The Best New Pizza in America is in San Francisco

[soft upbeat music]

[Max] Jules is a place where I could make pizza

in a way that I like,

and in a way that I felt didn't exist a ton

here in the Bay Area.

I describe our pizza as if New York style pizza

was slightly higher-hydration

and charred a little bit more,

like they would in New Haven.

It just doesn't have to be overly precious.

I just want it to be approachable to people still,

and not make them scratch their heads

about what we're doing.

At the end of the day, it's pizza.

It should be fun.

[soft upbeat music]

Hey, I'm Max.

I'm the Chef/Owner of Jules in Lower Hate.

Come on in.

[door squeaking]

[soft upbeat music]

This is our dining room,

we seat about 40 inside.

[soft upbeat music]

So we're gonna make all six pies

that are on the menu right now.

I'm gonna stretch

and top them,

and I'll explain them as we go,

and then, Tony's going to cook 'em for us.

So we're gonna do the Marone first,

which is our classic cheese pizza.

I go very little flour on top,

the flour kinda keeps it from getting

as much color in the oven.

And then, I start by kinda pushing

all of the gas to the crust as much as I can.

I am trying to keep a pretty open crumb with our crust,

and so I start on my fingertips,

and then stretch by giving it

like a little bit of a turn

and a pull,

flour the bottom again,

just to help keep it from sticking.

And then we'll get the rest of the size.

We've been really lucky to be successful

pretty much from the beginning of opening here.

We did two-years of pop-ups before we opened,

so it was sort of like had built in

a little bit of a following.

We had our one-year anniversary last week,

and there was a line around the block starting at 4:30

for people to come into the party.

It's nice to know people like wanna be here.

I'm starting with a scoop of sauce.

So it's sort of a cross

between an East Coast cheese

and a margarita.

To me, a true margarita,

like Neapolitan style is gonna be sauce,

basil, and fresh mozzarella.

In this case,

I wanna get some garlic in there,

and oregano,

and some of those other flavors that we'd get

from more of the like New York style.

So, I'm gonna give it a pretty good pinch of Adjika,

which is the chili flake mixture that we make.

We use Japanese chilies,

dry coriander, dry garlic,

fenugreek, and dehydrated marigold flowers,

and all gets blended up in there.

Some basil.

I also love fresh basil on the finish,

but in this case,

I'm getting it on to cook beforehand,

just kinda helps make that a little more aromatic.

And then, we're gonna go with our cheese mix,

I wanna be careful not to go too,

too heavy, when it's too cheesy,

I think you cover up a lot of the tomato flavor.

Also, it starts to get kinda soggy

and we're going for pretty crispy pizzas over here.

The Caciocavallo is essentially

a really funky sharp provolone in a sense.

The Sicilian Pecorino is like salty,

a little acidity, it's got...

It's a creamy, good melter.

And then, lastly with this one,

we are gonna give it some fresh mozzarella

to give a little bit of the creamy,

melty mozzarella texture.

Mozzarella is a great cheese,

it melts really well,

it's kind of bland overall as a cheese.

Give this a little bit of a stretch,

and then we're gonna go into the oven with that guy.

You wanna think about firing

sort of like throwing a dart.

There's like a sort of quick forward

and back movement.

I mean, the most important thing

is that it doesn't stick.

To check, I usually like to hit it against my hip,

I like to see that it turns.

If you see a spot where it's stuck,

I know I need to either move it

or re-flour it a little bit.

So, we're moving on here to a Spicy Ronny,

which is our pepperoni pizza,

it's our best-seller

'cause pepperoni is number one pizza ingredient in America.

In New York,

especially at the time I was there,

everybody was doing some version

of like a spicy pepperoni.

I worked at Roberta's,

which is home of the bee sting,

and theirs is with Sobrassada,

honey, and chili flake,

but we're doing a spicy pepperoni.

We have the option of adding

our fermented garlic honey,

but it doesn't come automatically on the pizza.

So, starting with tomato sauce

and garlic again,

Adjika as well,

pretty good pinch

since this one is the spicy pizza.

Cheese mix,

and I tend to go a little heavier

than I do on the Marone,

because here we need a little bit more of the fat

to balance out the pretty hefty amount

of salty Ezzo pepperoni.

And that's it before we go into the oven with this guy.

I'm gonna do a Drunken Sailor.

It's basically gonna be our cooked tomato sauce,

some oregano on there, capers.

And then it gets anchovy,

it's literally like two filets

that go on this pizza, broken up.

It's really more there to give you

a little bit of that umami,

like bites of it.

And that's it on this pizza

before it goes into the oven.

So we launch up in the front spots here

and then we're kind of looking for once it's set

and gets some oven spring,

so you can see this,

what was the backside has a little color on it,

and then looking at the bottom,

we've already got some colors.

So I'm gonna spin it

and move it to the screen on the back.

Oven Spring is the initial

powerful rise that you get

when bread goes in the oven,

it gets a burst of heat,

and the yeast reacts to that heat

by really quickly producing a ton of carbon dioxide,

so that's what makes it sort of explode in the oven,

and you need enough strength

and structure in the dough

to be able to get that oven spring.

When it's too strong,

the gas tries to expand,

and the gluten is so strong

that it can't really open up.

And so, that's why getting that protein content

around like 11/11.5% is kind of a sweet spot

for building a strong enough dough,

that also is extensible enough

that when it gets that oven spring,

it can like open up really nicely,

hold onto the gas,

but stretch enough that you get an open,

lighter crumb.

So we're gonna move into white pizzas.

This is called the Fun Guy.

Gonna get mushroom cream on there,

a little garlic as well.

Black pepper, some cheese mix.

We're gonna get our mushrooms on there,

Maitaki, Ponchameggi,

and then we've got some morels.

We use this cheese called Hornkuhkase,

a Swiss alpine cheese.

The name literally translates to horn cheese

because they use only dairy cows with horns.

The finish on this

is we put these little dots

of a black garlic tamarind sauce that we make.

It's kind of fun,

just 'cause a lot of people

think it looks like chocolate chips.

And then this last one we're gonna do

is Fiona's Destiny.

And because we never like

to take things too seriously here,

it gets finished with Funyuns.

I think Funyuns are an incredible

and underrated chip.

We're looking for like a pretty good amount

of Maillard reaction,

I like darker brown.

I mean, if anything,

this is like a really nice bake.

I like to be able to hear the crack when you do that,

and then when you pick it up,

I want to have like enough structure

that it doesn't fold

and collapse.

The bottom, I like seeing

a good amount of contrast,

nice like dark brown color

and not flopping everywhere.

I want that like open crumb lighter texture

with sort of a thin shattery crust.

We gotta get pizza dough going

and get those ingredients going,

so we're gonna start on that now.

All right, we're in the prep kitchen in our basement.

160 doughs for today.

I typically want the dough that we make today

to get used tomorrow.

The fermentation's really different between same day,

one-day, two-days,

three-days in the fridge.

The purpose of a sourdough starter

is to leaven the dough,

so it creates carbon dioxide,

which helps to make the dough rise.

On top of that,

there's a lot of lactic bacteria

that live in a sourdough starter.

The name of one in particular

is called Lactobacillus Sanfranciscensis,

it's named for San Francisco,

which is partly because San Francisco

is very well known for its sourdough.

That bacteria is what gives it a lot of flavor.

This guy, this is the pouliche,

also pre-ferment.

The pouliche as a tool

helps me manage the acidity

and give the dough a sweeter flavor that I like.

For me, one of the things you taste in the dough

of a New York style pizza

is often that sweeter,

yeasty flavor,

like traditional New York style pizza

is not naturally leavened.

And then, last thing we're adding before the flours

is a little bit of commercial yeast.

I know this seems complicated

to have all three different leaveners,

but I find that a little bit of that fresh yeast

is just what helps give it

that little bit of extra pop in the oven.

And that is part of what,

to me, gives it that thinner,

shattery crust.

We have three different flours in our pizza dough.

This one's called Max's Marvel.

Partly chose I'll admit because of the name,

but I also really like this mill,

it's Cape Valley Mills.

This is actually a blend

of three different grains.

Love this flour,

they mill it fresh for us.

Anyway, Glacier Peak here,

this is from Karen Spring Mills,

this one's a much whiter flour.

I love this flour, it's great.

It's too strong for pizza in my opinion,

if it were 100% Glacier Peak.

Higher protein's great,

makes a strong dough,

you can stretch it.

Because it's so strong,

it's like toothier

and harder to chew.

I don't really want to see someone

having to like rip it,

and I think with a lot of New York style pizza,

which is typically using really strong flours,

that's why your jaw is like tired

by the time you're done eating.

So we're kinda trying to avoid that.

Last flour,

Edison, this one is a single varietal.

This one is about 10.5% protein,

much softer overall.

I like blending these three

because effectively I'm kinda trying

to get a protein content overall of about 11 to 11.5%.

This one would be a little too weak on its own.

This one would be too strong.

This one has nice strength,

but is all whole-wheat.

But we blend 'em together

and we get something really good out of the three.

All right, these are all in here now,

I'm gonna get this started.

Gluten is two amino acids,

and when you add water,

and mix them together,

they bond

and create gluten.

In theory, if you mix it together

and let it sit for like 12-hours,

you'd end up with a pretty strong dough,

even without doing anything.

I like getting it started,

letting it rest,

letting the gluten start to form on its own

without having to over-mix.

So this one's just a couple minutes

and it has no strength.

It's not like tugging back at me at all,

it's really shaggy,

meaning like, that doesn't look smooth at all either,

but it is hydrated,

and in the next half an hour,

it will become a much smoother,

stronger dough, even with no effort.

All right, so we're going back in.

This has rested about 30-minutes.

It's still pretty shaggy,

but in terms of strength,

we've actually got development here.

So we're gonna do the final mix.

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And now that I see it kinda coming together,

I'm gonna add in the salt,

and then olive oil.

I like adding a little bit of fat,

it helps keep the crumb a little bit more tender.

All of our olive oil is from Truly,

which is based here in California.

You know, we could use Italian stuff,

but I feel like we're in California,

we should use California stuff.

And I love the flavor.

At the end of the mix,

this is looking really nice to me,

so this is what's gonna come out.

Hold that.

All right, dough for 160 pizzas is set.

Now, I gotta get some sauces started.

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I wanted to do vodka sauce,

but I also wanted to make things a little easier

since we already make four different sauces

for six pizzas,

which is a little crazy.

So, we make our wine sauce for the Drunken Sailor,

which has white wine in it.

So we're gonna use some of the wine sauce

as the base basically,

but we're starting it with Calabrian chili oil.

We use Calabrian chilies on top of the Spicy Ronny,

and we strain off some of the oil,

and then we have all this oil,

tons of Calabrian chili oil.

So, we're always looking for things

to use Calabrian chili oil for.

While it's still relatively cool,

I'm gonna add in Gochujang,

a fermented pepper paste common in Korean food,

it's gonna get really aromatic,

and definitely imparts a little bit of heat.

So we have like a nice fry-up here on our Gochujang,

so I'm gonna deglaze this with the wine sauce.

Our red pizza sauce for the Marone

and the Spicy Ronny

is a pretty classic raw tomato sauce.

It's tomatoes,

salt, little olive oil

and a little water,

and we blend that together.

Tomato is such an amazing flavor on its own,

it's got umami

and acidity,

and sweetness,

it's kinda got everything right there.

But, the wine sauce,

we sweat some onion

and garlic, add in oregano

and chili flake,

deglaze with white wine,

cook off the alcohol a little bit,

and then, add our tomatoes,

and bring that up.

So, a little bit more of that rich,

more caramelized tomato flavor in that.

I kinda want everything to come together

and as I stir,

and the heat comes up,

it'll kind of all get emulsified in there.

While this is happening,

I'm also going to get mushrooms

for our mushroom cream going.

Basically we take all the scraps

from when we break down the mushrooms,

and we're going to just season that with some oil,

some salt

and pepper, roast it right now.

We're gonna get a little rosemary in there

before it's done roasting.

And then that's all gonna get blended

with some red onion

and cream, and that's gonna make the base

of that mushroom cream.

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Just throwing this in.

Pretty simple.

Nice thing about having a pizza oven

is you can roast things really hot.

We got a Moretti Forni,

because I'd worked with them more in the past,

which is an electric deck oven.

This is a really old building from 1892,

so we did not have enough electricity for that.

So out of necessity we went with gas

and I am very,

very happy that we did actually,

this oven's awesome.

A lot of the old school,

like the Baker's Prides',

it's one really thick stone,

so it takes a really long time to heat that up.

And then, the first few pizzas,

you usually just basically burn

the [beep] out of the bottom,

because it's so hot.

And then, once you're in service

and you're firing a lot of pizzas in it,

you've pulled a lot of the heat out of the stone,

and it takes so long to reheat that entire stone,

'cause it's so thick,

that it's really hard to catch up

if you're really busy.

But, the way Moretti designs their oven

is that there's the three stones on each deck

that are what you're landing your pizzas onto.

Then there's like an air gap beneath that,

and then another set of three stones.

It's able to trap

a bunch of really like super-heated air

in between the two layers of stone,

and so it's sort of constantly replenishing.

We put pizza screens like in the back of the oven,

so we'll fire onto the first row,

and then once it sets,

we move it to the back on two screens,

and that allows the top to get enough color

before the bottom is too burnt.

Even with a really busy service,

this oven keeps up really, really nicely.

So this was just at like a pretty gentle boil,

and I'm going to just get the cream in.

The Satriale Special went on the menu,

it was supposed to be one of our seasonals,

just when the green garlic came in.

And it's quickly become

one of our most popular pizzas.

It beats Spicy Ronny in sales a lot of nights,

which, it's hard to beat a pepperoni pizza in sales,

so it's not gonna leave the menu anytime soon.

Our sauces are all set for the moment,

so I'm gonna run downstairs

and we're gonna start dividing

and shaping dough.

[soft upbeat music]

This is from today.

So this is the same one that I mixed.

So it's had about an hour

and a half bulk fermentation right now.

You wanna build a lot of structure,

'cause pizza dough is gonna be sitting

and proofing for a pretty long time.

So, I'm gonna kinda like bring these rougher edges in,

and I'm kinda like tucking,

and springing back to where I can work with it.

And then, giving it like a little bit

of a quarter turn each time I push it,

and then trying to seal that bottom.

And then it goes in the dough box.

If we were to bake this dough right now,

it's still pretty under-fermented.

There is some activity,

so it'd get a little oven spring,

but it doesn't have a ton of structure yet,

it would definitely just bake like a blob.

And honestly, the biggest thing

is just from a flavor perspective,

you get so much flavor from the fermentation time.

I'm the fastest at this.

[Max and employees laughing]

Yeah, I mean I've shaped,

at this point,

tens of thousands is not an exaggeration,

potentially 100,000 of these in my lifetime,

so it's just about practice,

and it takes a little while,

especially this is a stickier dough,

so this isn't like a beginner-level

pizza dough to work with.

We're gonna be shaping here

for the next 20-so-minutes.

So we'll be finishing this up,

and then we can go get some pizza ready.

It's 4:30, just about time for pre-shift,

we're mostly set up on the line,

so we're gonna go meet with our front of house staff.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome in, I hope you had a good day.

Welcome back, Eileen.

We're gonna go over our notes for the day.

Food-wise, we don't have any major changes,

we talked about very,

very minor change

that the Fresno chilies are Serrano chilies now

on The Crudo.

So we're gonna start with chicken this coming Tuesday

as like a one-day,

we're just gonna do it on Tuesdays I think for now.

Wanna also just say thank you.

And that's all we got.

All right, guys.

Great.

[soft upbeat music]

[Max] We're set-up here on the line,

I'll be expediting here at the pass.

I like to expedite,

but we'll also work the oven.

Some days I'll stretch

and open doughs,

kind of wherever is needed.

It's 4:55, we open in 5-minutes.

Thank you for spending the day with us,

but you gotta leave.

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