- The oven is one of man's greatest inventions
and it was a super pivotal moment in humanity.
We realized that this is a natural resource.
So we figured, let's capture that heat that we're burning.
They decided to put a dome around the fire.
And that's one of the reasons
why I love baking in a wood-fired oven
is it really connects me to early humanity.
Our boy Malcolm who raises the pigs
for our meatballs is here.
- This is ground pork,
pasture-raised ground pork from Bernardsville, New Jersey,
so about an hour away from here.
Yeah, heritage hogs.
We raise them in the woods.
Mostly sirloin,
sirloin and then the picnic,
which is kind of like the brisket on a pork.
- Pizza's our specialty,
but because we have these giant, beautiful wood-fired ovens,
we try to make as many things
in this wood-fired oven with the residual heat.
So we're making meatballs.
So we have day old bread
that we baked also in the wood-fired oven.
This is some buttermilk.
So we soak the day old bread in the buttermilk.
So we have a combination of beef and pork here.
So now, we're gonna mix in some eggs.
On my second trip to Italy when I was 24,
I had a meatball epiphany in the city of Parma, Italy.
What I loved about those meatballs that I tasted
was the texture was unlike any meatball I've ever tasted.
So I started making meatballs
immediately after coming home from that trip.
And it really comes down to the bread that we're using
and that's what creates that light and tender meatball.
We're portioning out the meatballs.
We're gonna go in and give them a quick little roll.
All right, so the meatballs are going in
and we're gonna put them two thirds of the way back
so that they cook nice and evenly,
but they're not gonna cook evenly
'cause there is a wide range of temperatures
in that back area,
but we're just gonna manage it.
We're gonna watch it.
It's 10:30 in the morning.
The first thing we do every day is light that fire.
We have this manmade log
that every piece is exactly the same.
It's virtually 0% moisture.
So what we're paying for is fuel.
And then we have these nice big pieces.
We want BTUs.
So species of wood matters much less
in baking in a wood-fired oven
where all we're looking for are BTUs.
We want heat.
You know, we're cooking with three different types of heat
in a wood-fired oven.
We're using conduction.
That's the direct contact of the food
with the floor of the oven.
Convection, which is moving hot air.
That's a little bit less important.
And then we're baking with radiant heat,
which is the physical rays of energy
that are radiating from the fire.
So the first thing we do in the morning
is light that wood-fired oven.
And the next thing we do is feed our sourdough starter.
So this is our starter.
This is the lifeblood of what we do at Razza.
All of our bread products, our pizza dough,
all of it is based around the sourdough starter.
This is doing hard work, right?
This is leavening all of our pizza dough,
bread dough, everything.
So it needs to be in prime health.
So it needs food on a regular basis.
And all it is is feeding it additional flour,
which is its food source,
and water, which does all kinds of things.
It's a living community of wild yeast
and beneficial bacteria.
And they live in symbiosis.
And we're looking for a nice, vibrant, very active culture.
Now, it's time to make the dough.
He's doing some algebra over here.
So we're calculating our water temperature to use for today.
We take the temperature of the flour.
We take the temperature of the air.
Our mixer generates a certain amount of heat
through friction.
We take a temperature of our starter.
And then we just do a little algebra
to figure out what our water temperature should be
in order for the dough to come out
at the same exact temperature.
So the water out of our tap came out at about 55 degrees.
And so we're adding a little bit of ice,
a few cubes at a time.
We're trying to bring it down to 49 degrees.
Your local pizza shop
that every time you go there and get a slice
and it's super consistent,
they are doing this.
And now, we're gonna add our sourdough starter
and water and yeast to the mixing bowl.
We break up our mixing process into two separate steps
and we're gonna take it out of the mixer
and let it rest for at least 20 minutes up to an hour.
We let the dough rest for about an hour
and now it's going back in the mixer.
So we add the salt to the dough now.
The salt provides seasoning,
but also controls fermentation
and builds a little bit more strength.
So you're gonna see the dough start to tighten up
over the next like minute or so.
So now, we're gonna add a little bit more water
to increase the hydration a little bit.
It's a big myth that your water source matters
or that the water in your location is important,
but it's really not.
It's kind of scientifically proven at this point
that it's not the water.
It's ingredients and technique.
And then it comes out and then we begin bulk fermentation.
And that can last anywhere between an hour and four hours.
So this is for our fresh mozzarella.
We make it here every day.
So we break up the curd.
Try to be gentle.
And then we add a little bit of salt to it.
And then we get some hot water here
and we're gonna slowly
increase the temperature of the curd.
We're looking for a more mild cheese.
This is understandable.
It's recognizable.
This is standard in Italian restaurants in New Jersey,
in New York.
A lot of people make their own fresh mozzarella.
And once you taste it warm, just stretched,
it's hard to go back.
So this is gonna chill now.
And then in a couple of hours,
we'll start to break it up to go on pizza.
Bring on the mushrooms!
Yes, look at those bad boys.
- These are maitake mushrooms,
also called hen-of-the-woods.
And then your pioppini are up there.
- I love the texture.
It's like velvet.
Dude, you're the best.
Thank you so much.
So we've got the mushrooms in.
These are going on our funghi pizza,
which is a white mushroom pizza.
These are pioppini mushrooms.
We're just gonna snip off the bottom
'cause he can't chew through that.
We're using maitakes also.
I just love the flavors and the textures.
And then we're gonna roast them in the wood-fired oven.
So it's three o'clock.
We're about to open the restaurant.
Our dough is finally ready.
It's been bulk fermenting for a few hours.
And now, we're about to divide it
into individual dough balls and roll them.
This is my favorite part of the process
because we get to hang out together.
We get to talk about our day,
but we also get to talk about the dough.
The dough is a living thing and it changes from day to day.
This is when we make adjustments to every other batch
that we'll make going forward.
Maybe we need to increase our dough temperature.
Maybe we need to decrease bulk fermentation time.
And the only way is to get in there and do it.
So these are gonna get stretched out
to a 12-inch individual size pizza.
Pretty much my entire life is dedicated to pizza.
For me, it's my profession.
It's my craft, it's my art, the way I feed my kids.
This dough is specifically formulated
around a high temperature oven like this.
If I try to bring this dough and put it into my home oven,
it's not gonna bake properly.
We have specific dough recipes formulated around the oven.
I'm watching for the first signs of caramelization,
which we're getting right here and right here.
And I'm checking the bottom to see how the bottom's baking.
So our oven is pretty much the center piece
of the restaurant.
It's a constant source of joy,
knowing that we put raw materials into it
and out comes something super delicious
that brings a lot of happiness to people.
Really caramelized in that spot,
so we're just about done now.
What do you think?
- [Male Speaker] It's beautiful.
- It's always a work in progress.
It's not done, it's not finished,
it's not perfect by any means.
And it won't be until I never show up
in this building again.
It's always gonna be pushing to make it better today
than it was yesterday.
(upbeat electronic music)