Latest / Stuff You Should Know / SYSK Selects: How Pizza Works
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: How do you Everybody? Happy Saturday? Chuck here to introduce
- 0:06Speaker 1: my pick for the stuff you should have select this
- 0:08Speaker 1: week about pizza. Boy, oh boy, do we have fun
- 0:12Speaker 1: on this one. October eleven, two thousand twelve shall live
- 0:15Speaker 1: in infamy because we talked all about pizza from its
- 0:19Speaker 1: from its origins to where it stands today, Where to
- 0:21Speaker 1: get the best pizza? Oh my goodness, it was so
- 0:24Speaker 1: much fun. It's gonna make you hungry too, so please enjoyed. Everyone.
- 0:29Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know from house Stuff Works
- 0:33Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
- 0:42Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I'm a little under the weather,
- 0:46Speaker 1: a little rundown, but I feel better than I sound.
- 0:49Speaker 1: I am over the weather. Yeah whatever that means. It
- 0:52Speaker 1: means you're in great spirits, good shape. Sure can put
- 0:55Speaker 1: your hand through that wall next to you. I probably
- 0:57Speaker 1: could actually on certain days, but not today. That's a
- 1:01Speaker 1: good Chuck. Yet you're doing okay? Yeah? Great, guld your
- 1:04Speaker 1: feeling better Even though you sound crappy, man, I really don't.
- 1:08Speaker 1: It's always reminiscent of the six month period that you're sick. Earlis. Yeah, now,
- 1:13Speaker 1: I'm healthy. I don't smoke, I exercise, I eat right
- 1:16Speaker 1: a juice. Isn't it remarkable how you don't get sick
- 1:19Speaker 1: as often when you live right? Yeah, when you treat
- 1:22Speaker 1: your body exactly? Um, well, chuck. It's an excellent segway because,
- 1:28Speaker 1: in my opinion, one of the best ways to treat
- 1:30Speaker 1: your body is to stuff it full of really good pizza. Yeah.
- 1:35Speaker 1: Have you had pizza before? Yeah? Dude, I love pizza.
- 1:40Speaker 1: I don't eat that much of it. Oh really No,
- 1:43Speaker 1: I mean I don't know how much. I mean, we
- 1:45Speaker 1: have stats on the average American and stuff. May I
- 1:48Speaker 1: spit one out? Sure? Every day Americans eat about a
- 1:52Speaker 1: hundred acres of pizza. I guess it would be Sicilian
- 1:57Speaker 1: because an acres it would be squared, although that have
- 2:00Speaker 1: to be square. No, you can have a round acre.
- 2:02Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I guess you could. Just forget what I said.
- 2:05Speaker 1: I've never seen a round acre before. I'm gonna imagine
- 2:08Speaker 1: an island. If it's round, Oh yeah, it would be
- 2:11Speaker 1: round acreage. There's not really any real round islands. There's
- 2:15Speaker 1: there's no such thing as a perfect circle of Gilligan's
- 2:18Speaker 1: Island was so round. It's just a circle. No, Yeah,
- 2:24Speaker 1: I love pizza. I don't know how much I eat
- 2:25Speaker 1: of it though compared to most people. Like i'd say
- 2:28Speaker 1: we order a pizza, like maybe once a month. What
- 2:32Speaker 1: we'll order a pizza? Are the only pizza you have?
- 2:35Speaker 1: Every every month? Yeah, we'll get like it. We'll order
- 2:37Speaker 1: a pizza delivery or and then probably will throw in
- 2:40Speaker 1: one visit to Antico which a month that you got
- 2:43Speaker 1: me beat there. I need to get out there more often. Yeah,
- 2:45Speaker 1: once every six weeks to two months for Antico. Yeah.
- 2:48Speaker 1: Here in Atlanta, Um, Chuck and I have a pizza place.
- 2:51Speaker 1: I guess everybody in Atlanta has it, but we're very
- 2:53Speaker 1: fortunate to have a place called Antico Pizza. It's really good.
- 2:57Speaker 1: And now I understand the name after researching this article.
- 3:00Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's kind of close to the original pizzeria.
- 3:02Speaker 1: I think that's the point, is it, I would imagine.
- 3:06Speaker 1: I don't think they follow the traditional rules though. Okay,
- 3:09Speaker 1: we're spoiling all of me, well for my part. You
- 3:12Speaker 1: mean and I are crazy about pizza and we eat
- 3:15Speaker 1: it like all the time. Everything. We're frozen pizza to
- 3:17Speaker 1: Dominoes to um pizza out like by the slice. Yeah,
- 3:22Speaker 1: it's good. I have a lot more pizza when I
- 3:23Speaker 1: lived up in the New York area. Yeah, because I
- 3:26Speaker 1: would like get it after class. Just the single slice
- 3:28Speaker 1: would be huge slice and you fold it in half
- 3:31Speaker 1: and it's just great. Did you want pizza while you
- 3:33Speaker 1: were researching this? Did you? Oh? Yeah? Yeah? Alright? So
- 3:38Speaker 1: by the Antico though, it is really really good pizza,
- 3:41Speaker 1: the best pizza in Atlanta, most people agree on. And
- 3:44Speaker 1: judging by the line out the door every single day,
- 3:48Speaker 1: then uh, I would say, we're right. I've even gotten
- 3:51Speaker 1: into an argument with them on the phone, which I
- 3:53Speaker 1: don't do very often, about whether or not you can
- 3:55Speaker 1: order a cheese a pizza without cheese, and I'll still
- 3:58Speaker 1: go back there after hanging up on them in anger. Yeah,
- 4:02Speaker 1: they do it their way. They definitely do that. That's
- 4:04Speaker 1: the man. They also have the big the dressing station
- 4:08Speaker 1: which is like the basil plants. They don't even have it,
- 4:11Speaker 1: like it's not dried basil or even leaves. It's like
- 4:13Speaker 1: the plant. You pick the leaves off there and they
- 4:16Speaker 1: got the big chunks of garlic and it's just so good. Yeah,
- 4:19Speaker 1: you can hear your food. Go now, I want pizza, Okay,
- 4:23Speaker 1: good all right, that's what I was going for, Chuck.
- 4:25Speaker 1: You got it worked. Um so everybody. I'm sure it's
- 4:29Speaker 1: familiar with pizza. I don't think there's gonna be too
- 4:32Speaker 1: many huge surprises there. But there's a lot about pizza
- 4:36Speaker 1: that I would imagine you don't know. Yeah, we're gonna
- 4:39Speaker 1: tell you that kind of stuff. Like, for example, at
- 4:41Speaker 1: its core, pizza really is bread, cheese, and sauce. Yeah,
- 4:47Speaker 1: that's it, tomato sauce, right, unless you're getting funky. But
- 4:51Speaker 1: you can't get funky and still call it pizza customarily. Yeah,
- 4:55Speaker 1: it's one of those things where like it has to
- 4:57Speaker 1: be made a certain way or else it's not really pizza.
- 4:59Speaker 1: It's like a tomato a pie. I don't know though,
- 5:01Speaker 1: like I would call like a pesto pizza pizza. But
- 5:05Speaker 1: you were born American? Yeah sure, yeah. Well do you
- 5:09Speaker 1: think I was speaking as like a native Sicilian? Well no,
- 5:12Speaker 1: but I'm saying like maybe as a citizen of the world. Okay,
- 5:15Speaker 1: you know we're in the midst of globalization, Chuck, Let's
- 5:19Speaker 1: let's do this, all right, let's talk pizza history then,
- 5:21Speaker 1: huh uh. Yeah. I used to hear from uninformed people
- 5:25Speaker 1: like you know, pizza is really American. It didn't even
- 5:27Speaker 1: come from Italy, right, they're talking about chop suey. Just
- 5:30Speaker 1: not true at all. Pizza did come from Italy in
- 5:34Speaker 1: a way. We need to back up eiven even further,
- 5:36Speaker 1: probably to Greece, where some people attribute like the original
- 5:41Speaker 1: flatbreads that they would decorate with things, is like the
- 5:44Speaker 1: first pizza style thing. Right, you're talking like third century BC,
- 5:48Speaker 1: a long time ago, right, But I don't mean they
- 5:51Speaker 1: didn't call it pizza until what eighty one thousand in Naples? Yeah,
- 5:56Speaker 1: of course, Well Naples is like the cradle of pizza. Yeah,
- 5:59Speaker 1: I did didn't realized. I didn't notice that it went
- 6:01Speaker 1: back that far. That's pretty interesting. Well that's what was
- 6:03Speaker 1: first named pizza, meaning pie. Okay, so I also saw
- 6:07Speaker 1: a discrepancy here. I saw pizza also could mean um
- 6:11Speaker 1: to pinch or slice. That's that's what I got, pizza mint,
- 6:16Speaker 1: not necessarily pie. Well that's what this person says. Okay,
- 6:20Speaker 1: So we're at a D one thousand, right, Yes, this
- 6:23Speaker 1: is such a cool cold date. Um. And the the
- 6:28Speaker 1: reason pizza started to take off was because the peasantry
- 6:31Speaker 1: didn't have that much money, and this stuff was kind
- 6:34Speaker 1: of easy to come by. You made your bread, you
- 6:37Speaker 1: had some cheese, maybe some kazu marzou with the maggots,
- 6:42Speaker 1: uh and um, maybe some seasonings and some olive oil.
- 6:46Speaker 1: That's about it. It wasn't until you know, the one
- 6:50Speaker 1: of the biggest main ingredients. It wasn't until um, the
- 6:53Speaker 1: Colombian Exchange started to take place, that tomatoes were introduced
- 6:58Speaker 1: to Italy because those are a new world for Yeah,
- 7:01Speaker 1: I did a little tomato research because that's kind of
- 7:03Speaker 1: fascinating on its own. I think tomatoes come from Peru,
- 7:07Speaker 1: they believe originally. And uh, because the fruit of the
- 7:13Speaker 1: night shade, the deadly night shade, looks like a tomato,
- 7:16Speaker 1: a lot of people thought it was poisonous over the years,
- 7:19Speaker 1: many years ago. And uh, actual stems and leaves of
- 7:23Speaker 1: a tomato plant do contain a toxic tomatine. Huh. But um,
- 7:31Speaker 1: like what is it was a lot of it. But
- 7:33Speaker 1: what will happen to you? Well, I think there's been
- 7:35Speaker 1: one reported death from eating tomato stems and leaves supposedly.
- 7:40Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true though. They figured out, well,
- 7:42Speaker 1: the stems and leaves are kind of gross anyway. Let's
- 7:44Speaker 1: just see the tomato, so thank you spain um. And
- 7:48Speaker 1: also interestingly, even though it came from like South America,
- 7:53Speaker 1: you would think it made its way up through the
- 7:54Speaker 1: States via Central American Mexico, but it didn't. It like
- 7:59Speaker 1: took the circuit circuitous route via European immigrants, probably through
- 8:05Speaker 1: the Philippines too. If you're interested in that, dude, you
- 8:08Speaker 1: should really read four all about it's all about that stuff.
- 8:12Speaker 1: Is that gonna just keep writing books as they're going
- 8:15Speaker 1: to be There is a benevolent god. Yes. So anyway,
- 8:22Speaker 1: tomatoes all people discovered, Hey they're not poisonous, they're really delicious.
- 8:27Speaker 1: Let's start throwing them on the bread exactly. Then now
- 8:30Speaker 1: we have pizza, so we're talking like the seventeenth century
- 8:33Speaker 1: I think was when the term uh no, it wasn't okay,
- 8:38Speaker 1: so that kind of yeah, that goes against that research too.
- 8:41Speaker 1: I think I saw somewhere that the term was coined
- 8:44Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century, like seventeen thirty eight, they started
- 8:48Speaker 1: making pizzas as we know them today. You know, I
- 8:50Speaker 1: think there's some discrepancies just in pizza lore because that
- 8:55Speaker 1: long ago. I don't think they're necessarily keeping track of
- 8:57Speaker 1: all this stuff like we do today. Okay, so possibly
- 9:00Speaker 1: in a D one thousand or in seventeen thirty eight,
- 9:03Speaker 1: about seven hundred fifty years later, the word pizza was
- 9:06Speaker 1: used to describe this flatbread right, consisting of now tomato, sauce,
- 9:12Speaker 1: cheese bread right. Um. And but the one thing that
- 9:17Speaker 1: is not disagreed upon was that both of these took
- 9:20Speaker 1: place in Naples, that's right. And Naples was the center
- 9:24Speaker 1: of it. Like we said, the peasantry was really hip
- 9:26Speaker 1: to pizza because it was cheap and it was abundant. Yeah,
- 9:29Speaker 1: and so if you wanted to go find pizza, you
- 9:31Speaker 1: basically had to go into the peasant districts of Naples,
- 9:36Speaker 1: and uh there it was an abundance being sold from
- 9:40Speaker 1: street carts. Now, is that where the first pizzeria was, yes,
- 9:44Speaker 1: peasant Land, Yeah, okay, so Antiqua Pezzeria port Oliba. Yeah,
- 9:51Speaker 1: so Antiqua. I wonder if that's the same as Antiko.
- 9:53Speaker 1: Who won't know what the difference is. I don't know.
- 9:55Speaker 1: Someone will probably explain it to us, hopefully in Italian.
- 9:59Speaker 1: Is there an authority on at all? Right, So that's
- 10:00Speaker 1: eighteen thirty the first pizzeria, right, And also, um, I
- 10:04Speaker 1: didn't see it in here, but I came across it.
- 10:05Speaker 1: A Pizzaioli was a pizza maker. That was the name
- 10:08Speaker 1: of a pizza maker. Yeah, So the peasantry in Naples,
- 10:12Speaker 1: and probably it's starting to spread a little bit beyond that,
- 10:15Speaker 1: but the peasantry in Naples has been eating pizzas for
- 10:20Speaker 1: well over a century, almost two centuries by the time
- 10:23Speaker 1: Queen Margharita and King Umberto. Queen Margharita, Yeah, does that
- 10:29Speaker 1: name sound familiar in regards to pizza. Yeah, especially when
- 10:32Speaker 1: you see it spelled out right, you're like, oh, wait
- 10:34Speaker 1: a minute, that's where it came from. Exactly. Reportedly, so,
- 10:37Speaker 1: Queen Margharita was apparently like a pretty um hip queen.
- 10:41Speaker 1: She was down with the common person. And she and
- 10:45Speaker 1: Umberto went and toured the country in eighteen eighty nine,
- 10:48Speaker 1: and one of the places they went was Naples, and
- 10:50Speaker 1: one of the things they did was eat pizza. And
- 10:52Speaker 1: she was like, I love this, I want more of this.
- 10:56Speaker 1: Bring me Raphael Esposito, her personal chef. Yeah, I don't
- 11:02Speaker 1: know if it's a personal chef. It was a personal
- 11:03Speaker 1: pizza chef at least, And he said, Queen, the one
- 11:06Speaker 1: gonna make you some good a pizza, including one of
- 11:09Speaker 1: looks luck at the Italian flag. And that is the legend,
- 11:12Speaker 1: at least of how we got Margharita pizza because you
- 11:15Speaker 1: have the red tomato, the white mozzarel and the green basil,
- 11:19Speaker 1: and uh, there's your Italian flag. Yeah, it's a great story,
- 11:23Speaker 1: hopefully true. So supposedly he made her that one, the
- 11:26Speaker 1: Margharita pizza, which she liked the most and is named
- 11:28Speaker 1: after her. Um, another one with pork, fat, cheese and basil.
- 11:32Speaker 1: It sounds pretty awesome, uh, and then another one with
- 11:35Speaker 1: garlic oil, olive oil and tomatoes. All of them sound great,
- 11:40Speaker 1: but she chose the Margharita and that's the one that
- 11:42Speaker 1: was named after her. But the upshot of all this
- 11:45Speaker 1: is that the queen was suddenly eating peasant food. The
- 11:48Speaker 1: Queen's the most popular person in all of Italy all
- 11:50Speaker 1: of a sudden, and now, all of a sudden, places
- 11:53Speaker 1: other parts of Italy where pizza wasn't heard of or
- 11:56Speaker 1: eating or whatever, people are starting to make it. That's right,
- 12:00Speaker 1: And that's like uh eighteen nineties, yes, which is a
- 12:05Speaker 1: great time for pizza to be coming into its own
- 12:08Speaker 1: Because there was a little country called America coming into
- 12:11Speaker 1: its own and uh with the arrival of Italian immigrants
- 12:15Speaker 1: in the late nineteenth century in places like New York
- 12:19Speaker 1: and Chicago. In Philly, New York light, Uh, they would
- 12:23Speaker 1: eat pizza and it was again sort of like street food.
- 12:27Speaker 1: Um at the time, at least right UM so about
- 12:30Speaker 1: the time I guess when Margarita was extolling the virtues
- 12:34Speaker 1: of pizza, I guess her. Um, this wave of immigration
- 12:38Speaker 1: had such a tangible connection to the old world that
- 12:42Speaker 1: like almost immediately they were making pizzas in these cities.
- 12:45Speaker 1: Like you said, apparently New York was the first city
- 12:49Speaker 1: with an actual pizzeria. I believe that. Um, Lombardies, General
- 12:54Speaker 1: Lombardi apparently opened his shop in nineteen o five at
- 12:58Speaker 1: fifty third and a half Spring Street, New York. I
- 13:00Speaker 1: wonder what's there now? Lombardi was still there, I believe. Still. Wow,
- 13:05Speaker 1: that's pretty great. Yeah. And did we say that Antico
- 13:08Speaker 1: Pizzeria in Naples is still in the same spot, still
- 13:11Speaker 1: selling pizza since eighteen thirty. We did not, but that
- 13:14Speaker 1: is true. Yeah, and that is very cool. That makes
- 13:16Speaker 1: me want to go to Naples quite badly. Yeah, I mean,
- 13:18Speaker 1: you could get an original pizza from the original pizzeria. Yeah,
- 13:22Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. And we'll get to this in a
- 13:24Speaker 1: little bit. But you may be kind of surprised when
- 13:26Speaker 1: you eat a pizza, a Neapolitan pizza at the place
- 13:29Speaker 1: where it all started, compared if you're used to like
- 13:32Speaker 1: Papa John's. I had pizza and Italy once. Yeah, you know,
- 13:38Speaker 1: I was there and I figured why not. I guess
- 13:40Speaker 1: I'll do is the Italians do exactly? Okay, so that's
- 13:44Speaker 1: pretty much. Oh no, we didn't. We didn't finish the history. Yeah,
- 13:48Speaker 1: United States was coming into its own Italian immigrants coming
- 13:51Speaker 1: in bringing in pizza. Then after World War Two, of course,
- 13:54Speaker 1: with a lot of things. G I's came back with
- 13:57Speaker 1: these flavors for different UH countries, foods and drinks, and
- 14:01Speaker 1: they said, man, this pizza stuff is really great, so
- 14:05Speaker 1: let's start building chains and degrading the product. And we
- 14:10Speaker 1: did so with Shaky's in Ur was the first pizza
- 14:15Speaker 1: chain in the United States. California chain Pizza Hut was
- 14:18Speaker 1: founded in Kansas, of all places, and the reason, apparently,
- 14:24Speaker 1: as legend has it, that their named Pizza Hut is
- 14:26Speaker 1: because the place, the building kind of looked like a
- 14:28Speaker 1: hut and there was only room for nine spaces on
- 14:30Speaker 1: the sign. So pizza hut, that makes sense. Yeah, uh,
- 14:35Speaker 1: shaky Have you ever been the Shaky's? No, As a
- 14:37Speaker 1: matter of fact, um no. The only time I've ever
- 14:40Speaker 1: seen Shaky's was in the movie License to Drive with
- 14:43Speaker 1: the Two Corries. Yeah, they're all over l A and uh,
- 14:47Speaker 1: you know, sort of pizza huttie and feel like a
- 14:50Speaker 1: family joint pictures of beer. Not so great pizza. But
- 14:55Speaker 1: apparently Sherwood Shaky Johnson got in that name because of
- 14:59Speaker 1: some like affliction and he had that made him change. No, yeah, goodness,
- 15:02Speaker 1: but I guess he embraced it. Well, yeah, he name
- 15:04Speaker 1: this is very popular chain after it, and there's still
- 15:07Speaker 1: around huh oh. Yeah, I'm surprised it hasn't spread by now.
- 15:10Speaker 1: N there's pizza huts everywhere. Yeah, I mean I think
- 15:14Speaker 1: they have them outside of California, although I'm not positive.
- 15:16Speaker 1: I didn't get to look that up, but I know
- 15:18Speaker 1: they don't have them over here down south over here
- 15:22Speaker 1: in the Southeastern Bible Belt, all right, dough. Yeah, so
- 15:27Speaker 1: that's a piece of history. Yeah, we should probably get
- 15:30Speaker 1: to the basics. And there's nothing more basic than dough.
- 15:34Speaker 1: And there's an art to this. There's three ingredients that
- 15:38Speaker 1: are demanded, flour, water, and yeast. Everything else is just
- 15:42Speaker 1: icing on the cake. Yeah, but you probably are gonna
- 15:45Speaker 1: throw little salt in, little sugar, a little shortening to
- 15:49Speaker 1: make it do the things you wanted to do, perform
- 15:50Speaker 1: like you wanted to perform. Yeah, and you can go
- 15:52Speaker 1: to Mellow Mushroom Pizza and get a gluten free pizza.
- 15:55Speaker 1: I myself have not had one because I don't have Celiac, right,
- 15:58Speaker 1: and I'm not about to just no. Yeah, but um,
- 16:02Speaker 1: if you if you are into, if you are gluten free,
- 16:05Speaker 1: you are s o l in a lot of ways because, um,
- 16:09Speaker 1: the flower used in pizza crust, pizza dough, um is
- 16:13Speaker 1: high gluten, high gluten flour. That's why gluten free pizza
- 16:17Speaker 1: tastes like crap. I've not had it, so I can't say, yeah,
- 16:20Speaker 1: well that's just my opinion. Yeah you've had it. Yeah,
- 16:23Speaker 1: I've tried it. It's just not it's not the same.
- 16:26Speaker 1: I'm sorry everybody. They need gluten in the flower because
- 16:29Speaker 1: gluten makes a crust tough and uh, it won't crack
- 16:33Speaker 1: crack apart, makes it stand up to the water keeps
- 16:36Speaker 1: it ropey. Yeah, it keeps it nice and ropey. And um,
- 16:40Speaker 1: I guess we need to talk about water at some
- 16:43Speaker 1: point anytime, because waters, you know, the old saying about
- 16:47Speaker 1: New York pizzas is because the water. Oh yeah, that's
- 16:50Speaker 1: like the old saying. I don't know. So they change
- 16:53Speaker 1: the water. Now they have like water you can drink
- 16:55Speaker 1: right out of the tap. Did they change their water?
- 16:57Speaker 1: Oh yeah, man, they overhauled their serious system. There's bottled
- 17:00Speaker 1: water you can buy now. That's just New York City
- 17:02Speaker 1: tap water and stuff is so like clean and pure. Well,
- 17:06Speaker 1: it's because it comes from it comes from two aqua
- 17:09Speaker 1: aqua ducts, and the cats skills ship it into Manhattan.
- 17:14Speaker 1: We should do a podcast on how Manhattan gets water.
- 17:16Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing. Okay, now now can we wait until
- 17:20Speaker 1: we research it. Yeah, that's pretty amazing though. But um,
- 17:23Speaker 1: I read this Wired article that kind of broke down
- 17:26Speaker 1: the pizza water New York thing, and um they got
- 17:31Speaker 1: in touch with Mario Batali, very famous tian cheff and
- 17:34Speaker 1: asked him and he said, well, one of the reasons
- 17:37Speaker 1: before we get to water is that, um the oven,
- 17:40Speaker 1: he said, captures the gestalt or if you're German, the
- 17:44Speaker 1: gestalt of a beautifully cooked pizza. So basically over time
- 17:48Speaker 1: totally did say that over time, Well, it makes sense
- 17:51Speaker 1: to overtime, you're gonna get uh, particles like volatized particles
- 17:56Speaker 1: caking onto the walls and the roof of your oven,
- 17:59Speaker 1: and then the convection process will just like work that
- 18:02Speaker 1: into whatever you're cooking over the years. So, because they've
- 18:05Speaker 1: been making pizza for so long in New York, some
- 18:07Speaker 1: of these old ovens like have this gestalt, they can't
- 18:11Speaker 1: be matched anywhere else, he says, in Chicago as well. Um,
- 18:16Speaker 1: but then with the water, he says, Yeah, the biggest
- 18:18Speaker 1: problem with California pizza is the water. It's just not
- 18:21Speaker 1: the same. Although he doesn't he doesn't use New York,
- 18:26Speaker 1: New York water at his restaurant Del Posto. He actually
- 18:29Speaker 1: clones water from Italy. He doesn't, he does, yes, clones it,
- 18:36Speaker 1: That's what he said. It's uh, he's created his own
- 18:39Speaker 1: mineral water composite, working from a chemical analysis of Laua, Italiana,
- 18:46Speaker 1: and it said basically it's a clone of this Italian water.
- 18:50Speaker 1: It sounds kind of pretentious. We should go sell some
- 18:52Speaker 1: real estate or something. But that's why the I think
- 18:56Speaker 1: the Food Detective Show did a test, a blind test
- 19:00Speaker 1: on New York water and pizza crust, and everyone picked
- 19:04Speaker 1: the New York pizza in a blind test. So there
- 19:07Speaker 1: may be something to at the mineral composition. I'm sure
- 19:09Speaker 1: there is. Yeah. I mean, if you have even the
- 19:11Speaker 1: slightest belief in molecular gastronomy, it makes sense, which would
- 19:15Speaker 1: explain why New York bagels are the best too, because
- 19:17Speaker 1: bagels are boiled. Everyone knows or the right if you
- 19:21Speaker 1: make it the right way, it's boiled. Yeah, when you go, chuck,
- 19:25Speaker 1: that's my water sidebar chuck on water. Well, I've always
- 19:28Speaker 1: heard that you know New York pizzas because the water
- 19:30Speaker 1: is because the water from the Catskills. I had heard that.
- 19:32Speaker 1: I didn't know it was from the Catskills or had
- 19:34Speaker 1: anything to do with just stalt or anything like. Yeah,
- 19:39Speaker 1: all right, if you want to know, then you're in luck.
- 19:57Speaker 1: Just just The third vital ingredient is yeast, and yeast
- 20:10Speaker 1: basically creates the precursor to beer. Remember in the beer episode,
- 20:15Speaker 1: could you imagine if there was no yeast, we'd be
- 20:17Speaker 1: in big trouble. No pizza, no beer, what's the point?
- 20:20Speaker 1: No bread? This would be this world would be, it'd
- 20:24Speaker 1: be sad. Actually, there's yeast free bread, I think, but still,
- 20:28Speaker 1: you know, yeah, no, I know. So what what what's
- 20:31Speaker 1: to deal with you? Well, basically, the yeast goes in
- 20:33Speaker 1: and it eats the sugars found in the flower um
- 20:37Speaker 1: and then you may also add your own sugar to
- 20:39Speaker 1: increase the fermentation. Um. But it causes the dough to
- 20:43Speaker 1: rise because it expels gas as a byproduct, and that
- 20:49Speaker 1: gas gets trapped in the dough and it causes it
- 20:51Speaker 1: to rise. It makes it up more malleable, it makes
- 20:54Speaker 1: it um tastier, the texture of it is softer. It's
- 21:00Speaker 1: just basically yeast is It's the happy fun guy that
- 21:03Speaker 1: you add to the whole, the magic ingredient. Yeah. Uh,
- 21:06Speaker 1: if you add a little salt, it's gonna add some flavor. Obviously,
- 21:09Speaker 1: it's going to slow the fermentation. Shortening is gonna make
- 21:12Speaker 1: it more pliable by providing lube and shortening would be
- 21:17Speaker 1: like olive oil. You're not gonna use criscoe unless you're
- 21:19Speaker 1: some sort of heathen. No, you can just connote oil.
- 21:21Speaker 1: But olive oil is what I would go. But sure,
- 21:24Speaker 1: um yeah Crisco. Chrisco is great though for some things.
- 21:28Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for like sugar cookies, especially the kind that's
- 21:31Speaker 1: like just the just the the shortening, the thick solid Yeah,
- 21:37Speaker 1: shortening that stuff is crazy. That's what I thought if
- 21:40Speaker 1: that's the only way I thought you could cook growing up,
- 21:42Speaker 1: because of like my grandmother's. Yeah, I thought, well, when
- 21:44Speaker 1: you cook, you get out that big can and big
- 21:47Speaker 1: ice cream scoop and you cut it down with that
- 21:49Speaker 1: wadded up piece of like wax paper in there that
- 21:52Speaker 1: you used to scoop it out. Yeah, it's completely covered
- 21:54Speaker 1: in crisco now. Yeah. Uh, either that or the grandmother's
- 21:58Speaker 1: also used you know, they say aived all their greats,
- 22:01Speaker 1: so they would be cooking with grease that they've been
- 22:03Speaker 1: using for like the past year. It's really good. Um.
- 22:08Speaker 1: Sugar changes the fermentation rate. Yeah, you can accelerate it.
- 22:11Speaker 1: It can increase the amount of gas released. And it
- 22:14Speaker 1: also causes the crust of brown. Oh yeah, yeah, that's
- 22:18Speaker 1: the sugar. Ye. So what if you don't put sugar,
- 22:21Speaker 1: you get a glowing yellow crust, doesn't brown as much,
- 22:24Speaker 1: It doesn't brown. Okay, you want to bail it up,
- 22:27Speaker 1: use your your hands. Yeah, I think I think you
- 22:29Speaker 1: should say here, like you're teaching people how to make legitimate,
- 22:33Speaker 1: real pizza dough here, Yes, I mean gold in rough strokes. Okay,
- 22:38Speaker 1: Like I don't think anyone could like we're not providing measurements,
- 22:40Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. No, no, but I'm saying,
- 22:42Speaker 1: once you've, once you've created this dough, now you're about
- 22:44Speaker 1: to tell them what to do with that, how to
- 22:46Speaker 1: make it. You want to bail it up with your hands. Um,
- 22:49Speaker 1: you don't want it all cracked. You want it tight,
- 22:52Speaker 1: and you want to put it on an oil cheap
- 22:54Speaker 1: pan and then proof it, which means you cover it
- 22:57Speaker 1: with wax paper and let it sit and let the
- 23:00Speaker 1: yeast do its thing until it like doubles in size
- 23:03Speaker 1: because the uses just sitting there eating sugars and pooping out. Yes. Uh,
- 23:10Speaker 1: then you need to retard it. Um. You need to
- 23:12Speaker 1: put it in the fridge for about twelve hours, and
- 23:15Speaker 1: then this slows the yeast down, but it's still doing
- 23:17Speaker 1: its thing. They're like this sugar, it's cold. Um. And
- 23:24Speaker 1: then if you do this, you've got pizza dough that
- 23:27Speaker 1: you can use for like three to five days. Yeah,
- 23:28Speaker 1: I would imagine most people who are really really into
- 23:31Speaker 1: pizza would be like, you can't save that for three
- 23:33Speaker 1: to five days? You think, I would think so fresh?
- 23:38Speaker 1: You think almost also do it like yeah, the same day. No,
- 23:42Speaker 1: I'm not saying that, but I'm saying like a pizza pierist, like,
- 23:45Speaker 1: can't use five day old dough for a decent pizza,
- 23:49Speaker 1: but I buy the dough sometimes like Trader Joe's, you know,
- 23:51Speaker 1: the Farmer's market, like the pre made dough balls, and
- 23:55Speaker 1: those are you know, not necessarily that day, and or
- 23:59Speaker 1: eat the oven. Well, you left out the sauce. Most
- 24:02Speaker 1: of the time it's tomato sauce. But if you're still
- 24:04Speaker 1: worried that tomatoes are poisonous and that the aristocracy is
- 24:08Speaker 1: trying to kill you by giving them to you, um,
- 24:10Speaker 1: you can eat garlic butter sauce, which will give you
- 24:14Speaker 1: a white pizza. You don't like white pizza. I don't
- 24:18Speaker 1: love white pizza. And if you go to Fellini's, We're
- 24:21Speaker 1: gonna name every single pizza place in town. If you
- 24:23Speaker 1: go to Fellini's in order a white pizza slice, you
- 24:26Speaker 1: know they use the pre made slice and they build
- 24:29Speaker 1: a white pizza on top of So you get a
- 24:30Speaker 1: little tomato sauce with your white pizza. That's really good,
- 24:34Speaker 1: but it's not white pizza then, right, No, not, you're
- 24:37Speaker 1: the one who calls like everything pizza you run around, Now,
- 24:39Speaker 1: that's a pizza. Look, there's a pizza over there. I
- 24:41Speaker 1: don't want to hear from you, all right, I'm not
- 24:44Speaker 1: a fan of white pizza, like some tomato sauce something. Yeah,
- 24:47Speaker 1: I'm with you if I like white pizza. Took um
- 24:51Speaker 1: and the cheese, you know, mozzarella traditionally, right, and the
- 24:55Speaker 1: way you build it is actually kind of important to Yeah,
- 24:59Speaker 1: depending on where you are. It's it's not just the ingredients,
- 25:01Speaker 1: it's the amount and the um, the distribution. Yes, where
- 25:06Speaker 1: they are in relation to one another vertically, well, let's
- 25:11Speaker 1: go ahead. Then New York is sauce, then cheese from
- 25:15Speaker 1: the dough, dough sauce, cheese, and then not that many toppings.
- 25:21Speaker 1: If you're a purist, again, cheese, a cheese slice is
- 25:24Speaker 1: what you're going for. I have not big on just cheese.
- 25:28Speaker 1: What are you? Pepperoni guy? No, not anymore, and that
- 25:30Speaker 1: since I was a kid. No, I'm just kind of
- 25:32Speaker 1: like pepperoni. So I like a good homemade Italian sausage.
- 25:36Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's good. Yeah, that's really good. Um, I
- 25:39Speaker 1: like sliced tomatoes on it, not sun dried fresh. Yeah. Basil,
- 25:44Speaker 1: black olives, basil always am not into olives. I like sausage.
- 25:48Speaker 1: I don't like the green olives. I like black olives.
- 25:50Speaker 1: Do you like the Hawaiian pizzas. I've only in the
- 25:53Speaker 1: last couple of months gotten into pineapple, and I'm still
- 25:56Speaker 1: feeling my way around it. Pineapples and strawberries. I just
- 25:59Speaker 1: I used to strawberries when I was a kid, and
- 26:01Speaker 1: I've rediscovered him recently. I'm like, yeah, when we were
- 26:04Speaker 1: in the suite at the Marriott, when we were doing
- 26:05Speaker 1: interviews at Comic Con, ate like fifteen pounds of strawberries.
- 26:10Speaker 1: They were so good. The chocolate covered are regular, No,
- 26:12Speaker 1: they're regular. Yeah, I don't even need chocolate covered anymore.
- 26:15Speaker 1: It's like I'm free. Strawberries are delicious. Yeah, but Hawaiian
- 26:19Speaker 1: I'll tell you in a minute or two, I'll try.
- 26:21Speaker 1: Emily likes that she's big on mushroom, green pepper and
- 26:25Speaker 1: pineapple together. Yeah. She doesn't do the meats, you know,
- 26:28Speaker 1: at all. Just as a food as while we're talking
- 26:33Speaker 1: about wives and pizza preferences. Yeah, you may have this
- 26:35Speaker 1: place in DC she used to go to and she'd
- 26:37Speaker 1: get like a huge slice of pizza in this place
- 26:40Speaker 1: also sold Indian food, so she'd get chicken sog and
- 26:43Speaker 1: put the sog on the pizza and she said it
- 26:45Speaker 1: was really awesome. Wo yeah. Yeah, we have to do
- 26:49Speaker 1: the half and half and I get like sausage on
- 26:50Speaker 1: one half and she does veggie and then it's like,
- 26:52Speaker 1: your sausage juice got on my hat, Like, well, your
- 26:56Speaker 1: mushroom got on my half. You like a cheeseburger pizza.
- 27:00Speaker 1: I love cheese. I'm not too big on beef on
- 27:01Speaker 1: the pizza. I'll give you one more tip. Okay, get
- 27:04Speaker 1: yourself some complete seasoning some I can't remember what it
- 27:09Speaker 1: is in Spanish, but um complete seasoning. It's like a
- 27:12Speaker 1: Mexican blend, and put it on your pizza. It doesn't
- 27:16Speaker 1: matter what kind of pizza it is. It works on
- 27:17Speaker 1: popcorn too, but then your pizza. It's just it'll make
- 27:20Speaker 1: you smile. Well, my friend Eddie, who you know, would say,
- 27:23Speaker 1: get a bottle of ranch dressing in your all set.
- 27:25Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's good alright. So man, that was a sidebar.
- 27:31Speaker 1: So you were saying, New York you build from the
- 27:33Speaker 1: dough up doe dough, sauce, cheese, and then maybe a
- 27:36Speaker 1: couple of topics. Chicago, it's the opposite. Yes, And this
- 27:39Speaker 1: is apparently a tomato pie the way it's built. Yeah,
- 27:43Speaker 1: because super deep dish right, baked in a pan, and
- 27:46Speaker 1: then you've got the cheese on the bread itself on
- 27:49Speaker 1: the dough, and then the toppings and then they put
- 27:52Speaker 1: this like ungodly thick, delicious sauce on top. Yeah. I've
- 27:55Speaker 1: not had it really, and I love pizza huts, pan pizza. Well,
- 28:00Speaker 1: the I mean you should definitely have like a true
- 28:02Speaker 1: Chicago style pizza. I mean it's it's great. You eat
- 28:05Speaker 1: it with a forking knife. I am a New York
- 28:07Speaker 1: pizza guy through and through. But you know, every once
- 28:10Speaker 1: in a while, if like when in Chicago, well this
- 28:13Speaker 1: is like um, when in Italy exactly. This is one
- 28:17Speaker 1: of those things where I don't think you have to
- 28:18Speaker 1: choose sides. No, let's just all eat all kinds of
- 28:21Speaker 1: pizza all the time. But people get really passionate about
- 28:24Speaker 1: their pizzas I know, but these are you know, It's like, man,
- 28:27Speaker 1: it's it's pizza. Enjoy all pizza. If there's one thing
- 28:31Speaker 1: we can all just settle down about. It's pizza, even
- 28:34Speaker 1: Mexican pizza coming. Yes, oh yeah, it's not pizza. What
- 28:39Speaker 1: are you crazy? You can't just run around saying that
- 28:41Speaker 1: what you eat is not pizza unless it's exactly what
- 28:45Speaker 1: the um Neapolitans are making. It's not pizza. It's not
- 28:49Speaker 1: a Neapolitan pizza. No, it's not pizza. Alright. So now
- 28:54Speaker 1: the ovens, I guess said this was an odd little
- 28:58Speaker 1: thing that they put in there. What about the different
- 29:01Speaker 1: kinds of ovens. Yeah, it just seemed intuitive to me. Well, sure,
- 29:05Speaker 1: well you use a peel. Not many people know that
- 29:07Speaker 1: that that big spanking paddle it's called a peel. I
- 29:10Speaker 1: didn't I have to say, okay, so you slide it
- 29:13Speaker 1: in there. They can be electric, they can be uh
- 29:16Speaker 1: cooked right on a conveyor belt, like if you're a
- 29:18Speaker 1: big pizza Chaine, which you know if you have a
- 29:22Speaker 1: belt even at home. That's true. But the king daddy
- 29:25Speaker 1: of all is the brick oven. Pizza cooked with wood
- 29:29Speaker 1: and like your crush should have little bits of black
- 29:31Speaker 1: char on it if you ask me for the best
- 29:34Speaker 1: for the best taste, which is actually soot it's been carbon. Yeah,
- 29:40Speaker 1: a little spoiler there for an upcoming show. And then
- 29:43Speaker 1: here in Atlanta, the Antico, I think they brought those
- 29:46Speaker 1: three ovens over from Naples, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah,
- 29:48Speaker 1: I can see that. So a lot of gestalt going
- 29:50Speaker 1: on there. There's tons of gestalt. Um. Neapolitan pizza. Yeah,
- 29:57Speaker 1: so Neapolitan pizza. Um is extremely thin crust, that's bubbly crust. Um.
- 30:05Speaker 1: You put on sauce and then maybe basil and mozzarella.
- 30:08Speaker 1: You don't cover the sauce. It looks like pretty much
- 30:12Speaker 1: equal parts. Just visibly looking down over the pizza, it
- 30:16Speaker 1: appears like equal splotches of basil, mozzarella and um sauce. Yeah,
- 30:21Speaker 1: kind of spare they don't overdo it and to be
- 30:24Speaker 1: a true Neapolitan pizza. As of December two thousand nine,
- 30:27Speaker 1: the European Union issued a protection that regional protection that
- 30:32Speaker 1: like champagne and what was the other thing we talked
- 30:34Speaker 1: about recently? Uh was it a cheese? I had to
- 30:39Speaker 1: have been probably yeah, um. And also I think neu
- 30:44Speaker 1: Chatel neuf Chatel has regional protection as well, but basically like,
- 30:48Speaker 1: it has to be produced in the area under these
- 30:50Speaker 1: certain guidelines to be considered that. Um, Neapolitan pizza enjoys
- 30:55Speaker 1: that economic protection now as well. And to beat Neopolitan
- 31:00Speaker 1: it has to be round. It can't be ostentatious no
- 31:04Speaker 1: more than thirteen and a half inches in diameter. Um,
- 31:08Speaker 1: it can only be a tenth of an inch tall,
- 31:10Speaker 1: which is thin at its center. Yeah. Yeah, Um. The
- 31:14Speaker 1: crust has to be no more than three quarters of
- 31:16Speaker 1: an inch thick. This is a really thin crust pizza, man. Yeah,
- 31:19Speaker 1: but not ultra thin. I got taken to task on
- 31:22Speaker 1: Facebook today because I said it was ultra thin. They
- 31:25Speaker 1: were like, not not ultra thin, ultra thins and tortilla.
- 31:28Speaker 1: I guess Mexican pizza. You have to kneed the dope
- 31:32Speaker 1: by hand, right, Yeah. And I got a couple of
- 31:34Speaker 1: more that weren't in the article. Supposedly, it has to
- 31:36Speaker 1: be in a wood fired oven above nine and five
- 31:39Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit only San Marzano plum tomatoes, okay, which you
- 31:45Speaker 1: know to me, that's the only tomato we're gonna be
- 31:47Speaker 1: cooking Italian style? Is that right? I think so? Is
- 31:49Speaker 1: that can. Yeah, okay, then I know what you're talking about.
- 31:53Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure you can get them fresh obviously,
- 31:55Speaker 1: but yeah, the the can San Marzano's are like what
- 31:57Speaker 1: I use in my spaghetti sauce. Have you been to that?
- 32:00Speaker 1: It tell you market by five seasons on the West Side.
- 32:03Speaker 1: I have not. It is like right like half a
- 32:05Speaker 1: block down and it is authentic. Really. Yeah, you should
- 32:08Speaker 1: check it out if you're into that. I am into that.
- 32:10Speaker 1: We'll check it out, all right. Um. And I think
- 32:13Speaker 1: that's all too to buy law. And of course no
- 32:17Speaker 1: one's they pointed out in the article I read that
- 32:18Speaker 1: no one's going out and like, you know, punishing anybody.
- 32:22Speaker 1: It's just a set of standards that they like to
- 32:23Speaker 1: hold deer. Uh. You know they're not gonna throw you
- 32:26Speaker 1: in jail for calling something in theopolitan, right yeah? Um,
- 32:30Speaker 1: although they should. So that's neopolitan. We talked about New
- 32:33Speaker 1: York and Chicago. Um, California pizza that is super thin crust,
- 32:39Speaker 1: usually made with um, what what vegetables are in season?
- 32:43Speaker 1: I like California Pizza Kitchen. It's okay, it's pretty good.
- 32:48Speaker 1: Like barbecue sauce on your pizza. H. No, they have
- 32:51Speaker 1: a tostada pizza that's really good too. You should check, man,
- 32:54Speaker 1: you gotta expland your horizones. It's not just New York.
- 32:57Speaker 1: In Chicago, there's a lot. There's a whole world of pizza.
- 32:59Speaker 1: I've been to CPK. It's fine. The black bean salad
- 33:02Speaker 1: there is delicious. They're they're guacamole is pretty good too, alright.
- 33:06Speaker 1: And then Greek. Yeah, that's also in a pan like Chicago.
- 33:10Speaker 1: It's just fetta. I'm not thinking feda fetta and spend
- 33:14Speaker 1: it sometimes olives, yeah, I like feta um. And then
- 33:18Speaker 1: uh Sicilian, and there's American Sicilian and Italian Sicilian. That's right.
- 33:23Speaker 1: And if you're an American, you're making a Sicilian pizza.
- 33:25Speaker 1: It's rectangular, square, thick crust. The reason it's thick is
- 33:30Speaker 1: in uh Sicily, they baked the ingredients into the crust. Yeah,
- 33:35Speaker 1: I'd like to try that. Actually, it's like, um, they
- 33:37Speaker 1: heard about stuff crust pizza and started mimicking it. Oh man,
- 33:41Speaker 1: pizza head drives me nuts. With all those things. It's
- 33:43Speaker 1: like the rope of cheese in the crust. Or then
- 33:46Speaker 1: they had the one crust. There was the one the
- 33:48Speaker 1: pizza eat backwards, like they just can come up with
- 33:52Speaker 1: all these things that are completely unnecessary. There was the
- 33:55Speaker 1: pizza that eats you the pizza. Yeah. Speaking of Soviet Russia, Um,
- 34:02Speaker 1: there's some pretty crazy toppings around the world. What do
- 34:06Speaker 1: they eat there? In Russia? They eat something called makba,
- 34:09Speaker 1: which is a blend of tuna, mackerel, sardines, onions, and salmon,
- 34:13Speaker 1: which I have to say, sounds kind of good. You
- 34:15Speaker 1: know what I thought good was good was the Japanese
- 34:17Speaker 1: the mayo yaga jaga yeah, man, mayonnaise, bacon and potato mixture.
- 34:22Speaker 1: They their their hot dogs in there too. Gosh, yeah,
- 34:26Speaker 1: it's really good. A lot to check that out. Uh.
- 34:29Speaker 1: In India, little pickled ginger and tofu maybe and little
- 34:32Speaker 1: minced mutton. Yeah, sounds good to me. You don't like
- 34:36Speaker 1: mutton had a pet goat? That's this is a lamb.
- 34:41Speaker 1: Totally different animals. They can't even mate, I don't think.
- 34:44Speaker 1: Oh I bet they could. Well, they can, but they
- 34:46Speaker 1: can't reproduce. Okay, Um, Brazil, you might get some green
- 34:52Speaker 1: peas on your pizza. Yeah. Costa Rica you might get
- 34:55Speaker 1: a little coconut equally wolf, Yeah, I think so. I'm
- 34:59Speaker 1: not big on coconut and antrovies are generally regarded as
- 35:04Speaker 1: the least favorite pizza topping. What's the number one pizza
- 35:07Speaker 1: topping in America? Pepperoni? Of course? Really it got toppled
- 35:11Speaker 1: this last this year. Chicken, as far as protein goes, chicken,
- 35:15Speaker 1: really yep? And is that how do they calculate that?
- 35:19Speaker 1: Is that like in restaurants or there's an actually surprising
- 35:23Speaker 1: amount of pizza industry UM marketing and lobby groups in
- 35:29Speaker 1: trade groups, And that's true of the pizza and association.
- 35:33Speaker 1: I ran across the blog post and I don't remember
- 35:35Speaker 1: I followed it to this press release from some pizza
- 35:38Speaker 1: association UM, and I don't remember which one it was,
- 35:41Speaker 1: but they said that, um, chicken topped pepperoni as far
- 35:45Speaker 1: as pepperoni toppings goes. So that means that Americans consume
- 35:51Speaker 1: more than two hundred and fifty million pounds of chicken
- 35:54Speaker 1: on their pizza. Yeah, which makes sense because chicken's heavier
- 35:57Speaker 1: than pepperoni, that's true, and a lot of pepperoni. Maybe
- 36:01Speaker 1: they're good by weight. Yeah, we've got some awesome stats here,
- 36:04Speaker 1: don't we go ahead and fire some of those out? Uh? So,
- 36:07Speaker 1: the number of pizza sold in the US each year,
- 36:10Speaker 1: three billion. I'm responsible for at least a million and
- 36:14Speaker 1: a half of those three slices sold every second. Yeah,
- 36:19Speaker 1: not bad. And uh, every year, the average American eats
- 36:23Speaker 1: forty six slices. That's child's play. Americans eat pizza at
- 36:28Speaker 1: least once a month. Yeah, that's a lot. That is
- 36:31Speaker 1: a lot. I mean that is that means like almost
- 36:33Speaker 1: every American eats pizza at least once a month. That's
- 36:37Speaker 1: pretty staggering. I can't imagine that there's any other food
- 36:40Speaker 1: like that except maybe a cheeseburger. I bet pizza tops
- 36:43Speaker 1: that even I would think. So it's just such an
- 36:45Speaker 1: easy because vegetarians can eat pizza, cheese, pizza. Yeah. And
- 36:49Speaker 1: if you if you go to like McDonald's or something
- 36:51Speaker 1: like that and you have a family of four, uh,
- 36:54Speaker 1: you're going to spend more than you would on a
- 36:57Speaker 1: pizza that will feed that family of four to and
- 36:59Speaker 1: you don't get the cold breakfast leftovers either. Uh, exactly
- 37:03Speaker 1: what McDonald's you do. But what else was there anything else?
- 37:09Speaker 1: I had? There was a guy in my elementary school actually,
- 37:12Speaker 1: you know remember the little rectangle elementary school pizzas. They
- 37:15Speaker 1: were so great. There was one dude, Brett Standish, that
- 37:18Speaker 1: did not eat pizza, and he was like the only
- 37:21Speaker 1: kid I ever knew that it didn't eat pizza. So
- 37:22Speaker 1: every time we had pizza, it was like there was
- 37:25Speaker 1: a battle royal to find out who would get Brett
- 37:28Speaker 1: Standish's pizza. And he would like up his you know,
- 37:31Speaker 1: his asking price each week when you know it was
- 37:34Speaker 1: like a valuable commodity. Smart kid, Yeah, what do you
- 37:37Speaker 1: what was the most he ever got for it? No?
- 37:39Speaker 1: I have no idea. Probably a bunch of pringles and
- 37:41Speaker 1: like a little time behind the school, you know what
- 37:45Speaker 1: I'm saying. Uh no, when my imagination is racing right now? Okay? Um?
- 37:51Speaker 1: Oh yeah. There was this little sidebar in this article
- 37:53Speaker 1: that said that more than thirty pizzaias in New York
- 37:56Speaker 1: are operating under the name Raise more than It's like
- 38:00Speaker 1: that sounds like a lot until you realize there's nine
- 38:02Speaker 1: thousand pizzerias in New York alone. New York City. Well,
- 38:06Speaker 1: I thought this is pretty interesting. Should we talk about Raise? Um?
- 38:10Speaker 1: If you've ever been to New York or Atlanta's got
- 38:12Speaker 1: four Raised pizzas? Is that right? Famous original race? Atlanta
- 38:16Speaker 1: has raised New York pizza UM. And you know how
- 38:19Speaker 1: I always says since whatever year, since nineteen in Atlanta,
- 38:24Speaker 1: that's not too bad. But yeah, they're by the count
- 38:27Speaker 1: I got. There are forty nine UM pizzerias in New
- 38:31Speaker 1: York that use some form of the name Ray. And
- 38:34Speaker 1: here's the story behind it, Um Ray. Uh. Ralph Cuomo
- 38:40Speaker 1: opened the first race on Prince Street nineteen fifty nine.
- 38:43Speaker 1: He's grandfather de Rivers and father of Mario. And his
- 38:49Speaker 1: nickname he claimed to be Ray because he said it
- 38:51Speaker 1: was Ralphie than Rayphie than Ray. I'm not quite so
- 38:54Speaker 1: sure about that. Um that he opened a second one
- 38:56Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, and then someone named Rosalino Mangano Majano.
- 39:03Speaker 1: But the second race changed the name to Famous Original Rays,
- 39:08Speaker 1: even though that wasn't true, So things started a little messy. Uh.
- 39:12Speaker 1: Then man John out now goes by Ray, which is
- 39:15Speaker 1: also bogus opened, Uh several more Famous Original Rays all
- 39:21Speaker 1: over the city. Sold that to new owner who begin
- 39:24Speaker 1: using other variations of the race. So it kind of
- 39:27Speaker 1: just spread. But ironically, three quote unquote Rays got together
- 39:33Speaker 1: to trademark the name. None of them our name Ray.
- 39:37Speaker 1: Yet they have all gotten together to try and trademark
- 39:40Speaker 1: the name Ray and to shut down at least in
- 39:43Speaker 1: name places like Atlanta's Nearer Pizza Raised Nearer Pizza in Atlanta,
- 39:48Speaker 1: who you just probably got in trouble. And I don't
- 39:50Speaker 1: think so they know about them, so you don't know that.
- 39:53Speaker 1: It sounds like a cartel. I think it is speaking
- 39:56Speaker 1: of Cartel's Chuck, the Big Three, Pizza Hut, Dominos, Papa John's. Um.
- 40:03Speaker 1: Of those three, the one that has the most urban
- 40:05Speaker 1: legends associated with it, as Dominoes. I had heard. I
- 40:10Speaker 1: think one of these. Well, the thirty minutes or less
- 40:13Speaker 1: went away because they killed some kid in a car
- 40:16Speaker 1: delivery person, ready made urban legends supposedly, Um, they there
- 40:23Speaker 1: were lawsuits from people being hit. At least one person
- 40:27Speaker 1: was hit, but they didn't say it had anything to
- 40:30Speaker 1: do with the thirty minutes or less. One person was killed. Yeah, well, yeah,
- 40:34Speaker 1: that's right, one person killed at least, so then at
- 40:36Speaker 1: least one person hit. We're both kind of right. But
- 40:38Speaker 1: they did do away with that. There was also a
- 40:41Speaker 1: rumor that the owner of Dominoes contributed a lot to
- 40:44Speaker 1: anti abortion groups um, which may or may not have
- 40:49Speaker 1: been true, but he didn't known Dominos probably at the
- 40:51Speaker 1: time because the guy who founded the company, um, Tom Monahan. Yeah,
- 40:56Speaker 1: he sold a billion, which is pretty tiny. But he
- 41:00Speaker 1: is a staunch Catholic and obviously a supporter of pro
- 41:04Speaker 1: life and is building his own little Catholic town outside
- 41:09Speaker 1: of Miami. Yeah, one of those. And I've heard of
- 41:12Speaker 1: these before. We basically like, I'm gonna build my little
- 41:16Speaker 1: my own little town, like filled with people that are
- 41:19Speaker 1: like me, exactly because I'm incredibly wealthy exactly. So I
- 41:24Speaker 1: don't know what the status is on that now, but um,
- 41:27Speaker 1: supposedly more than thirty thousand residents will occupy this town
- 41:31Speaker 1: and eventually they'll go to war with Celebration Florida. Uh.
- 41:35Speaker 1: And then there's all these goofy pizzas. I don't get
- 41:37Speaker 1: into all this stuff, like the the three thousand euro
- 41:41Speaker 1: pizza with Klagnac marinated lobster and edible gold. And okay,
- 41:46Speaker 1: so that holding suked caviare for the most expensive with gold.
- 41:50Speaker 1: There's actually two categories in Guinness as far as most
- 41:53Speaker 1: expensive pizza with edible gold and without. Apparently, if you
- 41:56Speaker 1: just want to like throw some edible gold on your pizza,
- 41:59Speaker 1: you can just you know tip the scales by wise,
- 42:02Speaker 1: but if you want the most expensive pizza in the
- 42:04Speaker 1: world without gold, that record was recently broken. Uh and
- 42:08Speaker 1: Stevenson Pizza Company in Vancouver, which apparently is affiliated with
- 42:12Speaker 1: the guy from Hell's Kitchen. Oh yeah, shut it down, Yeah,
- 42:17Speaker 1: Gordon ramsay, Yes, Um, they have a four hundred and
- 42:20Speaker 1: fifty dollar pizza called the C six. Pizza has lobster thermidor,
- 42:24Speaker 1: black Alaskan cod and caviare on it. It looks kind
- 42:28Speaker 1: of good. Yeah. You know, they do stuff like that
- 42:32Speaker 1: to get pressed and get people in there, and I
- 42:35Speaker 1: get it. What about the largest pizza ever built and eaten?
- 42:39Speaker 1: I like that they have that caveat Yeah, agreed, Havana, Florida.
- 42:44Speaker 1: Um from seven. I'm surprised no one has tried to
- 42:47Speaker 1: break it since then. Um thousand, four hundred and fifty
- 42:52Speaker 1: seven pounds of pizza, ninety over ninety four thousand slices. Yeah,
- 42:57Speaker 1: devoured by thirty thousand, at least thirty thousand people hanging out.
- 43:01Speaker 1: How do they bake that thing? I wonder? I don't know.
- 43:07Speaker 1: That's that's a great question. That's the one I want
- 43:10Speaker 1: listener mail on not your favorite pizza topic? No one
- 43:12Speaker 1: cares about that. How did they bake that thing? I guess.
- 43:15Speaker 1: I mean maybe it was sunbaked. I don't know, or
- 43:19Speaker 1: maybe those they're like, wow, this is really like they
- 43:22Speaker 1: make it and then like oh wait yeah because it
- 43:24Speaker 1: says eating. Or maybe there's another record tied to it
- 43:27Speaker 1: for the largest pizza oven and then the longest pizza delivery.
- 43:32Speaker 1: Two thousand four, a Domino's franchise owner named Lucy Clough
- 43:37Speaker 1: delivered a pizza ten thousand, five DT two miles undred
- 43:42Speaker 1: fifty KOs from London to Melbourne. It was a vegetarian
- 43:45Speaker 1: pizzas part of the Make a Wish Foundation. I was
- 43:48Speaker 1: about to disparage it. I know. That's why I got
- 43:51Speaker 1: all that out in one breath before you could break it. Yeah, okay,
- 43:54Speaker 1: I was saving you from yourself. Make a Wish then
- 43:56Speaker 1: I support it. Way to go, Chuck. That's pizza. Yeah,
- 44:22Speaker 1: you know what's awesome about pizza. And I guarantee you
- 44:25Speaker 1: there's dark corners to all this that we didn't even
- 44:27Speaker 1: hit that we're going to hear about that we want
- 44:30Speaker 1: to hear about. This will be one of those which
- 44:32Speaker 1: I love. Yeah, I love pizza. Uh if you love
- 44:35Speaker 1: pizza You can read more about it at how stuff
- 44:37Speaker 1: works dot com. Type the word P I z Z
- 44:40Speaker 1: eight into the search bar at our beloved how stuff
- 44:43Speaker 1: works dot com website um, which is now two words.
- 44:48Speaker 1: I think as far as eight P goes what website? Yeah,
- 44:51Speaker 1: I thought a long time. They know I was taught
- 44:54Speaker 1: when I was hired. Here it's capital W E B,
- 44:56Speaker 1: separate word, lower case S I T E. Right now
- 44:59Speaker 1: it's lower case. All one word. Oh, it's all one word. Now.
- 45:02Speaker 1: I thought you were saying it's two words, now, gotcha. Yeah, no,
- 45:05Speaker 1: it's one word. Okay, this is great. And if I
- 45:09Speaker 1: did say two words, I was wrong. Okay, we'll find out. Uh. Anyway,
- 45:14Speaker 1: I think I said search far in there. So it's
- 45:17Speaker 1: time for the listener mail Chuck. Yes, we should tell
- 45:23Speaker 1: everybody about something very special and dear to our hearts.
- 45:26Speaker 1: New York City. That's right. We are going to Comic
- 45:29Speaker 1: Con and we will be doing a live podcast on Friday,
- 45:33Speaker 1: October twelve at Comic Con at the jab At Center.
- 45:36Speaker 1: It's like our new thing. We did San Diego, now
- 45:38Speaker 1: we're doing New York. That's right next up Albuquerque. So
- 45:40Speaker 1: if you are going to Comic Con, you should come
- 45:42Speaker 1: by and see that. But after Comic Con, we have
- 45:46Speaker 1: one of our famous, its famous to us All Star
- 45:50Speaker 1: Tribua nights. Um, where is it going to be the
- 45:53Speaker 1: cutting room? It is at the grand reopening of the
- 45:56Speaker 1: Cutting Room in the flat Iron District, which is what's
- 45:59Speaker 1: the address? It is uh forty four East thirty second
- 46:02Speaker 1: Street in New York And it's in the flat Iron
- 46:05Speaker 1: you said. And doors open at seven thirty. Trivia goes
- 46:08Speaker 1: down at eight thirty. And what is first come, first serve? Right? Free, free, free,
- 46:13Speaker 1: first come, first serve. We will have a bar there
- 46:15Speaker 1: that you can buy drinks. Yeah, you can buy us drinks.
- 46:18Speaker 1: That's right. We're gonna basically be having a really good
- 46:21Speaker 1: time if you if you're not familiar with our trivia nights, like,
- 46:24Speaker 1: just come out and check it out. It'll be worth
- 46:25Speaker 1: your while, absolutely, and stay tuned for info on Facebook
- 46:29Speaker 1: and Twitter about the makeup of the All Star team.
- 46:32Speaker 1: We're filling that out as we speak. But we will
- 46:34Speaker 1: have some special guests that you will want to meet. Yeah,
- 46:36Speaker 1: and at the very least you can come take on
- 46:37Speaker 1: me and chuck right. Yeah, okay, it's just fun. So
- 46:40Speaker 1: what is that that's Friday, October twelfth, Right, yep. The
- 46:43Speaker 1: panels that win the panel is at I believe six, okay,
- 46:48Speaker 1: and then we're gonna be at the cutting room starting
- 46:50Speaker 1: at eight thirty. Trivia starts at eight thirty, doors at
- 46:53Speaker 1: seven thirty. Be there, be square. You're good at this.
- 46:56Speaker 1: Thank you all right? The time for listener mail. Yep.
- 46:58Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this accident. It's thanks to us. We
- 47:02Speaker 1: cause an accident, a good one now, like no one
- 47:06Speaker 1: got hurt. This from Annie and Annie was going off
- 47:09Speaker 1: to college, which was several states away, so her family
- 47:12Speaker 1: decided to road trip with her to uh To to
- 47:16Speaker 1: the college as a little mini vacation. That is very
- 47:18Speaker 1: sweet depending on how Anie feels about her family. Well,
- 47:21Speaker 1: you're about to find out. It may sound fun, but
- 47:23Speaker 1: it's not easy to agree on music when you're James
- 47:25Speaker 1: Blunt loving mom, Miley Virus loving younger sister she is
- 47:30Speaker 1: just heading off in college. Yeah, and weird eurometal loving
- 47:34Speaker 1: older brother. All crammed into a car together. After a
- 47:37Speaker 1: few hours of me wondering if I could get a
- 47:38Speaker 1: refund on my soundproof headphones, they agreed to let me
- 47:41Speaker 1: pick the music, and I picked the stuff. You should know.
- 47:44Speaker 1: It turns out everyone loves slash doesn't hate stuff. You
- 47:47Speaker 1: should know. We were all interested more importantly not yelling
- 47:51Speaker 1: or throwing CDs out the window. Plus it was fun
- 47:53Speaker 1: to go back through Uh my favorites. Jack the Ripper,
- 47:56Speaker 1: for instance, made my mom a little green. However, you
- 47:59Speaker 1: don't know what we heavily edited that one. Yeah, it
- 48:02Speaker 1: was worse. It was way worse. I think. Yeah, I
- 48:04Speaker 1: remember going through there and be like, dude, weekends. At
- 48:06Speaker 1: least it was factual, No, it was. It was so yeah. Um, However,
- 48:12Speaker 1: during a time when it was my goofy brothers turning
- 48:14Speaker 1: to drive parentheses, I really can't stress how weird he is.
- 48:18Speaker 1: At the end of the cast about Genius, you were
- 48:20Speaker 1: reading some other listening listener mail from a lady truck
- 48:23Speaker 1: driver and told her to honk her horn, which my
- 48:26Speaker 1: brother did really loud, like a truck would do. It
- 48:30Speaker 1: wouldn't have been a problem, but we were in one
- 48:31Speaker 1: of those curby two lane highways behind a senior citizen.
- 48:36Speaker 1: Uh and basically this this old lady thought that they
- 48:40Speaker 1: were honking at her. She slammed on her brakes and
- 48:44Speaker 1: caused the person riding behind her to butt into her
- 48:46Speaker 1: rear end. Oh no, uh no one was hurt, but
- 48:49Speaker 1: I was laughing because over the screech of tires, I
- 48:51Speaker 1: actually heard Chuck say, I hope we didn't just cause
- 48:54Speaker 1: an accident. Wow, this is um. Everyone is fine. There
- 48:58Speaker 1: was no damage to either car. But my mom made
- 49:00Speaker 1: my brother give them both info because my mother thought
- 49:03Speaker 1: that he was liable. Thanks Mom, Yeah exactly. She just
- 49:07Speaker 1: drove straight to jail. Then she says, I was the
- 49:10Speaker 1: one to awkwardly explain to the old lady what a
- 49:12Speaker 1: podcast was ps. I hope my dorm mate likes you guys.
- 49:17Speaker 1: That's from Annie. Thanks a lot, any that was really nice.
- 49:20Speaker 1: Glad everyone's safe. Me too, Man, that's that's crazy, chock.
- 49:23Speaker 1: It sounds a little made up, but oh yeah, we've
- 49:26Speaker 1: followed for it before. Man, remember the way the marriage,
- 49:30Speaker 1: the wedding proposal. Yeah, I still have to eck on
- 49:34Speaker 1: my face about that. That's all right, man, We all do,
- 49:37Speaker 1: we all do. If you have a great story about
- 49:43Speaker 1: how your family has been brought together by stuff, you
- 49:45Speaker 1: should know we want to hear it. We also want
- 49:47Speaker 1: to know how the citizens of Havana, Florida baked their
- 49:52Speaker 1: thousand sliced pizza. We really really want to know that, agreed, Um,
- 49:57Speaker 1: and how delicious it was. Yeah. Uh, you can tweet
- 50:01Speaker 1: to us all of this information to uh s y
- 50:04Speaker 1: s K podcast. Seriously. Our Twitter is killing it, is it? Yes,
- 50:09Speaker 1: that's great. There's it's one of the best Twitter feeds
- 50:11Speaker 1: on the internet. Wow, it's got it all man. It
- 50:14Speaker 1: has um wacky news, it has important news. Criticism of
- 50:19Speaker 1: Twitter when they suspend people's accounts, um it has. We
- 50:24Speaker 1: we talked to people back and forth. Sometimes we pester
- 50:27Speaker 1: Hodgman for no good reason. Yeah. Um, there's just all
- 50:30Speaker 1: sorts of great stuff on Twitter. Or we'll like, we'll
- 50:33Speaker 1: see a tweet from like the Jim Hinson company that
- 50:36Speaker 1: they like the Muppet podcast. Yeah yeah, so like pretty
- 50:39Speaker 1: cool stuff like that is going down. Yeah it is.
- 50:41Speaker 1: It's very cool. Um. So you can follow us on
- 50:43Speaker 1: Twitter at so it's the AT symbol and then s
- 50:47Speaker 1: y s K p O d c A s T
- 50:51Speaker 1: at s Y s K podcast. We're also killing it
- 50:53Speaker 1: on Facebook or Facebook page is awesome. Uh that's Facebook
- 50:56Speaker 1: dot com slash stuff you should know. Yeah, right, m H.
- 51:04Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
- 51:07Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com,