-fired ovens and a really
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bad pizza recipe and i recognized very early in my career that the restaurant business is a meritocracy
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the better we are at our jobs the more people enjoy it and return and that's what makes a successful
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restaurant we're good at what we do people are going to come back so i just really wanted to make
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the pizza as good as i possibly could and i'm still doing that every day it's still not it'll never be
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finished pizza is a lifelong quest it's it's a series of choices and techniques that we use
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to put together a pizza which is seems so simple everybody understands pizza my four-year-old son
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understands pizza but it's extraordinarily complicated when you want to put it together
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in a way that you truly believe in so you you're the chef of a restaurant the raza pizzeria yes in
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jersey city new jersey in jersey city new jersey like what kind of pizza do you do like what's your specialty
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okay so we make american artisanal pizza that's the only way i can describe it it is it's not a
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new york slice it's not a detroit style pizza it's not sicilian it's not neapolitan uh our fuel of
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choice happens to be wood so we bake in a wood-fired oven we when i was coming up with the pizza of my
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dreams i started writing a list of characteristics about pizza in general that i love and that i
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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
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soggy so i started with a list of maybe eight or ten characteristics and over the years and over the
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decades at this point i've accumulated a list of about 60 different characteristics about pizza that
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i think makes my perfect pizza and now listen this is my perfect pizza it's not everyone's perfect
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pizza but it was a set of blueprints that i used for the creation of our pizza and it's it's a list
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of characteristics that i use to teach my team and hold my team accountable and let them hold
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themselves accountable for producing the product that is the raza pizza so uh give us the description
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like what what is that what is your perfect pizza what are some of the characteristics that it has
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so we have an idea yeah so it's everything from the structural integrity of it right it should be
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able to be picked up with your hands and not have that floppy wet soggy thing it should have a crust that is
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deeply caramelized it should have a crust that is light airy tender big open holes in the crust
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separated by thin cell walls the flavors of the crust should be aromatic and floral fragrant it should
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smell and taste like fermented wheat because that's what it is the tomatoes should have a balance between
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sweetness and acidity the sweetness shouldn't be cloying like i added some sugar to my sauce we don't
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ever do that tomatoes are a fruit and they should be sweet the cheese should melt and flow fully on
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the pizza you know it shouldn't be little clumps of uh unmelted cheese yeah i mean there's there's so
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many what makes pizza i mean it seems like you know pizza night that's a tradition i think in most
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american families what makes pizza such a go-to food and like even mediocre pizza even pizza that's got
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the floppy mess with yeah or the cardboard crust it's it's okay you're never like oh this is i've
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never had a pizza i'm just like this is disgusting i'm like that was okay what is it about pizza that
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makes it good like that such a go-to yeah so for me it's probably three or four things one it's
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fundamentally delicious right it it satisfies on a on a very deep level melted cheese tastes great who
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doesn't love melted cheese right it provides a little bit of protein fatty rich and then it's
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balanced by a sweet yet acidic tomato you know an acid always balances fat right acid is kind of the
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counterpoint to fat and sweetness is the counterpoint to acidity right so you have all of these flavors and
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it's all baked on on top of a fresh piece of bread because fundamentally pizza is a flat bread
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with condiments baked onto it so when you bake on something like melted cheese and sweet tomato
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it's just fundamentally delicious there's also the affordability factor a pizza is not very expensive
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in the realm of dining out it's accessible and approachable to everyone it's probably the first
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food that i was able to buy for myself as a child and i'm dating myself a little bit but when i was
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a kid a slice of pizza was a dollar so i knew that i could scrounge up four quarters nestled inside my couch
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cushions and go to the store and buy myself a slice of pizza and that's that's childhood that's that's another
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thing like pizza is deeply ingrained in a child's life it's at every birthday party after baseball
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games and soccer games school events we had pizza night twice a week when i was growing up and it was
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it was a way for the family to come together and there's that that equity portion that a kid gets
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the same slice of pizza as as your parents there's just it's it levels the playing field and it brings
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people around this communal dish and i i'm personally as a chef i'm obsessed with communal dishes like
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paella is one of my favorite things to make so we'll make a big batch of paella and i'll take the paella
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off the grill after it's done and i put it in the center of the table and we all share from one
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communal dish there's just something so connected about that and that's one of the things that food
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does in general but when everybody gets their own dish it's it's a little bit less special than when
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everyone shares from from the center of the table so you you make pizzas for a living but your book is
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about helping people make pizza at home and i was thinking about this the other day as i was reading your
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book is you know pizza is a simple dish you know like you said it's bread with cheese and sauce
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and some toppings on top of it it's can't get simpler than that yet people typically don't make
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pizza at home like in our own family we've made pizza at our home in our own family before but it's
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it's rare that we do that and i imagine there's a lot of people like me as well what do you think
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hold people back from making their own pizzas despite being a simple dish i think pizza making is
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a very difficult skill i put pizza making in the same category we're we're more similar to plumbers
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and carpenters than we are to chefs where we have to learn like if i was a carpenter right i have to
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learn the properties of of wood i have to understand the hardness and how walnuts different from oak and
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maple and how to treat it slightly differently and then i have to learn the techniques for how to
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join wood and put pieces put the pieces together to make the art right so i have to understand the
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science and the technique in order to practice the craft and it's a lifelong pursuit it's not something
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that you can typically nail the first time you try it i think i've over the course of 20 years of making
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pizza the first 15 years i had awful success when i tried to bring the restaurant's dough to my house
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and just bake it in my oven it doesn't come out the same the restaurant equipment is typically the
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ovens are typically at a slightly higher temperature than your home oven can get so by using a store-bought
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dough that was produced for say a higher temperature oven which most pizza dough is you're going to have
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bad results what i did with my doughs in our book is i reverse engineered the dough to be to bake
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properly in the home oven gotcha does that make sense yeah that makes sense yeah let's talk about
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that how people can get closer to pizza perfection their home like equipment at your restaurant you're
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using wood-fired ovens uh you know brick you know people have always seen those at different pizza
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pizza restaurants do you need something similar in your own home to get a quality pizza
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absolutely not and that that's one of the the biggest misnomers that prevents people from making
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pizza in their house oh it's the oven it's not the oven you just need to tailor your dough around the
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specific oven that you have so there are high temperature ovens now for the home like uni makes
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one gosney has the rock box and dome there are it's a booming industry people are getting these cool
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little home ovens to make a pizza that you need a higher temperature oven for but your home oven can make
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equally as good if not better pizza than any of those high temperature ovens but you need the right
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formula and that's one of the things that that we go in depth in our book is specifically tailoring
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the dough recipe around the home oven because i'm not going to use i'm not going to use the same dough
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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
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wood-fired oven it doesn't work like that what is it about the dough i mean maybe we get into this
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but like kind of briefly it's really yeah it's really just the water content of the dough is
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different because water so water is a very good conductor of heat so because the heat is so low in a
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in a home oven you actually need additional water in the dough so that the heat transfers to the to the
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dough more efficiently now let's say i used a wood-fired oven my water content would be very
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low because the heat is so intense that i want a low water content to prevent burning so if i used
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a very wet dough in a very hot oven the water would aid in heat transfer to the dough too too efficiently
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and the pizza would burn which is something it's like not common sense you know it's really like i i
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had to study a bit of thermodynamics to understand how a pizza bakes properly in different environments
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it's super interesting and that's the thing about pizza like it's yes it's a simple food but there
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are tons of rabbit holes that you could go down and i like i just i really enjoy going down those
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rabbit holes it's fun it's engaging it keeps me learning it keeps me growing it keeps my team engaged
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and it's just it's it's endless in in what we can learn from such such a simple and understandable
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food okay so the key to making good pizza at home is you got to raise the water level in the dough
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and you got recipes in the book with exact ratios on that and it all depends on the type of oven you're
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using but besides that is there anything else people can do uh to cook good pizza in a conventional oven
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like for example do you recommend a pizza stone yeah so there's there are two main pieces of equipment
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or tools that you absolutely have to have in order to make great pizza in your home oven okay one is a
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scale okay for weighing your ingredients you have to weigh out all of your ingredients for these recipes
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to work okay baking is it's all based on ratios the ratio of flour to water the ratio of salt to flour
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the ratio of yeast to flour they have to be weighed out because volumetric measurements are not accurate
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your cup of flour versus my cup of flour even if you try to scoop two cups of flour in a row you're
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going to get different quantities of flour so you got to use a scale because 100 grams of flour is 100
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grams of flour all around the world man so the other tool that you need is a pizza stone a pizza steel or
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some fire bricks you have to build thermal mass into your home oven pizza bakes in a multi-directional
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way okay it's baking from the bottom up okay it's called conduction it's that direct contact your pizza
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sitting on a hot surface okay and it's cooking the pizza from the bottom then you have radiant heat
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and convection where you have moving hot air and and waves of heat from all the other directions and that's
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what's cooking the the rim of the pizza and melting the cheese cooking the toppings and making it all
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come together so we really you have to balance those three types of heat and it's really the radiant heat
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and the uh conductive heat that we're that we're trying to keep in balance okay your home oven has a wire rack
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there's no possible way to get that conductivity that conduction to cook the bottom of your pizza so
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you'll be left with a a pale white it'll probably be completely raw on the bottom and that's just not
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delicious you have to build that conductive heat by inserting something into your home oven to capture the
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heat of your oven and then then be able to transfer by conduction to your pizza okay so a pizza stone a
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pizza steel or even fire bricks like every big box store sells fire bricks uh that you can just
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get eight or ten of them put them into your oven close close together you don't want gaps in between
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them preheat that thermal mass for a minimum of an hour two hours is better you want that heat from
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your oven to be stored in that thermal mass to be available for conduction so if you don't have that
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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
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break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show okay so you make your dough like the
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thing i think i think it might intimidate a lot of people is like shaping the dough into a pizza shape
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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
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the middle because every time i've tried to stretch a pizza i'm like ah this is way too thin in the
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middle what where do people mess up there in the the dough shaping part they tend to exert themselves
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onto the dough and touch the dough too much you just have to be very gentle touch the dough as
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little as possible keep the dough dry with you know dry hands and uh and extra bench flour but
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honestly gravity is one of the best stretchers of pizza out there just hold it up and it'll it will
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stretch itself my six-year-old daughter can make a pizza start to finish and she you know if she can do
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it anyone can do it how big a pizza do you go for usually we do 12 inch pies because that fits great
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in a home oven i also like the smaller size because i can make more varieties right we can start with a
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margarita then we can do a mushroom pizza then we can do you know anything else that we picked from
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our garden or we happen to have uh leftover sauteed broccoli from the night before i can chop it up and make
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a broccoli pizza right so i like having a smaller pizza so i can make more of them plus as we're
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making pizza in my home kitchen everybody is gathered around our center island they're in our
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kitchen my wife my kids my son gets a chance to stretch one of the pies and and top one of the
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one of the pies my daughter gets a chance my wife even gets a chance and by having that smaller pizza
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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
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it's again it's a bit about connectivity and being together and teaching skills and there's so many
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things we can learn about pizza that i can teach to my kids that we try to make a night out of it
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it's special all right so you got the dough that's the foundation the next part important part of pizza is
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the sauce and you keep things really simple with your sauce tell us about your approach yes so my
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approach to all ingredients is buy the best raw materials and treat them as simply as possible
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if you if you have a great tomato or a great butternut squash you don't have to do anything
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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
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because i i just let the ingredients do the talking but when you taste my tomatoes
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it would be a crime to add garlic oregano basil sugar it's it's just a crime they're perfect they
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were grown very well they were canned very well and you know it it would be it'd be sad to to for
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that tomato to lose its sense of self okay so you don't you don't add anything to it you just
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it's like pretty much raw and like also the thing you don't do is you don't pre-cook it
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before you put it on your pizza right yeah so 90 i'd say 95 percent of all pizza sauce is
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is uncooked and when i say uncooked it's actually it's been cooked once right when fresh tomatoes are
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put into a can and sealed they have to be pasteurized so they take the can they cook it
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so when you open a can that tomato has actually been cooked one time already right right that's
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why a canned tomatoes doesn't doesn't look the same or taste the same as a fresh tomato we are
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spreading such a thin layer of tomato sauce we're talking two to three ounces of tomatoes for a 12 inch
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round pie this the sauce is such a thin layer and it's going to be in your oven anywhere between two
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minutes and four two minutes and six minutes depending on your oven of choice in that time
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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
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overly reduced and thick acidic pasty it's just not not very delicious the the only time we do use a
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cooked tomato sauce is if we're gonna put it on after or if i'm making a square pie or like a grandma
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slice if you if you're familiar that i would use a cooked sauce but it's really just a small fraction
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of the time the gist of the tomato situation is buy the absolute best quality tomato that you can find
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and unfortunately the only way to know that is to buy about eight to ten of them open them all take the
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labels off but mark the bottom of the can and do a double blind taste test and in our book we have we
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have a we have an instruction sheet for how to taste these tomatoes and we're tasting them based
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on their actual merits and their actual merits are positive flavor attributes negative flavor
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attributes whether there's an abundance of seeds and skins the texture of them the color of them the
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sweetness and the acidity that's what makes up a great tomato so these are canned tomatoes exactly
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yeah because i would never use a fresh tomato unless it's in the peak of tomato season wherever
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you're located and for us in new jersey that is july through the first week of october and that during
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that time of year we're using fresh tomatoes and it's a completely different experience it's just it's
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it's phenomenal it's so delicious but the rest of the year it's always canned tomatoes because they're
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they're grown in their peak of season they're packed when when they're super ripe and then they're good
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all year long are there brands you found that are pretty consistently good there are yeah the one we use
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at the restaurant is not available retail there it's a wholesale only but at the restaurant we have we always
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have about four or five different tomatoes in the restaurant at all times and we use them in different
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methods we have a yellow tomato tomato from southern italy that is just mind-blowing and we make a
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yellow margarita out of it and when you see this pizza it looks like a pizza it doesn't look like a
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margarita but if you close your eyes it tastes like a margarita and these tomatoes are just glorious we also
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have a tomato from the southern part of new jersey which is where i live so that kind of tells a story of
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time and place and we use it on a pizza that we call the jersey margarita because we're located in
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new jersey and we want a pizza that kind of tells a story of time and place right okay so sauce keep
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it simple canned tomatoes you don't have to cook it uh again don't add oregano but taste yeah taste the
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tomatoes before and use the best one that you that use the winner of your tomato tasting and use that all
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year and and you know for me when i go to the supermarket i'm walking up and down the tomato aisle
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looking for a new brand that i've never tasted before and if i ever do see a new one i'm buying
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it tasting it up against what what i currently use and if it's better i'll switch to that better
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tomato but tomatoes are a product of agriculture and every year they might be subtly different so just
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because you bought this tomato from julia last year and it was phenomenal maybe you should taste it
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next winter and see if if that next vintage the next season of it is the same because it very well
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might not be especially if it's an italian tomato because they're they're canning technology is not
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nearly as advanced as our canning technology here in in the united states and also the sauce like less
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is more i think a lot of people be tempted just to slather the thing you don't want to do that
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yeah yeah in in our book we each of the pizza recipes has a before before the bake picture
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and then after the bake picture so you can see how much of the of each ingredient really goes on and
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it's way less than you actually think it's human nature to just want to put more and more and more
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on because you you spent a lot of time cutting that cheese and and you know making your other
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toppings of course you you think it needs a little bit more than it actually does okay so let's move
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to cheese uh what you go to is mozzarella your go-to cheese for pizza so mozzarella is my go-to we we
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always have at least two different types of mozzarella but really any cheese is great for pizza as long as you
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like it right i can tell you taleggio is the best cheese for for pizza but if you think taleggio smells like
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feet and you are disgusted by it that would be the worst cheese possible for you so number one use
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what you like but really look at cheese look at the cheese right if you're going to put the cheese on
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before you bake it the cheese has to be a good melter and some good melting cheese are mozzarella
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collegio scamorza any of the swiss cheeses like gruyere raclette there are great melting cheeses
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out there so if you're going to if you're going to put the cheese on before the bake make sure it's
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a good melter after the bake is a completely different story then you can use hard grating
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cheeses like of course parmigiano reggiano grana padana pecorino romano but even if like let's say you
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love goat cheese and want to make a goat cheese pizza well goat cheese doesn't melt at all it kind of just
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stays put and gets crusty and weird so put it on after the bake right so just look at the cheese
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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
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melter after the bake so how do you spread your cheese out in your pizza so you ensure adequate
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coverage and you want that structural integrity so things don't just plop off when you lift the pizza to
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your mouth yeah so the quantity is super important it's more important than the actual moisture content
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of it so i do like a wetter mozzarella that will flow fully and completely but i tend to use much
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less of it than if i was using a a dryer more processed mozzarella so quantity really is everything
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here gotcha all right so let's move to toppings we got our we got the dough sauce cheese uh what
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are you what are your go-to toppings for pizza this is the fun sky's the limit man sky's the limit
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everything from uh you know so we have a little a sad little backyard garden that you know depending on
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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
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
00:38:25.700
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00:38:29.300
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