(smooth blues music)
♪ Hey, baby, I hear the blues are callin' ♪
♪ Tossed salads and scrambled eggs ♪
- That was really good pizza.
- Oh, this is the best pizza in a cup ever.
This guy's unbelievable.
He ran the old cup-of-pizza guy out of business.
- [Marie] Really?
- People come from all over to get this, uh-huh.
- [Oliver] Hey, what's up, Reddit Food?
I'm here to answer the question:
what does the food from film and television
actually taste like?
My name is Oliver Babish,
and today we're looking at
the pizza in a cup from "The Jerk,"
the first and most obvious solution to which
is to put some pizza in a cup.
That's why I got a pizza here,
and I'm going to get into my cup by any means necessary,
grab myself a fork, and dig in.
And I gotta say...
Oop, we got a straggler here.
Oop, oop. Oh!
Oh, disaster.
What I was gonna say was: I gotta say,
this tastes an awful lot like pizza
that's been shoved into a cup.
I'm not sure if that was the procedure
for the pizza-in-the-cup place from the movie,
but I do think that we can do better,
starting with those microwave pizza-in-a-mug things
that I always knew that one day I would eat.
We're combining four tablespoons of all-purpose flour,
1/8 of a teaspoon of baking powder,
and 1/16 of a teaspoon of baking soda in a mug,
whisking to combine,
and then adding three tablespoons of whole milk
and one tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil,
again whisking until it forms a paste.
And then we're topping it with pizza sauce and mozzarella
and some mini pepperonis that I am fashioning
out of regular-size pepperonis and a paring knife.
Then this guy's headed into the microwave
for one minute and 20 seconds,
just enough time to turn it into
a steaming bowl of pizza-like matter,
which I am going to diligently take a big ol' spoonful of
if I can get past this impossible cheese stretch.
Come on. I don't have time for all this gooey cheesiness.
There we go.
And my first impression upon first bite wasn't bad,
but this gooey, amorphous blob of pizza dough at the bottom
made me feel too post-apocalyptic.
It's like a pizza designed by one of those AI chatbots
that's forced to read about pizza for 1,000 hours.
I thought that I could perhaps
improve upon this recipe by doubling it up
and placing it into a heavily oiled mug
that I'm going to bake
at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes
until it's sort of golden-brown a little bit.
Top it with the requisite pizza trappings,
let the cheese melt before I add the pepperoni,
throw it back into the oven to crisp up,
and it makes for a pretty good thumbnail.
Something that makes your mind's eye wonder,
"What would it be like to drink pizza out of a mug?"
But in reality, all I've made here
is an unflavored cupcake
with melted cheese and sauce on top.
And yes, on paper this is pizza in a cup,
but I still think that we can do better.
The very loose batter-like dough
reminded me of a very high-hydration Pizza Bianca.
In this recipe adapted from Serious Eats
I'm combining 500 grams of bread flour,
10 grams of kosher salt,
and two heaping teaspoons of instant yeast
in the bowl of a stand mixer.
Then I'm combining 400 grams of tepid water
and 40 grams of extra virgin olive oil
which I'm going to stream into the machine as it is running.
This is going to form an extraordinarily sticky dough
with a hydration of 80%.
We're gonna place this in a generously oiled bowl
which we're going to refrigerate overnight in the fridge
to help develop its flavor.
At least 18 hours; up to 72 if you got the time.
Now, to make this Pizza Bianca into pizza in a cup
I'm going to transform it into trapizzino,
which is a recently invented hybrid
between a pizza and a sandwich
and I think it qualifies.
So as you can see, I'm making an Italian American red sauce
with meatballs and sausage,
perfect fillings for our trapizzino.
Click the link in the upper-right-hand corner
if you wanna see how to make that.
The next day and our Pizza Bianca dough is out of the fridge
and we're going to develop its gluten
by lifting and folding it on itself six times in a circle
every 15 minutes for an hour and a half.
Then we're turning it out
onto a quarter-size rimmed baking sheet
that we have rubbed down with two tablespoons of olive oil.
Flip it once to coat it all over with oil
and then, using our fingers,
we're gonna to press and spread it into the corners,
realize that we forgot our hairpiece, put it back on,
then we're gonna cover loosely with greased plastic wrap,
letting it rest at room temperature for one to two hours
until it's grown and it's puffy
and it's nearly twice its size.
This is gonna take different amounts of time
depending on the temperature of your kitchen.
Now, we want to cut this before baking,
and to do so we want to trace
the outline of where we're going to cut using olive oil.
This is gonna make sure that our bench scraper
doesn't stick when we cut it into four pieces.
Then we're gonna cover it with some flaky finishing salt
and throw it into a preheated 550-degree Fahrenheit oven,
turning once halfway through baking
for about 12 to 15 minutes total
until golden-brown, dappled with bubbles, and crisp.
We're gonna separate it into its intended four pieces
and let it cool for about 15 minutes
before slicing in half diagonally,
placing a cut down the center of longest side
and beginning to stuff it with fillings
like mozzarella cheese, halved meatballs, and sausage.
And yes, I agree that this is basically
a glorified focaccia sandwich.
There's gotta be some way we can get it
closer to being a pizza in a cup.
How 'bout, I don't know, placing it in a cup,
mostly so it can be held stable
while we top it with a little bit of parmesan cheese,
raise a toast, and dig in.
Now, I know this one went a little bit off the rails.
I know that is not what you picture
when you hear Steve Martin say "pizza in a cup,"
but is a portable, self-contained pizza sandwich vessel
and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
If it were in a cup it would be a member
of the Clean Pizza In A Cup Club.
And now real quick, guys,
I just wanna raise a tiny whisk...
Key. Heh, a tiny whiskey.
And toast to you for sticking with me
for the past five years of "Binging with Babish."
It's been the most important
and exciting five years of my life
and I cannot wait to see what comes next.
(upbeat music)