Hello, and welcome to Google users. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking dishes coming to you. From Rockefeller Center on newsstands studios in the heart of Manhattan joined as usual witness dossier, the hammer Lopez, how're you doing? Good? Yeah. your week been okay. So far? Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Good. Got John here with me. How you doing? Doing great. Thanks. How's the customer service life? Is it just everything you always hoped? Super

swell? Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Got to run to Stanford later to go to offsite storage and get some parts to mail to people.

Oh, snap. And did. It's gonna be the best. Yep. Yeah,

I haven't. I will. Quick sidenote on that. Actually, I've been telling everyone who has an old school spins all the one with a 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 web. Nice.

Cool. All right. Working the boards here. We got Joe Hayes in how're 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. And of course, working our international intercontinental engineering needs we got Jackie molecules. Hey, how's it going? It's going well, I am excited. Especially to have you. I'm always excited to have you Jack. It even when you're just in LA and not in Mexico. Oh, by the way, what do you see now? Oh, you've put the hell dude, you had to leave. So you couldn't like have fun during all the LA Superbowl parties?

Yeah, I'm doing radio stuff with the line Hotel. So

you sound excited to do it. I'm sure if they listened to the so the site. I'm doing radios now.

Yeah. Oh, sad to miss the Super Bowl. But I love it. No, I love it here. Yeah, thinks he's the best.

Okay. All right. You know, sure. All right. But the reason I am excited and I'm hoping actually that you that you kind of punch in with questions, Jack. Because today you have you're in a privileged position to ask specific questions that I might not think of other people might not think of because today on the on the program we have Francisco Nagoya, who is limos late latest, mostly latest project is modernise pizza, which came out I don't know how long ago they come out. Couple months a couple of 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 8000 pound three volume with a kitchen set thing that comes in in a you know, you know, a waterjet cut metal powder coated box. But it's it's like a giant pizza multitone pizza thing for Cisco? Thanks. How are you? How are you doing? I'm doing well. And you do well. So we're gonna obviously have a lot of 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 the question everyone wants to know, why do I need three volumes that each one is like bigger than a presentation Bible? On? On on pizza?

Well, I mean, there's a difference between need and want. Right? I think that the biggest pitch here would be that it's, you know, when we were doing research for this book, and we were searching for pizza books. First, there's not a ton of them. Most of them are geared for making pizza at home, which is fine. But when we're doing research, we're trying to find also books that are, you know, for professionals for people who will make pizza at home and in sorry, in restaurants, pizzerias, and so forth. And I think maybe there was one or two. And mostly, when you have a book on pizza, it's it focuses on one style. So either thin crust, or, you know, New York style, or Neapolitan and so forth. So essentially, this book, The intent of this book is to be all encompassing. So every actual style of pizza that exists any environment that can be baked or cooked in all of those aspects were taken into consideration. And yes, it was, you know, four years of research of doing you know, a lot of travel a lot of, you know, r&d, a lot of experimentation to get to the results that you know, those of us who are from those of you who aren't familiar with our books, may know which is basically a deep dive into the world of pizza and the most popular food in the world. I think you'll find pizza pretty much Anywhere you go, I believe you say that about many foods

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, I'm saying,

right. I mean, you have to maybe not everybody believes it. Yeah, I think that there's there's two countries, and I forget where they are. But there's only two countries where there's like, no trace of pizza.

Where's that? You forget where they are, but like, don't go there. Like, I mean, everywhere. There's some pizza it might be horrific. You might be you might I had a I had a sweet durian pizza. And Shenzen Whoa, yeah. Like, it was like, it was like cafeteria style crust. You know what I'm saying? Like, like, somehow, like super dopey, and yet also undercooked like they left it in for a long time. But still, somehow it was gummy. You know, I'm talking about

and the durian effect the bonus, yeah, and then

the durian on top. And I was like, oh, three and 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 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, I'm open to things, but the durian pizza was just like, man, plus. Did you guys do Pete? I don't remember. I read the read the book a while ago. Did you do pizza and China are no,

no, no, we did not visit. Nor do a like on the ground research in China. Okay. But it's from what I hear it's in in areas. It's a little bit of a sort of like a fancy event. It's not as casual as it is in the United States that gets to an event to go and have pizza.

Well, I have had takeout pizza also in China. And I wanted to get your take on the 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 Shenzen. You were expected to put on rubber, like not rubber, those plastic ill fitting plastic, like polyethylene LDPE gloves to eat the pizza. 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 loves. But I have not encountered that. No.

What are your thoughts on on former mayor, former Mayor de Blasio, who theoretically have Italian extraction? First day in office eats pizza with with a knife in 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. But I would say that, you know, there are parts like in Naples, where pizza comes from pizza with a fork and a knife. No, that's where it comes from. And that's, you know, that that is where people will eat it with a fork and knife. I mean, you can choose not to. But

that's because Can we start this now? Neapolitan pizza is not you can't it for if it gets limp in the tip, they'd like you can't get around it. No matter how hard you fold it. The sucker is gonna get limp in the tip. I am not. I appreciate a great, you know, DLP pie. But I'm gonna say it's not the be all end all pizza. I mean, I know you. Obviously you wrote a million pages on it. But it's like, 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 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, because there isn't such a thing as the best pizza, right? When people ask me what is the best pizza when you like,

but except for except for you say that people who like their own pizza. And this is I feel like the first 150 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 years. Like, I feel like the first maybe 150 pages you literally say you have there's a section of the book of your exaggerating. Oh, there's a section of the book you already called. There's a section of the book called What What about the pizza I grew up with? And in this section of

the book, what you're, you're you're, you're validating that argument.

Listen, listen. You like in enjoying the pizza that you From where you come right to the Stockholm Syndrome, you literally say, and I was like he's talking about New Haven people. I think 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 was like, 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 Pepe, 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 to have it out with me, you guys flew?

The testing. One of the things that is going to be complicated about this conversation we're gonna 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 Democrat is just not going to happen. But I'm going to 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. I think that what matters most is that if I eat something that is burned 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 burns, we call it what it is burnt, but if you enjoy the taste of burnt then that is fine. We prefer we prefer to not have a burnt pizza. Now there's dark there's char if you have a Neapolitan pizza has a little flex on it. You go to some pizzeria. It's 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 2% salt in the dough.

Well, we can all agree. We can all agree that Tuscan breads, the worst bread in the world. Go ahead. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. But you know, there's a similar there's this, there's that spirits who is most of the pizza dos that are made in New Haven, which is that they don't have salt. Now, you're also going to have every top 10 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's great 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 it's more about, okay, we compare this we tasted this. It's just, it's a it's a pizza that is not what it's hyped up to be, in our opinion in a from like a culinary standpoint. It has it misses a few targets. But if it's what you grew up with, and that's what you enjoyed, I mean, who are we to tell you to not eat it? I mean, there's there's other pizzas that are better season, they're less burns that could be tastier.

And and you didn't like Sally's either. Right? You didn't like Sally's or Pepys?

Well, I mean, I think that there, there could be vastly improved. I mean, there was an interesting occasion where, you know, they brought a pizza to us, it will look perfectly fine. And then they're like, no, no, put it back in the oven, get it darker. And we're like, no, it would have been perfect at that point. But, you know, I think that, you know, we can talk about New Haven and how, you know, how much we dislike a pizza if you'd like, but, you know, maybe there's other things we'd like to discuss when it comes to pizza, but it's not our number one pizza. I think it's I don't think we spent 150 pages on it. But

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 all and end all of pizza either. I agree with you in a lot of ways that 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, you know, I agree. I'm just giving you a little bit of a give you a little bit of a hard time for the Old Town sake. All right, come on. All right. So

well, you know, it's a bit of a sore subject here because everybody does have an opinion on pizza. Right? And people there's like a very strong it's like people under sports teams, right? I mean, I don't know if you find this but it's people will defend the one style they like to the death figuratively big thing, but there are very strong emotions associated with preferences of pizza. So just like to

so what about I was interested because there's certain styles of the pizza that I've never had even though they're only a couple 100 miles away from me like what's with this old Forge? I've never even heard of old Ford peach before I picked up your book.

I'm surprised because there's a sign at the entrance of unfortunate says best pizza city in the world. And how could you not have been there? Oh, Forge is you know, it is baked on a like a, you know, typically baked on a full size sheet pan aluminum you know, the dough is is kind of like white sandwich bread dough. So it's like, soft, a little bit sweet. Then Most places will like put the sauce down on top of the dog directly, then like chopped onions, and then the cheese. And then it's baked. Kind of pale. Like there's very little browning. So that is and there's a bunch of them. There's a bunch of pizzerias down the street like, I mean, I guess if it's by quantity of pizzas maybe might be the you know, the per capita pizza capital of the world, but it's a slightly you know, like, what you would get in a like a cafeteria. I mean, these are and some people will love it and be fans of it. And it's it's a style it's definitely a type of pizza that numerous people in old forge really haven't liking.

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 these shiny alumina

notes, one of your your regular kitchen, she pans aluminum, so it'll also bend and warp as it's baking. So you don't get like that nice. Crispy bottom underneath the pizza. So

sounds delightful. Yeah. So 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 Pizza Hut would call New York style a distant cousin, a relative that they don't see any more. But they might have a maybe some DNA in common. So maybe maybe that, but it 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, you know big enough it was gonna but 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 going and birthday to Pizza Hut. And maybe I have those sorts of associations with it. But it's it's definitely very different 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 like almost the bottom gets kind of fried. And 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 seems whatever's underneath it. And it doesn't really you know, whatever you having, including the dough could get stay like gummy. So I don't know if you've had like Chicago stuffed crust.

Now I've had regular Chicago deep dish, but I've never had this No, I've never had this stuff guy.

Stuff crosses is almost it's you wonder why they put the you know, 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 delightful.

Those are the things that happen. Yeah, right. I mean, we did encounter a few horrors on this trip. I had a banana tops pizza when Osiris and I only had it because i How could I not? I mean, it's on the menu we have. We have to see what this this banana pieces and it's as awful as you might imagine. But there were there were a few of those things that we encountered 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 I've never been to Brazil. So what's that? What's that all about?

So yeah, we went we were on the fence on whether we should go to South America. But when we started to see like the, you know, the the visual aspects of you know, the characteristics of these different pieces we thought you know, it's they look like they're actual styles that we need to Have seen document learn about and also figure out if if they should get a recipe in the book. And so follow alone has 2000 pizzerias. I mean, that's it's a large city Yes, but still 2000 of anything is pretty remarkable. It is thin crust. It is a, it has, you know, you can have like your average normal like tomato sauce, cheese topped pizza. But as happens in many places you have sort of like an adaptation of toppings that have you know, depending on what's available, people put on pizza. So some of the things that we saw very frequently is like just canned tuna fish. We had, you know, hard boiled eggs. There was hearts of palm. Shrimp is a huge one. Like together on the same pizza,

like all of that together. All of that.

Yeah. And yeah, but then you also like another common one was like our pepperoni. They call it calibrates them. And it's like a similar sausage. So it's, you know, it's a it's a sausage that is popular 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 pizzas that wherever you go and has like, different cultural, you know, aspects that are important to talk about, like, it's a people only have pizza for dinner in South Hall. There are a few places that are open for lunch, but it's almost out of the question to have it for lunch. But here's an you know, to the point of eating pizza with a fork and knife. That's how it's eaten in Brazil. The newer pizzeria is actually encouraged people to use their hands to eat pizza, but we believe it with fork and knife and it's like tableside. It's like a little fancier. So people like go have pizza and the waiter brings your pizza to a table and puts on a tray on the side and will serve you spices as you're eating them. It's a little bit more. There's a little bit more of a ritual around it that is more of a special event. But if you go to when Osiris 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. 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 at 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, like a pizza that you could have two, two and a half. Slice that's a more of a like, prefer. Yeah. You and I do you know what I do all the time since I turned 40 I always put salad on my pizza no matter what it is. I always ordered a salad throw the salad on the pizza. You it shove it in my face healthier? I don't know. I just don't know. No, I don't believe in health. But I don't know something about I just like having the green. Crunchy. I guess it started in the Stasi and I used to when we went to Roberta's all the time we would want to throw fresh arugula on our pizza. 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 restaurant? Yeah. Yeah. Because they wouldn't, because you know why we did it? Because they had it in the restaurant, but wouldn't let us buy it. In that messed up anyway. So like, yeah, we used to do that. So that's what I do. Am I'm a harsh I also use an unconscionable amount of crushed red pepper. But that's enough of me. So how did this work in the book? Did you guys do the trip in the middle of writing? I mean, you could tell me like, like the way you started as you started, 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 in the project towards the tail end of our bread book, which came out in 2017. So there was a period of time where 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 publishing, the heart, you know, print of modern spread. We got working on on the feets above so there was a good about a year or so of r&d and experimentation that occurred before we started going on trips. 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 distinct styles of pizza in South America. Or how fanatic so people can be about Neapolitan pizza and Tokyo, for example, you know, all these things that you start to learn as you start to dig deeper and deeper, so, so the trips occurred, I would say, most the bulk of the trips were in 2018. So on year two of the project, and those really helped either clarify the vision or fine tune recipes, or completely eradicate recipes and basically rewrite them because the idea was to basically learn to go to different different pizzerias and pizzaiolos that were willing to talk to us and show us how they did their pizza. 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 Naples, there's like the VPN, right? But nobody really follows it. I mean, there's no, nobody follows it to the tee. But you sort of have to to get the certification. But everybody does it slightly differently, or vastly differently. There's many changes that people do and adapt their their recipes to which we also mentioned the book. And, you know, because there were different ways of making a pasta and pizza. In the US, you have like the long 40 An hour 24 hour cold proof and Naples, it's overnight at most. And then there's the VPN version. So we have three very different neapolitan style recipes. They're all like for a different purpose in a in a different use. But those were the things that that we learned as we went and we just started to like, insert them into the book.

As we saw it as a Breadhead. And a pizza hen. 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 pockets? Like, do 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 dose so everything gets slack, if I let it go that long. What do you think?

I agree, I think that there is a sort of like a sweet spot for cold proofing, which is between 24 and 48 hours. But we did have a lot of you know, pizzaiolos that are doing like seven to 72 hours. You know, one guy that's doing Roman pizza, like he even advertises on his menu, the 96 hour cold proof. It's not it, it, I don't know that it makes things better. I don't know that quote, proofing is all that important. Really, if you're fermenting your dough properly, I think that I mean, it slows things down. You have, you know, you know, whatever activity would happen at room temperature happens in refrigeration to just a lot slower. It does make the dough easier to handle. I mean, 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 going to be seeing very much improvement on your dough. But if you if you do, like our master Neapolitan pizza dough is a 24 hour bulk fermentation at room temperature it does it never touches the refrigerator. So

how hard is that to titrate? How like 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 president of what we learned from our bread book, which was, you know, multiple experiments on 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 percentage how long it's going to take to ferment from point one the difference between point to point 3.5, how long how much time you have, it kind of becomes this, like a second nature understanding of how much uses enough. But also because for example, if you think of a pre format like Polish, if it's a if it's a brief moment that you're going to do, you know, at 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. So 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 or your go to is what SAF read. I know you give exhaustive ways to like go back and forth between the different yeast but I mean, is there a reason for the average person even professional to use anything for pizza other than SAF red?

Let's see if red is good because it's it's instant and I think Uh, you know, SAF is the brand. And you know, for those of you who don't know, if they say find other brands have instant use that work fine, but that's the important distinction to use instant versus active, mostly because instant has more live cells per gram than active does, because the process of producing activities is a little harsher on the on the yeast though, so there's more dead yeast cells, which is why you have to use like hot water to kind of like wake it up and break through all the dead yeast cells to get to the living the cells. And so that alters your dough temperature, so it's kind of a mess to use active so don't use active if you can avoid it. freshers fine. For those who do not know it's a, it's basically it's yeast that is in a, in a, in a moist form in a in a, like a cake, if you will. It's it looks like about a pound of butter as a similar look. But it's already hydrated. The problem you have with with fresh yeast is that not every maker will put its its expiration date. And you only really have like two or three weeks to work with it before it starts to decline. So if you have a lot of production, you do a lot Sure go ahead and use fresh, you know, cake use, but if you're doing it every now and then or if you're not sure about the shelf life of your lease, just just use instant use.

Environmental even in a professional environment. I mean, I don't really mean have you, you've done the test, 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 taste that we tested, we wanted to see if it had an effect on the rheology of the dough, meaning how the dough, the integrity of the dough. 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 a machine that's called an extensive graph, 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, what it's going to tell you is how extensible the dough is, you know, basically, how much can I stretch this. So before applying X amount of weights, to it will make it basically rip. So we didn't see a lot of differences. To to that would be remarkable that would say, you know, use this use instead of that yeast. And the favorite part, I mean, I 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 difference, because that's just the nature of pizza, it's bread with other stuff on it. But in our triangle tests, the triangle tests are tests that you do to get people's unbiased opinion on what they perceive, from what they're tasting, whether there's a difference between one thing or the other, or no difference at all. So we weren't, we're not able to detect people, we're not able to detect strong differences between pieces made with one type of use versus another. So you know, there's, there is something to be said, if you've always use fresh yeast, and it's always worked for you, then great, you don't need to switch. And if you've always used this, then don't feel bad that you're not using any fresh they're, they're both can be used interchangeably. If use in the right quantities, you need a lot less of the instance because it's dried and you do have a fresh because it has water. So you just need to know what the conversion is from one to the other.

And spirits if you like conversions, or if you like tests of things. You got to check out the book because it's like, it's all of that stuff. There's there's a page where you guys review all the different flowers. And actually, surprisingly, I'm surprised. One of your main recommendations for a lot of styles is my standard kind of house brand, which is hackers. You use a lot of hackers what? What draws you to them.

So I started to use hackers. You know, one of the people that we learned a lot from is Tony Gemignani in San Francisco. And I took a few classes with him and worked at his pizzeria to basically learn, you know how he makes pizza. And that's one of the ones that he uses for a specific style of pizza. He likes the strength that's in it. It's a really it's a a higher protein content flower that has a particular strength, but it also stretches nicely, right so because you're gonna have flowers that are very strong that you're trying to extend And, and there's just like a rubber band that pulls back, right? So an ideal flower is going to have a job that's going to produce a strong job, but it also can yield to pressure without ripping and tearing the dough. So you may or may not know this, but hackers has another name. It's called Sarasota.

If that's 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. made by the same company, they just have two different names.

It's like Hellman's, mayonnaise. And bedmates. The same Manny's What the heck? So dumb,

why can I No, I don't know. I have no idea. It's a great question.

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 from my crew things like they're gonna, they're gonna love things like vacuum, vacuum draining of the mozzarella, you want to describe things like that my crew might particularly enjoy.

Yeah, you know, one of the things that we were thinking is like, when you buy fresh mozzarella, it comes in, you know, this ball form. It's about, I think, 100 grams ball on average. 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, like a some sort of straining environment or, you know, cheesecloth what have you, because there's too much moisture in it. And so, you know, I keep wondering why doesn't somebody already have this cheese already pre cut, and pre drained, so I can just use it. And the the thing is, like you can do your own, if you want to, there's different ways of doing it. You can also, you know, one of the ways to do it is to put like the fresh mozzarella, put it in the shape that you want to cut it. 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 even size pieces of cheese,

you don't have

no no cuts. The what I like to do so like I'll put two inside the French fry cutter so that the one behind pushes the one in front and so forth. But you get these even the cut pieces of cheese that what we like about is that it'll melt, they'll melt at a similar rate.

Right? Which are you using? Which, 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? It's? Yeah, it's called the WEBstaurant store.

Oh, yeah. But those guys are evil. But yeah, sure that they have everything. They're not that it's not that they're evil. It's not that I'm sorry. Maybe I'm nothing against them other than they've swallowed up a lot of business. You know what I'm saying? Sure. I mean, the Bowery shadow of its former self.

Yeah, I will. I was gonna say you might find find it in the Bowery. I mean, I don't know how far people live that live in your you know, or listen to your show. But the Bowery wood, you can certainly find it there. But it's just a very restaurant specific piece of equipment that you know, it's it's got these like feet that are like suckers so that you can really hold on to the table. But that's the one we use. And it cuts them to the same size. But anyway, so

she uses a 13 millimeter cutter.

I think that's the biggest one you can find. Yeah, well, they

do a wedge, wedge cut, but you're not using the wedge cut, right? You're using a square cut.

No, no. Yes work. That's

probably 13

attachment. The attachment for the robot who that you can also do it by robot was really expensive. So maybe not everybody has a french fry cutter. You know, it's something that it's it was less than 100 bucks.

I mean, have you had luck with the flu because it mutilates cheese when you're putting it into it, you know what I mean? I don't love it. Yeah.

I don't love it. I like to I prefer to use the French fry cutter for cutting even shapes because you can hand tear to but they also when you hand tear, it's a pretty nice look. But the hands here there you have different pieces, different sizes, they're gonna melt different rates, even if we're talking about 60 seconds or even more like you can use fresh mozzarella and any people you want. But 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 big but putting the you know the cut mozzarella inside a cornerback bag with a clean paper towel. You pull a vacuum you have an instance strain because sometimes you can forget right i mean it can happen you have to plan ahead. And that's when we saw it. I was like well people can just buy it like this like way. Why not be able to provide this sort of service if you're selling fresh mozzarella, especially if you need to, you know, maybe you don't have enough people working Your kitchen, maybe your short stuff, maybe you don't have a bunch of time. It certainly is a convenient product 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 skateboard. So but it's not the same thing as cutting it in training it, you know what I mean? It's not the same product.

Right? Right, it melts differently. It has slightly different tastes. Sure.

Yeah. And one more question from me before I get to like, I'm gonna get my head stabbed by John here for not getting to the proper questions. But this is going into bread in the back into bread Bread Head again, but as part of pizza, so you know how we all talk about hydration, right. But the hydration, we always talk about it on the on the dose side before it's cooked, right. And you know, you and I both know that, you know, protein is a factor. Damage. Starch is a factor, whether there's brand under inclusions that have that hold on to water as a factor, right. And almost all of the research that I've read focuses on the what the water does to the dough, when it's still a doe, including up to like the size of the bubbles 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 cook dose structure. But what does the height, let's say that you could have two different flowers and you could get them real logically identical. Again, rheology for those is the is the kind of texture and pulling and snapping of the dough, you can get them identical at different hydrations what effect would that have on the cooked product?

I think that the most, one of the things that you're looking at on a cooked dough is that water is going to affect how long the dough is going to take to bake as well. 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, 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 the hot environment. And so what occurs is the water that is on the surface of little droplets of they're basically going to get hot enough that they're going to turn into steam. And then that steam has to go somewhere. 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 don't start to get on the surface, the steam is not escaping what it's doing. It's it's going it's digging deeper and deeper into the dough. So basically, when you look at the dough at a dough next time on 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 contacts 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 of the dough. So once the temperature at the core of the dough starts to sort of equalize to what the temperature of a steam is, then the steam is going to start to escape from the surface. So the more water that you have inside your dome, the longer this process is going to take. Additionally, more water is going to mean that the crust is going to take a longer time to set. So if you want a crispy loaf of bread, right, no nice crusty sourdough. If it's very high in hydration, it's always worth venting, meaning either cracking your oven door a little bit longer. Or if you have like an actual bread oven, opening the vents 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 formation of crust as well.