Pizza Czar

Falco Anthony Falco

Description

In his comprehensive first book, legendary pizza czar Anthony Falco teaches you everything you need to know to make pizza wherever you are, drawing from his singular experience opening pizzerias around the globe If there's one thing the entire world can agree on, it's pizza. It just might be the world's favorite food. In every climate, in every region, in every kind of kitchen, there's pizza to be had, infused with local flavor. In this definitive book, filled with hacks, tips, and secret techniques never before shared, International Pizza Consultant Anthony Falco brings the world of pizza to your kitchen, wherever you are. After eight years at the famous Brooklyn restaurant Roberta's, culminating with his position as Pizza Czar, Falco pivoted from the New York City food scene to the world, traveling to Brazil, Colombia, Kuwait, Panama, Canada, Japan, India, Thailand, and all across the United States. His mission? To discover the secrets and spread the gospel of making the world's favorite food better. Now the planet's leading expert pizza consultant, he can make great pizza 8,000 feet above sea level in Bogota or in subtropical India, and he can certainly help you do it at home. An exhaustive resource for absolutely any pizza cook, teaching mastery of the classics and tricks of the trade as well as completely unique takes on styles and recipes from around the globe, Pizza Czar is here to help you make world-class pizza from anywhere on the map.Important Note: For a correction to the extra-virgin olive oil quantity in the recipe for Thin & Crispy Dough on page 57, and for instructions on using this book without a sourdough starter, see https://www.abramsbooks.com/errata/craft-errata-pizza-czar/* For corrections to the recipes for Thin & Crispy Dough on page 57 and Garlic, Caramelized Onion, Anchovy, and Breadcrumb Sicilian Pizza page 124, and for instructions on using this book without a sourdough starter, see https://www.abramsbooks.com/errata/craft-errata-pizza-czar/*

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 18 mai 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781647002909
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction
The Road to Pizza Pro
International Consulting: Philosophy
The Three Pillars of Pizza: Wheat, Tomatoes, and Cheese
Tools of the Trade
Methodologies
FRESH MOZZARELLA
Stretching Fresh Mozzarella Curd
Raw Milk Mozzarella
TOMATO SAUCE
Basic Tomato Sauce
Tomato Flavor Bomb
Robust Tomato Sauce
Spicy Grandma Sauce
PIZZA
ESTABLISHING THE BASELINE
Thin and Crispy Dough
Tomato Pie
The Original (Plain Cheese)
Sausage and Pepper Pizza
The New York-Style Margherita Pizza
Pepperoni and Pickled Chile Pizza
Palace Special Pizza
The Falco Pizza
NEAPOLITANISH PIZZA
Neapolitanish Dough
The Margherita
WHITE PIES
Classic White Pizza
Brussels Sprouts Pizza
Shrimp Scampi Pizza
Clam Pizza
Mushroom Onion Pizza
Ferngully Pizza
PAN PIZZAS
Sicilian Grandma Dough
New York-Style Grandma Pizza
Onion and Olive Bread
Garlic, Caramelized Onion, Anchovy and Breadcrumb Sicilian Pizza
Classic Upside-Down Sicilian
Spicy Pepperoni Sicilian Pizza
Faccia di Vecchia (Old Lady s Face Pizza)
BUTTERCRUST PAN PIZZA
Buttercrust Pan Pizza Dough
Cheesy Pan Pizza
Veggie Lover s Pan Pizza
Supreme Pan Pizza
INTERNATIONAL CONSULTING: TRAVEL
Lamb Sausage Pizza
Bolognese Pizza
The New Portuguese Pizza
Tokyo Marinara
CONTROVERSIAL PIZZAS
Pineapple Pizza Al Pastor-Style
Brazilian Mashed Potato Pizza
Eggplant Parm Pizza
Pizza Alla Norma
Eggs for Pizza
Potato, Egg, and Cheese Pizza
SAUCES OILS
Anchovy Sauce
B chamel Sauce
Bolognese Sauce
Roasted Garlic Cream
Tomatillo Sauce
Pineapple Sauce
White Wine Lemon Cream Sauce
Herb Oil
Ranch Dressing
TOPPINGS
Al Pastor Pork
Caramelized Onions
Lime Pickled Onions
Fingerling Potatoes
Falco Sausage
Fried Garlic Chips
Fried Eggplant Cutlets
Lamb Sausage
Marinated Shrimp
Mashed Potatoes
Pickled Chiles
Oven-Roasted Fancy Mixed Mushrooms
Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Roasted Eggplant
Vegan Caramelized Onions
Roasted Peppers
Toasted Walnuts
Sourdough Breadcrumbs
Sicilian Onion Topping
NOT PIZZA
Sicilian Texan Grandma s Meatballs
Sicilian Orange and Fennel Salad
Pesto Alla Trapanese
Products
Natural Fermentation-What the Hell is That?
Ovens
Acknowledgments
Index of Searchable Terms
FOREWORD
PHIL KRAJECK
It was April 2018, and Anthony and I had just finished working a long-ass day at my soon-to-open pizza restaurant, Folk, in Nashville. Anyone who has ever opened a restaurant knows that it s like giving birth, getting married, and getting divorced all at the same time. We came home, showered, and lit a fire in my backyard. We were exhausted. We needed a drink.
Anthony had traveled to Nashville to crash in my guest bedroom and help us figure out what the fuck we were doing. Sauce, dough, cheese-that was covered. It s the How do we set ourselves up to execute consistently and quickly? How do we maintain the perfect oven floor temperature all service long? How do we get the ideal balance of extensibility and elasticity in our dough? -that s the other part of Falco s genius that most people don t see. He s a consultant. You re in Sao Paolo and want to do grandma pie? You re in Mongolia and want to do Neapolitan? Call Falco. He ll arrive; dig into the supply chain; help you source the best dairy, flour, and tomatoes; and teach you how to properly use the oven you just spent thousands of dollars on. Falco knows the restaurant world and systems so well. Having him get on a plane-as a bro-and help me was invaluable.
Back to my backyard: After the aforementioned long-ass day, I opened a bottle of wine. And another. And another. At one point, Anthony looked deep into the fire and said, We cook pizza with the stored energy of the sun.
Pizza Czar? How about Pizza Mystic?
See, the State of Pizza in Popular Culture over the past ten years is divided into two periods. B.F. and A.F.: Before Falco and After Falco. Anthony made pizza cool, mashing up art and culture and music and drugs and fucking delicious pizza and wine. That s why he s a legend. Because not only has he studied and tested his recipes a million times over, but he understands that pizza is a great unifier. It s joy and togetherness.
I don t know how to do anything else, he s said to me, and likely countless people. Anthony Falco is a dude who just wants you to enjoy it as much as he does. Which is a lot. So much love, energy, and effort has gone into these recipes. Use them as a reference. And make so much pizza for your family and friends.
INTRODUCTION
I never meant to make my life about pizza. I also never asked to be called Pizza Czar. But here I am, forty-one years old, and my life revolves around pizza. And now I m writing a book all about pizza.
Mind. Officially. Blown.
Growing up I had a fierce love for pizza. But I imagined myself becoming a filmmaker, illustrator, or revolutionary (and I ve done all three . . . in pizza). I was drawn to life in restaurants after realizing my artistic and revolutionary leanings would not be suited to office life.
I was raised in a household where my dad, a vegetarian (in Texas), denounced the factory farming he grew up around in Falls County. He was an outlaw, someone who thought cannabis and hemp should be legalized, took every psychedelic you could find in the 70s, and spent years in federal prison for smuggling hash. There was a lot of radical shit banging around the Falco house growing up, and food was foundational to it.
It had an effect. I found the real disruptors behind the bar, in the kitchen, and on the floor. Artists, writers, filmmakers, creatives-people who couldn t stomach the sacrifice of plugging into the nine-to-five. The cushy bubble of corporate stability felt like it could smother that flame. These were the people I wanted to surround myself with. But we needed gigs, so we found ourselves in the service industry.
Working in a restaurant, you develop comradery because you re on the battlefield together. You meet and work with new people from the world over. The work is physical. Everyone sweats and cleans together. And while there are rules, there is so much room for creativity.
I wouldn t even start making pizza until a decade into restaurant life, when I found myself at my first job in New York, where I d been trying to move my entire life. And I wouldn t so much as come within three feet of the wood-fired oven for weeks after starting at Roberta s in Bushwick, Brooklyn. After I somehow got through my first shift topping pizzas without making a fool of myself, my boss said, Falco, your pizza ninja training has begun.
Then he shoved a deck brush in my hand and said, Now scrub the floors.
I was stoked. One of my favorite comics growing up was Usagi Yojimbo (which translates to rabbit bodyguard ) by Stan Sakai, the story of a samurai rabbit who, rather than join the prestigious martial arts school in town, trains with an angry old hermit living in the mountains. He carries water, splits wood, and cleans before becoming a ronin (a masterless samurai). At this new gig, I d become very good at splitting wood.
In 2010, I purchased a wood-fired mobile pizza oven with money I borrowed from my wife Rebecca s parents. I may have owned the pizza oven, but from that moment, it was pizza that owned me. That oven was more challenging and required more creativity than any restaurant I d worked in. Cooking out in the elements in unfamiliar places and climates using different ingredients elevated my understanding of pizza. And by pizza, I mean dough. Dough is the hard part, the living part, what you obsess over if you commit to pizza as I did.
I came to oversee not just that oven but nine others and a team of pizza makers-probably 150 people between takeout, delivery, and frozen and mobile operations. My pizza masters called me the Pizza Czar. Back then, I felt this title may ve been an attempt to keep me out of their traditional culinary hierarchy and make me sound silly. If my suspicion was correct, that backfired. Instead, the title sparks imaginations. (That, or it makes people think I sound like a pompous asshole.)
I made thousands of pizzas (some perfect, some failures), honed my skills, and was a part of a pizza program lauded as one of America s best. Then I sold my oven and said goodbye to my old life, and in the years since, I ve traveled the globe making pizza, each challenge another chance to learn.
This book represents everything I ve learned about making pizza over thirteen years: my mistakes (there ve been plenty), my successes (luckily, I ve had a few), and the recipes along the way.
As difficult as restaurant life is, in some ways it s a safe place. I mean, not really. It s a crazy place filled with dangers physical and emotional. But intellectually, after six months or so, you become familiar with the conditions and could probably work every station. Seasonal ingredients or menu refreshes add some variability, but the routine won t drastically differ. As a consultant, though, I ve been thrown into situations making pizza in jungles and deserts, climates I ve never encountered, hopping between hemispheres and among unfamiliar cultures. I ve learned a lot about myself, about pizza making, and about dough-sometimes life-changing things. When I learned about natural fermentation it completely changed the way I approached dough and reshaped my understanding of the craft of pizza forever. The idea of employing the same technique that s been used to make bread rise for millennia- harvesting wild bacteria and yeast from the air, from us, from flour-there s something amazing, even revolutionary about it.
That is what I want to share.
In this book, I ll start by outlining the principles, tips, and methodologies I think every person needs to know when they embark on their pizza journey. Then I ll share recipes for you to try yourself. And, finally, in the back of the book, you ll fi