Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 87 - Dan Richer

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

Dan Richer, the pizza master and owner of Razza in Jersey City, promises to be my Yoda and show me the way to the perfect pie. We can do this!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's how we go. Hey, it's time for Breaking Bread with Papa. Hey, don't you know? Hey, it's also a show. Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Breaking Bread with Tom Papa. I'm Tom Papa. Thank you for joining me at the table once again. Happy New Year to you.

We kicked off the new year with a new show, creating our little game plan of where we're headed this year. And we're very excited because today we get to sit down. with Dan Richer. He has a book called The Joy of Pizza. It's a little backwards on my camera. He is the owner of Rata, which is, according to people who I have spoken to, some of the best pizza in the world, in the world.

A shout out also to Katie Parla, who he created this book with. I spoke with her on our Sirius XM show, What a Joke, over on Netflix. This is a joke radio. had a short interview with both of them. She was in Rome, and Dan was in New York or New Jersey. And we had a great conversation, but I knew there was going to be more to talk about because I am dough crazy, as you know,

and I'd a lot more. And I wanted all of you, dear listeners, who don't listen to both shows, to be introduced to Dan. This is a great book. And as you know, I struggle with pizza. I've been trying to make it off and on, not not not I'll I'll admit it I'm kind of a pizza quitter I'll be into it I'll I'll give it a try

and then it doesn't work and I get frustrated and I decide I'm never going to go back to it ever again this is inspiring Anthony who we did the interview with at the end of last year Anthony Giulio he loves this place and that this was kind of once he heard that I had spoken to Dan and then I had that great interview with Anthony. We were talking all about wine and all of that great stuff, Italian cooking with Anthony, that the three of us kind of all come from this Jersey roots and are all expanding out in our different ways with our joy of making people happy and getting together and eating and celebrating and creating the best stuff that we possibly can.

That was just, as they say, that's kismet. So I'm very excited to start off our year with our very first interview with Dan. This is going to be a great little journey. We have a great conversation. You're going to love it. The sponsor for the show today is Tom Papa. How about that? Listen, there is a slight hiccup in our travel plans because of the Omicron.

We're having to wear masks a little bit more. But this is one of those times. where it's becoming evident that it's just something we have to deal with and figure out along the way. And my shows are all going. Go to tompapa.com. I am heading to New Jersey this week. And then we're going to Chicago and Indianapolis, a whole bunch of places. The family reunion tour is rocking along.

And I really do believe and hope that this will only be like two weeks of more, two more weeks of concern. But again, every prediction I have about the pandemic has been. wrong. So let's hope I'm wrong in a way that we'll make it happen even sooner. We'll wrap this stuff up. All right. So that's it. Go to Tompapa.com and get all your tickets and I'll come and see you live and in person someplace. Soon. Shoon. That's not even a word. Okay. So the joy of pizza. Everything you need to know. When we get into this conversation with Dan, you're going to realize everything that you've learned about cooking pizza at home is wrong. that's what that's kind of the headline here and that's what i have uh what i have figured out it's a great book i recommend that you get it do it get it and you can start trying to bake pizzas along

the way of through the year the same way that i'm going to he says it's possible he says whatever we have in our home we can make this insanely great pizza so let's let's try it man i'm still intimidated i'll tell you the truth all right enjoy this conversation with the great Dan Richer. Good to see you, Dan. Good to see you. Man, oh man. This is exciting.

This whole little, nothing makes me happier than when the food world connects with the New Jersey world, which connects with my friend world. And you, I did a podcast at the end of the last year, just a couple weeks ago with our good friend Anthony, Anthony Giulio. And he, I didn't realize that you guys were so. close. Yeah. Yeah. He's a good, good friend. Yeah. He's a great guy. And we had such a good conversation about wine. It was like, it was one of those things similar when I had you on our serious XM show where it was like, all right, this is whatever, however long we go, you have to come back because we connect on too many levels and there's too many questions and there's too many avenues that we can go down. Definitely. That was, it was such a good episode. I listened to the

whole thing, obviously. Anthony's the best. Your conversation was fantastic. Oh, it's so cool. That's so great. Well, thank you for being here. This is such a treat. I want to start off by by showing you, introducing you to my starter. This is my sourdough starter that's getting ready to go for a 24-hour fermentation after I mix the dough tonight. I've been doing this thing where I mix the dough, fold it throughout the evening, and then leave it overnight, and then come out in the morning, which is such a treat to see it like bubbling over the side, which is such a satisfying thing. I don't know why. But you're one of the only people I know that I could actually show my starter to and you would get why I, it's like introducing a friend of mine. Totally. Because you have to

take care of it. You have to. Yeah. To be nurtured. And that's one of the, one of the best parts for me is that we get to collectively at the restaurant, we get to nurture this living, breathing thing that is feeding so many people. And we have to take care of it. Otherwise, the food's not good. Yeah, it's crazy. So how do you do it? Like, you started as a homes.

We'll go back to your history, but I'm going to stick with a starter for just to start. When you start at home and you have your little starter as I have two mason jars with two different versions of, of starters and you know i can get away with just feeding it like even when things are hectic and i'm traveling like even two times a week i'm or once every two weeks even and uh and keep it going but when when you go from that scale from you and your little refrigerator making your pizzas to doing it on at a restaurant where it's now like it's like little shop of horrors this giant beast that's in your thing do you still have the connection with it is it's is it any is it just the scale that's different okay so i actually started the

opposite direction. I started by doing it at the restaurant on this large scale. And then, you know, and whenever I want to bake at home, I just bring a little piece from the restaurant because we have a whole team of people here that feed the starter multiple times a day. Oh, and we always have very active, you know, starter. So yeah, yeah. How big of an area, how big of a starter is it that's feeding this for everybody from the restaurant okay so we we do it in stages um overnight it'll be a very small amount and then in the morning we'll build it up to a much larger quantity and that's what we incorporate into the dough we'll save a little piece for the nighttime feeding so we we never throw out any we have we never have sourdough discard right because we're

bake them constantly and we have all these uh you should see my my excel sheet for the uh dough formulas and for our starter feeding quantities it's oh god it's just insane i know i'm not that good at excel but the way that i built this excel sheet is just it's so fantastic yeah that's one of the things i really like about you is you are legitimately insane you uh the the the The checklist, what do you call it, the rubric? Evaluation rubric. Yeah, the evaluation rubric of a pizza and every element of it and that has to be checked off and the evaluate, it's like you're a mad scientist. Well, honestly, it's all about this set of blueprints because without a set of blueprints, you don't know what you're building.

Right. And that mentality can be applied, obviously to home building. but also to anything that you want to create. You need a set of blueprints before you start to build. Right, right. And for me at the restaurant, it's a way to train our team. So a new person starts working. First conversation we have is here's our, here's our blueprints.

This is what we expect of our product to be. And here are steps that it take to create that. Man, and there's got to be two responses. There's got to be someone who's like, oh, I love this. And someone who's pop out of their head? Like, what have I? What, who am I talking to right now? Yeah, those people usually get weeded out pretty fast.

Yeah. The people who want to work here are really into it. They love learning. They love growing. So when somebody really wants to learn something, having this document for them is just, it's so, it's spelled out. It's very concise. Yeah. And that's what I ended up writing the book based around this evaluation system.

Yeah. Because the, the without it, which I kind of fly without it, my blueprints is like your book. It's like I'm, this is my blueprint from when I'm going pizza. And then it's the Ken Forkish book when I'm going bread. And those are those are kind of my blueprints, but they're not really that personal. And I know I've been doing this for years. And my brain does not go to. blueprint and analyzing, which is unfortunate in one regard because every time when I am baking

that bread and I kind of, I have a sense of it, but you lift that lid, it could really be anything. It really, because there are these so many different factors that can send it off the rails. Completely. Yeah. And even like, even just like the type of flour and how cold it was that night and all that stuff is such a, I don't keep track of it. So it's, I luck out a lot of the time, but it really is kind of a wildcard. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm thankful that I have a, I have a 20-year lease on a commercial restaurant space.

So I have to nail it every day. Otherwise, we're going to go out of business, right? So it forces me to be analytical and to really systematize. everything. No, I mean, the consistency, that thing is the, that's the most mind-blowing thing to me when I see, and there's a place I love for anything, a baked good or a restaurant or even a cocktail. It's like, how is it, how is it so reliably good year after year after year? That thing, that, yeah, I totally, I totally get. Yeah, no, I totally get it. All right, no, but take me back. Let's go to the, let's go to the beginning because you're a young kid in Jersey.

Uh, your family loves this one pizza place. Yeah. And, and you go a couple times, uh, you go a couple times a week, sometimes bring it home. Tell me about, tell me about that time in your life. You're about 14, I think you said in the book. Yeah, it was just my entire childhood from, yeah, I might can remember through, you know, into, into college. Well, everyone eats the memories start in your youth because pizza is just so ingrained

in American culture. It was the first food that a kid could buy themselves. You know, I could dig up enough coins from the, from the couch cushions to buy a slice of pizza. Yeah. Yeah. When I was growing up, it was a dollar for a slice of ice. And where are you? Where are you at where and when is this?

In New Jersey, in the 80s and early 90s. What part of Jersey? I'm in Monmouth County. I grew up in Adon. Got it. Okay, cool. Down by the Shua. Yeah.

That's sure. And was there one pizza place that was your old reliable? Yeah, we had our favorites, but, you know, growing up in New Jersey, we have tons of pizzerias. Every town probably has eight to ten pizzerias. And every family has their favorite. And so, you know, by the time I was 12, you knew. your friends' families and where they got pizza.

And if you liked it or if you didn't like it, but at the end of the day, it's pizza. It's all delicious, right? It's melted cheese on baked bread. Yeah, you're not, you're right. Everything, yeah, every fail is going to still be okay to eat. But you're right.

I have a very distinct memory of my friend Joe, his father taking us. And he was kind of a gruff father. He wasn't like a warm and fuzzy kind of a guy. And he brought us into this pizza place where you stood up at the counter. you got your slice you stood at the counter and he was the first person i saw take crushed red pepper and pile it on to his onto his slice and then i was like oh i'm trying to be like you know big and tough too and i did it and just exploded with fire and starting to like kind of cry and uh but it's

such a distinct memory of that father bringing me to that place so that my crushed red pepper memory the first time I ever had it or the first time I ever saw somebody put it on it was my grandfather he would get us out of the house every now and then and just we'd be like an hour before dinner but we'd go to the pizza area would split a slice cut in half and I remember him dumping crushed red pepper on it and it's it's funny that you those memories just stay with you I'll never my grandfather for that and no exactly especially that one because it's scary when you're looking You're a little kid. You're like, what is this man doing?

It's so funny. All right. So then you're going along. So your Jersey kid is we all are Jersey kids. And we all have that common experience of our favorite pizza places and these people that are intersecting our lives. But what is it for you that starts to tip it over? Why are you starting to get a little more obsessed? Yeah, yeah.

So I went to Rock Gerson. like most Jersey people do. I went to Rutgers. I started at their agricultural school, Cook College, because it's the only college that I really got into. I didn't want to have anything to do with agriculture. I was taking,

I took all these core classes and learned a lot about it. Transferred within Rutgers, got my degree with the shortest amount of credits you could get, which was communication. Me too. And my senior year in college, right after my last final, I skipped my graduation ceremony, flew to Italy and traveled up and down from all the way from Switzerland, southern Switzerland, all the way down to the deep south of Italy.

And I fell in love with the food, even though I grew up going to so many Italian restaurants, but the food was so much different. And it was that curiosity and that that strong desire to understand why. I just wanted to know why the food was so much different. And it was the simple things like a plate of pasta with tomato sauce. Why was the tomato sauce so much better? And why have I never experienced anything like it? Right, right. So started to cook.

Because our upbringing, that New York, New Jersey, Italian, it's the southern Italian food and then taken to this American level of just drowning in red sauce. Everything was drowned. I mean, it was beautiful. It was great. You loved it as a kid. But that is, that, that was my only thinking of what Italian food was at the time. Mine too.

Right. Yeah. And in Jersey, we, we, we like that Sunday gravy, that long, slow, really intense tomato sauce. Yeah. Right. And that's completely not what I experienced in Italy. Right. Yeah, that that all day long six hour just yeah, really intense. Just really cook the hell out of the tomatoes. That's not what I love about tomato sauce. Right, right. Yeah, not at this point. But it would so when you started, did you start, I mean, it's even different though within Italy. I mean, the northern, the northern style, right?

Completely different. Yeah. Completely different. And were you. Was this your goal or was your goal just, I'm done with school. I just want to go. I just want to go or was food the reason. No, I wanted an adventure. Yeah. And my cousin was studying architecture in Rome. So he had a, we had a place to stay.

He had all from school. We just wanted to have an adventure. Oh, that's great. We did. I just, I came back from that trip knowing exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. For real. Yeah, yeah. I was so curious about why was this food so much better?

And, you know, after cooking for many, many years, I realized that it's two things. It's the ingredients and the techniques. So raw materials and how we treat them, how we manipulate them to make them just more delicious. Right. Were you cooking when you were young? Like where you was, was it your house a place that was, everyone was cooking? Not really. Uh-huh.

Yes and no. We weren't cooking very well. Yeah. But I did cook. Like by the time I was, I don't know, maybe 10 or 12, it was a responsibility in our household for every person to take turns cooking one or two nights a week. Oh, wow. That's a lot.

Yeah. That's more than most homes for a kid. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, my parents worked. Right, right. And it was out of necessity. Right. And I always loved playing with food. I remember as maybe a five-year-old playing in the sink with flour and water and sugar and just playing around with it. Right. Yeah. I'm still doing that today. I have flower all over my arms. I'm covered in it. I can't believe that I get to do this as a job. Yeah, it's so insane. I know. I literally was saying today because we heard that Ken Forkish sold his places in Portland. He's, he has a great book, Flower Water, Salt and Yeast. And he, I went and interviewed him up in Portland. He's like one of my bread gurus. And he just retired. And I was joking with my producer. I was like, why didn't he offer it to me? Like, why? And then we got into the conversation of like, would, could I, could I go into a like, could I go into a like. of baking and it's so much harder than what I do. Your life, your hours, I think are more intense.

Even though you're not traveling, what time do you, like when you started, okay, let's go back. Let's, let's keep it tied to your story. When you, when you went to, so you come back and you're all jazzed up and you're like, I'm going to, I'm going to show, I'm going to show New Jersey what real pizza is. I wasn't even there yet. You weren't there. I was so curious and wide-eyed about how to recreate what I tasted because I had all these new flavor memories in my bank.

My palette was developing. Right. And so I started to visit farmers markets and buy ingredients. And that's when the whole agricultural thing came into play. And I could actually have a great conversation with a farmer because I had this, weird background in agriculture. Right. So I always connected with farmers immediately.

And when you taste a tomato that's grown in soil in the heat of New Jersey. Yeah. And you compare that to a tomato that you buy in the middle of winter in a supermarket. There's a no-brainer. Yeah. Right. Yeah. There's so many tomatoes.

I get even here in LA where you think everything, it's so bountiful. And you just bite into it. And it's like, it looks like a tomato. It does not taste like a tomato. There's almost no taste to it. Yeah. So many times. Yeah.

That's so funny that you, that it's funny. I mean, this is why things happen. This is why I love these kind of stories. It's like you went to that part of that university because it was the only place you could get into. But man, how valuable at the end of the day. it informed everything that I do on a daily basis. And you're just screwing around at this point.

You're just like, I just want to make food. I just want to eat that food that I had before. Yeah. Well, so it's a little bit more than that. When I flew to Italy, my mom was dying of cancer. And I think that trip was a little bit of an escape for me. I remember crying my eyes out on the airplane. on my way home because I didn't want to go back home to what I knew was waiting for me.

And she passed away like two months later. And I needed something to bring people together. I needed the emotional support of friends and family. And the way that I brought people together was by making a big batch of tomato sauce or cooking a meal for people because I needed that support. support. And it was, it was very obvious that food brought people to, to me when I needed them. Wow. That's, yeah, that's pretty profound. And when you say people, you mean like your immediate family, your dad and. Yeah, my dad, my brother and all of my friends. We just got out of college. Nobody was

really doing anything that profound at the time. So people would come over two, three nights a week because I was cooking. And we eat a big meal and then we go to the bar and grab a drink and all the night. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. All that time, I was also working at restaurants. I was working. My first job at 15 was as a bus boy in an Italian restaurant in my town.

Right. I just continued to work in restaurants throughout college. And when I got out, I realized I wanted to open. in my own restaurant and bring this amazing food to New Jersey. So I bought a failing restaurant that happened to have two wood fired ovens. Oh, wood fired ovens. Yeah. Oh, man, right from the start.

Yeah. Yeah. So I learned the hard way how to work with them over, you know, almost 20 years now. Did you know that you, did you know, is this the same? spot, by the way? No, no. Okay. So did you know that, did you know that it was going to be more complicated? Did you have wood in your mind or like, did you know it would be better? You just knew they were failing when it just happened to be in there. They happened to have two wood fired ovens. And I, I knew the previous owners. So they, you know, they basically said, go work there for a

couple years, learn the business, and then we'll sell it to you. And that's what happened. So I was able to buy the restaurant when I was 26. I borrowed all the money. I maxed out three credit cards, they're very small loans from anybody who would give me, you know, five, 10 grand. Jeez. And I got it done. And I'm grateful that it had those wood fired ovens. Yeah. Because I really latched on to them and really studied everything from, from wood to thermodynamics, because that's really how cooking occurs is thermodynamics. It's just a heat transfer. And you really have to understand that in baking pizza, especially.

Yeah. No, the heat, that was the thing that that has been a problem for me. I don't know if it's the problem. I have so many pizza problems. I'll be honest. It's hard. It's really hard. And it's, I'm, you know, I can cook well.

I can I can bake bread well. And whenever I, whenever it's my try at pizza, it is just a disaster. And part of it, I know part of it, or maybe I don't know is that, I don't know what, I don't know how to manage the heat of my own home oven. Yeah, because pizza cooks from all different directions. Yeah. It puts from the bottom, which really gets your crust nice and crispy. Mm-hmm.

And it cooks from the sides to get the crust brown on all sides. And then it cooks from the top down to get the cheese to melt and the sauce to cook and reduce. Yeah. But those types of heat have to be in balance. And that's the thing that is so hard to learn. Plus, all of your ingredients have to be cut to the right size for that bake time and temperature. Right. You have to get your crust to bake and brown at the same.

time that you have to get your cheese to melt properly. Yeah. And all the other toppings to cook. So it's this timing thing that you can you can slow down or speed up the rate of each of these things by subtly manipulating them. Right. If you want your crust to bake longer, you add more water to your dough. If you want your toppings to bake faster, you cut. them smaller. If you want your cheese to melt slower, you cut it larger or make sure that it's got a nice, a higher moisture and fat content. Right. There's like these little fine tunings that all pizzerias in the country, we're all doing the same thing. It's flour, water, salt, and yeast, cheese sauce, maybe some olive oil and other topics. We're all doing the same thing. We make these

subtle, subtle decisions every step of the way. And that's what leads to each pizzeria having its own identity. Yeah. And this is the problem is that I to get good at it, even at home. I mean, your book is so beautiful. And it's, it's very detailed as, as you are. And it's like, I know that this, if I'm going to pull it off, it's going to be with this book. And I really, and it can't be a thing that you just do.

once every couple of months. It's like, no, this has got to be the pizza adventure. We're locking in and we're going to try and we're going to really try and do it. And just looking at the, you have the great picture of the instruments that you need, the tools that you need when you're making it and that you have a caliper, like literally a thing to measure the thickness of the stuff that you're putting on and the cheese and everything. I was like, all right, if I'm going to be serious, this is, I'm going to be serious.

I've got to get myself a damn caliper. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's so important because let's say you're making a pizza with pepperoni and you slice the pepperoni too thin. It's not going to cup and curl the way that I like it to do. If it's cut too thick, it's going to be too difficult to chew through, right? So the only way for me to write a book is to be exact and to really give people the tool. for success. And we use the caliber here at the restaurant all the time for dialing in those, that exact perfect size, whether it's zucchini or phenol or guancholy or pepperoni.

Right. It's got to be the exact right thickness for every pizza to be consistent and for it to have that right mouth feel texture and for it to bake properly in the oven. Yeah. When you, when you, the pepperoni cupping and curling. when that, when you get a slice in that is, that is one of the most beautiful things in all of food. It's true. I really is. It's just like, oh my God.

I mean, because you grow up with that flat pepperoni, which is good on its own. But then you get that cupping thing and you're like, oh my God, this is a whole different level. Yeah, because there's so many different textures to it. It's like crispy on the edges and a little bit caramelized on the rim. But then the bottom pools and there's that little. cup of pepperoni grease.

We shave garlic onto it too. We shave like paper thin slices of garlic. So when a slice of garlic lands in that pepperoni cup and gets fried in the pepperoni oil, that is my favorite bite in all of humanity. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Of anything at any time of any type of food.

That is insane. All right. So tell me this. How about you tell me. What is your perfect pizza? Like without you're going through your whole giant list. Like for you, what, what is it about a pizza that comes out? What do you want to see?

Okay. So for my pizza or for somebody else's pizza? For you, what do you mean? Like when I'm going to eat at someone's pizzeria and what do I look for or when my pizza comes out of the oven, what am I looking for in trying to produce? Why would they, where would they be different? Like, you know what you like. Yeah, but I, I love all pizza, right?

And my evaluation system is for, for the pizza that I want to produce. Right. But it doesn't really apply to, say, Chicago Tavern style pizza. Gotcha. Right. Or Neapolitan style pizza. I love Neapolitan pizza. It's not what I want to produce.

Right, right, right. They're very different things. And if I tried to produce Neapolitan pizza, my evaluation system would be completely different. Right. Okay, then let's, I'm trying to produce. It's crispy. Yeah, describe the one that you are making. Yeah, so that's the one we're in love with.

First and foremost, I want to be able to pick up the slice of pizza with my hands and have it be crispy when you bite into it. Right. I don't like when pieces. They're floppy. Yeah, yeah. I don't want that at all. Right. I like deep caramelization.

So I want the crust to be brown and not blonde. When I say brown, I mean many different shades of brown. I don't want a uniform colored crust because that's that tells you a lot about fermentation, right? When we're getting these many, many different shades of browns, grays, even a tinge of, of Auburn. I love that. That's indicative of a very well-fermented piece of dough.

Why is that? It's just part of the myard reaction and caramelization. No, why is the fermentation the result, why is that the result of really good fermentation? It's just the part of the process. It's just more active.

So that means that there's different parts of it that are a little more ahead and behind and no. It's more about the, just the the fermentation process unlocks different sugars. It, it, um, it unlocks certain proteins that are then available to brown or undergo the my yard reaction. It's some real nerdy stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. It's great though. Yeah, but you, you know when you, when you bake a loaf of bread and it's under-fermented. or like well under fermented, it's going to have this uniform dull appearance that's, that's just one shade of brown rather than if it's like super well fermented, you get all these different shades of coloring. Totally.

You're totally right. And I actually, you're actually solving something years into my hobby that I didn't, like there's certain times when I get a. I'll bake a loaf of bread. And it's been happening with consistency off of this 24-hour fermentation, which is making sense to what you're saying, where I'm getting this caramelized, beautiful exterior to the bread, which I've only seen when I would go to, like, lodge bread or tartine or what.

And I was like, how do they do that? What is it the oven? Is it the thing? And this makes perfect sense. You've actually solved something for me. It's all the fermentation. Yeah. And the appropriate.

bake time and temperature. Right. It's got to be baked at the right, at the right temperature for the appropriate amount of time. Right, right. All right. So you want, so for the crust, you want it to be like that. You don't want it to be floppy, which was so funny, another childhood thing. How many times when you get the feet in, you would fold it, like, get it to like,

you're trying to make it stiff. Yeah. So funny. Okay. And then go on. Yeah. So, we'll continue on with the crust. The crust, I'm looking for an eggshell-like crust, meaning the actual part that browns should be thin, but crispy.

So when you bite into it, the crust should shatter in your mouth rather than being difficult to chew through. Like, I don't want to be gnawing at my jaw shouldn't hurt by the time I'm done eating a slice of pizza. Right, right. Right, so I'm looking for this thin, crispy, eggshell-like outer crust. And then the interior of the crust, we want big, open holes separated by thin cell walls. Light and airy. It should be perfumed with this floral essence of wheat. Right, right.

And the flavors of fermentation. Can you, is part of that, that beautiful floral kind of aroma? from it is how much of that is from you using the wood oven? Zero. Zero. Zero. Really? Yes.

I would think that would be a huge factor. Not at all. So our pizza's bake in anywhere between two and a half and three minutes. And that is not long enough for the pizza to pick up any smoke. Plus, we're using wood that is obscenely dry. It's not like barbecue where the meat's spending eight hours. hours in smoke and they're using wood that has a high moisture content because they want smoke. Right.

You know, wood is just our fuel for the oven. Got it. We're not looking for any aromatic species of wood or any kind of moisture. We're looking for BTUs in our wood. Got it. Got it. Got it. What temperature is this?

So that's a big misnomer. There is no one temperature. One of the beautiful parts about baking in a large wood fire. fired oven is that we have a range of temperatures. Everything from sure it's near a thousand degrees right next to the fire, but you're not putting the food right there. Yeah. And then it's a flame. Exactly. And then there's every temperature possible down to probably 450 degrees, which is the area close to the to the mouth of the oven. Right. So we move the pizza to where the pizza needs to be cooked at any one moment.

There's no one temperature at all. Right. Oh, interesting. In an electric oven or a gas oven where you can set a specific temperature, that's a different story. But in a wood fired oven, there is no one temperature that we're baking at. Every moment is different also. Right. You know, because we're burning wood.

So when you put a new piece of wood on, the temperature will increase by 50 or 100 degrees and then it'll slowly back down as that piece uses up its fuel right right of course then we throw another one on so it's it's in constant motion yeah and you're just for two to three minutes you're you're not walking away you're you're watching it you're moving it around you're yeah yeah yeah yeah that's cool so if in my oven it's it and it's at 500 degrees uh is that cool is it is it doable totally totally that's one of the one of the one of the one of the one of the things that I really unlocked in in the book is that you can make great pizza at any temperature above 450 degrees. You just have to tailor your dough recipe around the oven that you're

baking in. So the dough that we use at the restaurant in a wood-fired oven, if I tried to put that in my home oven and bake it at 150 degrees or so lower than we bake at the restaurant. it's not going to come out great. Right, right. So you have to tailor your dough recipe around the oven that you're baking it. Got it. And you don't, you're not, you don't use the double zero flour, which a lot of people say that's the pizza dough flour. Yeah, it's nonsense.

Right. I love this. I love how you're literally shattering every dumb thing I've heard about making pizza. Yeah. I mean, you can make great pizza with pretty. much any flour aside from like pastry flour right one anything from an all-purpose flour coming in at like 11 and a half percent protein all the way up to 13 and change any bread flour any any any all-purpose flower you don't need an imported italian flour that they're not even growing the wheat in

italy they're importing wheat from the the big wheat producing countries in the world which which the United States is one of them. They blind those wheat seeds up into flour and then sell it back to us. Oh, come on. I don't use doubles. That's how it works. Wow. That's crazy.

Because I would get this double zero bag and it's like, which is not that easy to find in the first place. And you're like, oh, this is the stuff. It probably came from right down the road. Exactly. And right down the road probably has higher quality flour. than. Yeah.

No. The United States has so much great flour. So we're one of the biggest we producing countries in the world. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of our biggest exports. Like we, we have great, a great climate for wheat growing. We have fantastic producers here.

So why not, why not support our local or at least domestic agricultural system? Yeah. It's so important. Do you feed, what do you feed the starter? or is it all purpose or is a combination? I don't. That's one thing that I don't do, unless I had to. I spent years doing it.

But I always feed my starter organic wheat. And typically it's high extraction wheat, meaning there's a little bit of germ and a little bit of brand in there. So it's like halfway between white flour and whole wheat flour. Right, right. It's got a little bit of a little bit of the, a little bit of the, yeah. right the stuff to it right yeah it keeps it keeps the starter really happy because there's a lot there's substantially more vitamins and minerals in it and uh and uh we've noticed a big change in in the uh the flavor profile of what we bake based on what we feed the starter yeah

to keep it happy yeah no it's it's amazing how much that changes the the flavor of what's going out because sometimes, you know, you'll just, I'll just get in. It's been, I'll push it. It hasn't really been fed. It's a little angry, which you can smell. It's like a little more sour. Yeah. It's kind of fun sometimes. It's kind of like, you get pissed it off. You have this angry piece of bread. It's kind of sour. It's like, oh, all right. You're kind of rude, but I like you. All right. So go on. So we've got, I think you've covered the crust. Yeah, you've covered the crust.

Yeah, so I like a tomato that is a balance between sweetness and acidity. Tomatoes have probably eight components to it from the sweetness, acidity, the color, the positive flavor attributes, the negative flavor attributes, the whether there's seeds and skins. I hate tomato skins. It's one of my, I loathe tomato skins. So you don't, so if you were doing it at home or you recommend in the book, you're not going with whole peeled tomatoes. Peel. Oh, you peeled, right.

But still, you'll find some skins in those. So that's one of the ways I judge a can of tomatoes. Okay. Right. Look inside that can. If there's a lot of skins in there, they're not, it's not a good cannery. They're not, they're not. Right.

This isn't dialed in enough. Right. Of course, you'll get one or two here and there. But I run them, I run the tomatoes through a food mill. So the food mill usually takes out any, any remaining bits of skin. So if you're, if you're recommending to the people at home that are using it, you're not going crushed, though. I don't go crushed usually.

Right. Because that's a little, it's not as good a quality tomato ultimately, right? Yeah, typically tomato canneries will put their best fruit into the can as whole peeled. Right. And then they have a variety of other products that they use to use up the not so perfect parts, right? Right. All the way from whole peeled tomatoes to crushed to, you know, prepared sauce. Right.

All the way down to the worst of the worst, which is tomato paste. Right, right. all the garbage goes in there. And I love to make it constantly at my house, not for pizza, but for, you know, whether I'm brazing something or making a stock, making a soup. Yeah. I just, right. I just use it for a curry that I made the other night.

And tomato paste just to coat all the vegetables and stuff. And it was like, yeah, okay. You wouldn't know that this was a lame or tomato. Byproduct. But there are some tomato paste out there. that are dynamite. There's one that, do you know Gustiamo.com?

They're an Italian importing company and the products that they import are phenomenal. And they import this, yeah, they import this. It's called like tomato extract. It's basically tomato paste, but it is so fantastic. I just discovered this product a couple months ago

and I can't stop using it and talking about it. Oh, that's awesome. I'm very excited. The best version of tomato paste. Right. So for that, but for your pizza, you're going with a whole tomato, no skins. Yep. Right.

Okay. Yeah. Balance of sweetness and acidity. Right. I love the, um, uh, Gustiamo has one that I love called the gusto tomato. I love Bianco DiNapoli. It's, uh, they're, you know, I'm friends with those guys. They're phenomenal people and the product is great.

It's organic. So I can feel good. about serving against my kids. Right. It's awesome. How is that compared to a cent, a chento? Chento as an Italian company. Yeah, the, yeah.

They're good. They're good. Yeah, we, so we do our tomato tasting every year. Oh, yeah? Yeah, we'll line up 10, 12 different tomatoes that we can get for the restaurant. And we do a double blind taste test based on the tomato evaluation system. Right. And the winner of that tasting is what we serve at the restaurant. And Chanto always comes right in the middle of the in the middle of the batch.

Okay. That's good. That's good for the home cook. Definitely. Yeah. But I have a giant poster, framed poster of the label of Bianco DiNapoli in my, in my dining room. That artwork is gorgeous. It's gorgeous.

I love those guys too. Rob and Chris. Yeah. I've never met by my. Chris I know pretty well. Yeah. So good. So good.

And okay, so cheese? Cheese. So I want the cheese to melt and flow completely onto the pizza. Right. We're looking for, you know, really a cheese that flows. I don't like when it just kind of melts and sits there and is. in a blob in a blob and is kind of difficult to chew through has that like squeaky rubbery texture I want creamy milky fatty rich cheese I love especially when it's a cheese made from grass fed cows

which you really have to search for you have to seek out that creamery that will make a cheese for you. Thankfully, we have we have a number of them that we work with. And the the product is completely different. Really? Yeah. Where are they? Are they East Coast? Yeah, we work with one in New Jersey and Sussex County. Grass fed cows. We see differences in the way the cheese melts and flows. We see differences in the color and flavors of the cheese based on the sea. in and what the cows are eating because the cheese is an agricultural product, right? It is the product of a cow and what that cow is eating informs how the cheese is going to taste. And it's just so interesting to watch the cheese change throughout the year based on,

you know, what the cows are eating right now. It's the middle of winter. They're eating hay and silage and the cheese has this off white color, whereas in the middle of, in the beginning of spring, when they're first put out to pasture on fresh. growing grass, it turns this neon yellow. It's extraordinary. Amazing. And these are the inconsistencies that we try to celebrate because it's real. It's natural. Right. Right. I'm okay with the cheese changing color slightly because it's normal. It's real. But you've got to be, you can't go too far because people are coming to Rasa and they're expecting something. Yeah. So we always

have multiple cheeses, multiple tomatoes at the restaurant at all times. And we use them for different purposes. Right. The tea that is from New Jersey is not our standard mozzarella that we use. It only goes on two or three of our pizzas here because it is so different. And it's slightly less approachable. Like my four-year-old son doesn't like it. Right.

And that's okay. He just doesn't understand. He doesn't have the palate yet for it. It's like, it's just like drinking wine, right? Yeah. There's your everyday $12 bottle that everybody understands, you know, call it a, you know, I don't know. Yeah.

Kianti or a. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's a single crew, you know, the grapes are grown on this one hillside. And the wine is a true expression of that grape and that hillside and that wine maker. Right. Right. So we view cheese that way and tomatoes that way.

Yeah. So the cheese that changes from Sussex County changes throughout the year. That's that single crew wine that tells a story of time and place. But our standard cheese is one that we make here every day. And now we use on most of our pizzas. And that's understandable, approachable. We can control so much about it because we're making it here every day. So we can make it today and use it.

today and try not to use it the next day because it changes. Right, of course. So have you, have you, you pay so much attention to this and you have these different approaches and you, just the expression of just the cheese of what you're just saying just now. Have you, have you noticed that your customers have matured? Like they, they have developed more of an understanding. Have they, have they learned from what you're feeding them?

I think so. We try not to be too preachy about it. I don't want to jam the information down your throat. Sure. At the end of the day, our goal is to make people happy and to, it should be understandable, again, to my four-year-old, right? We shouldn't have to tell a story about the pizza for you to understand it. It should be innately delicious.

Yeah, yeah. If you love it, then you then we'll love it. then we'll tell you the story. Yeah, exactly. If you inquire, then I'll, you know, I'll talk all day about it. Right, right. But it shouldn't be only enjoyable because you have the story behind it. Right.

That's a good way to even think about wine. It's like if I have to, if I hear this, if you tell me the story after, then I know I'm not being con. Yeah. Right. If you're telling me a whole story and then I'm like convinced I have to. to enjoy this, otherwise I'm an idiot. And that's not a good experience.

Exactly. Exactly. But people do learn a lot and their palettes have definitely developed during, you know, from the beginning of my pizza making until now. Yeah. And, yeah, I think that we've, we've, we always try to do the right thing at every step of the way in this, in this restaurant. And that leads.

to a trusting relationship with our guests where they know that that we're really trying our best every day at every aspect of it. So whatever we put on our menu is going to be delicious. That's huge. That really that really is the success story for every successful spot and chef. And I mean, you can tell when you know it's it's very interesting. It's even beyond, I always say it even with comedy clubs. Like all my friends. favorite places to go perform over the years, the owner was in the building. It wasn't some manager in some like strip mall who didn't care. It was the owner was there wanting to help you,

wanting to, involved in every aspect of the place. Yeah. It's just caring. Because he truly loves it. And I love being here. Like, I love it. Yeah. What time do you get in in the morning?

Anywhere between 11 and 12. That's healthy. Yeah. Yeah. So my mornings, I have coffee with my wife. wife. Nice. And then kids the bus stop. Was it always this way? Wasn't always this way. No. This is a successful person talking. This is a person who knows the limits. And we're, we're closed one day a week. We don't open for lunch. I feel like the restaurant business is

very difficult. I've been burnt out many, many times throughout my 20 years in, you know, making pizza. Yeah. And then a little bit more money is just not worth it to me. And it's not, it keeps my team happy. It keeps me healthy. And there's very little humanity in the restaurant business for the, for the workers, for the people who do the work. Right. And we're trying to change that. We're trying to not be so greedy. That's great. That's really great. I mean, this is the, yeah. I mean, look, if you're going to, if your whole goal is to make people happy. Why would you want to piss off the people who are like shoulder to shoulder with you every day? Yeah. Yeah. Man. All right. Well, this is, this is a great first interview with you.

Done. You can't be done. We're getting close. Oh, my God. What I am going to do is I'm going to take this book and I am going to go on my pizza journey. And then I'm going to, and then I'm going to roll back and then, uh, and tell you whether I've, uh, whether I've failed or succeeded. You're going to do it. If you bake bread, you can make pizza. I know. You mentioned that. But I've been making bread.

And then I'll go to make pizza and it'll be like good on the outside. And then the middle is raw or the or it's bled through. And now it's or I've put in a stone because I'm trying to get the heat as crazy as possible. And then go to put the pizza and then the stone is cracked. because I've made it to a steel. How about that? Should I be using a steel rather than a stone? Okay, so I like a steel because I've broken too many stones to ever buy another one.

Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, what's with them? I would think they'd be so much more durable. It's so fragile. So fragile. So I've got a big ass steel. I bought it.

I haven't used it yet. Do it. Yeah, I'm going to throw it in there. Send me pictures. I will. I'll totally send you pictures. And your restaurant is open now? Yeah. Yeah. We're open six days a week, closed on Mondays. We're open from three o'clock until nine o'clock. Oh, wow. Yeah. Three to nine. That's so healthy. Super weird hours. Those are weird hours. I don't think I've ever heard of a place open three to nine. I know, but I love it. That's pretty great. So when do you get home at night? If you're on a work day, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're, 11. 10 or 11. That's healthy. It is. Yeah. This is a good life you've carved out. All right. The other thing I'm going to do is when I come when I come back east is I'm going to get Anthony. And we're going to, uh, the three of us are going to meet in person, uh, at your spot. Yeah. Anthony will bring the wine. I'll bring the pizza. I'll bring some jokes. And an appetite. And then you all pay you back when you come to a show. And I'll be working. Thank you so much, Dan. This is

really so great. And really, this is just, this is part one. I hope so. Yeah, I'm just putting that in. Have a great, have a great new year. And I'll talk to you. Thank you so much. All right. You'll probably get little notes from me along the way, yelling and screaming, but then we'll, then we'll, we'll sit down proper. All right, man. Happy health. All right. Thank you so much. All right. Stay safe. You too. Okay, everybody. That was our big show. Make sure you get the book, The Joy of Pizza, me more better than that. If you're in Jersey City, go to Rata. That is supposed to be the best pizza in the world. It's endorsed by all the people who I know and trust, and I will be going

there soon. Thank you so much for listening. Keep your comments coming. Keep the conversation going. I hope you enjoy it, and I will see you next week.