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Bon Appétit spends a day on the line at Jules Pizza in San Francisco with chef-owner Max Blachman-Gentile. From stretching dough and building the perfect New York-style crust with New Haven-inspired char, see how Jules creates some of the Bay Area's most talked-about pizzas.
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00:04Jules is a place where I could make pizza in a way that I like and in a way that
00:09I felt didn't exist a ton here in the Bay Area.
00:12I describe our pizza as if New York style pizza was slightly higher hydration and charred a little bit more
00:19like they would in New Haven.
00:22It just doesn't have to be overly precious. I just want it to be approachable to people still and not
00:28make them scratch their heads about what we're doing.
00:31At the end of the day, it's pizza. It should be fun.
00:41Hey, I'm Max. I'm the chef owner of Jules in Lower Haight. Come on in.
00:48This is our dining room. We seat about 40 inside.
00:53We're going to make all six pies that are on the menu right now.
00:56I'm going to stretch and top them and I'll explain them as we go and then Tony's going to cook
01:01them for us.
01:02So we're going to do the marron first, which is our classic cheese pizza.
01:05I go very little flour on top. The flour kind of keeps it from getting as much color in the
01:11oven.
01:11And then I start by kind of pushing all of the gas to the crust as much as I can.
01:17I am trying to keep a pretty open crumb with our crust.
01:21And so I start on my fingertips and then stretch by giving it like a little bit of a turn
01:27and a pull.
01:28Flour the bottom again just to help keep it from sticking.
01:32And then we'll get the rest of the size.
01:35We've been really lucky to be successful pretty much from the beginning of opening here.
01:41We did two years of pop-ups before we opened, so it was sort of like had built in a
01:45little bit of a following.
01:46We had our one year anniversary last week and there was a line around the block starting at 4.30
01:51for people to come into the party.
01:53It's nice to know people like want to be here.
01:56I'm starting with a scoop of sauce.
01:59So it's sort of a cross between an East Coast cheese and a margarita.
02:03To me, a true margarita like Neapolitan style is going to be sauce, basil, and fresh mozzarella.
02:09In this case, I want to get some garlic in there and oregano and some of those other flavors that
02:15we'd get from more of the like New York style.
02:17So I'm going to give it a pretty good pinch of ajica, which is the chili flake mixture that we
02:22make.
02:22We use Japanese chilies, dry coriander, dry garlic, fenugreek, and dehydrated marigold flowers and all gets blended up in there.
02:31Some basil. I also love fresh basil on the finish, but in this case, I'm getting it on to cook
02:37beforehand.
02:38Just kind of helps make that a little more aromatic.
02:41And then we're going to go with our cheese mix.
02:44I want to be careful not to go too, too heavy.
02:46When it's too cheesy, I think you cover up a lot of the tomato flavor.
02:50Also, it starts to get kind of soggy, and we're going for pretty crispy pizzas over here.
02:55The cacio cavallo is essentially a really funky, sharp provolone in a sense.
03:00The Sicilian pecorino is like salty, a little acidity.
03:04It's a creamy, good melter.
03:06And then lastly, with this one, we are going to give it some fresh mozzarella to give a little bit
03:12of the creamy, melty mozzarella texture.
03:14Mozzarella is a great cheese. It melts really well. It's kind of bland overall as a cheese.
03:18Give this a little bit of a stretch, and then we're going to go into the oven with that guy.
03:23You want to think about firing sort of like throwing a dart.
03:26There's like a sort of quick forward and back movement.
03:30I mean, the most important thing is that it doesn't stick.
03:32To check, I usually like to hit it against my hip.
03:35I like to see that it turns.
03:37If you see a spot where it's stuck, I know I need to either move it or reflour it a
03:41little bit.
03:41So we're moving on here to a spicy Ronnie, which is our pepperoni pizza.
03:46It's our bestseller because pepperoni is number one pizza ingredient in America.
03:51In New York, especially at the time I was there, everybody was doing some version of like a spicy pepperoni.
03:57I worked at Roberta's, which is home of the bee sting.
04:01And theirs is with Soprasada, honey and chili flake.
04:04But we're doing a spicy pepperoni.
04:06We have the option of adding our fermented garlic honey, but it doesn't come automatically on the pizza.
04:11So starting with tomato sauce and garlic again, ajica as well.
04:16Pretty good pinch since this one is the spicy pizza cheese mix.
04:19And I tend to go a little heavier than I do on the maroon because here we need a little
04:25bit more of the fat to balance out the pretty hefty amount of salty Ezzo pepperoni.
04:31And that's it before we go into the oven with this guy.
04:35I'm going to do a drunken sailor.
04:37It's basically going to be our cooked tomato sauce, some oregano on there, capers, and then it gets anchovy.
04:43It's literally like two fillets that go on this pizza broken up.
04:48It's really more there to give you a little bit of that umami, like bites of it.
04:52And that's it on this pizza before it goes into the oven.
04:55So we launch up in the front spots here.
04:58And then we're kind of looking for once it's set and get some oven spring.
05:03So you can see this, what was the backside has a little color on it.
05:07And then looking at the bottom, we've already got some color.
05:09So I'm going to spin it and move it to the screen on the back.
05:11Oven spring is the initial powerful rise that you get when bread goes in the oven, gets a burst of
05:18heat,
05:19and the yeast reacts to that heat by really quickly producing a ton of carbon dioxide.
05:24So that's what makes it sort of explode in the oven.
05:27And you need enough strength and structure in the dough to be able to get that oven spring.
05:31When it's too strong, the gas tries to expand and the gluten is so strong that it can't really open
05:38up.
05:38And so that's why getting that protein content around like 11, 11 and a half percent is kind of a
05:43sweet spot for building a strong enough dough.
05:45That also is extensible enough that when it gets that oven spring, it can like open up really nicely, hold
05:51on to the gas, but stretch enough that you get an open lighter crumb.
05:54So we're going to move into white pizzas.
05:58This is called the fun guy.
06:00Going to get mushroom cream on there.
06:02A little garlic as well.
06:04Black pepper, some cheese mix.
06:07We're going to get our mushrooms on there.
06:09Maitake, honshimeji, and then we've got some morels.
06:12We use this cheese called horncucasa, a Swiss alpine cheese.
06:17The name literally translates to horn cheese because they use only dairy cows with horns.
06:22The finish on this is we put these little dots of a black garlic tamarind sauce that we make.
06:28It's kind of fun just because a lot of people think it looks like chocolate chips.
06:31And then this last one we're going to do is Fiona's Destiny.
06:34And because we never like to take things too seriously here, it gets finished with Funyuns.
06:39I think Funyuns are an incredible and underrated chip.
06:43We're looking for like a pretty good amount of Maillard reaction.
06:48I like darker brown.
06:50I mean, if anything, this is like a really nice bake.
06:52I like to be able to hear the crack when you do that.
06:56And then when you pick it up, I want to have like enough structure that it doesn't fold and collapse.
07:01The bottom, I like seeing a good amount of contrast, nice like dark brown color and not flopping everywhere.
07:08I want that like open crumb, lighter texture with sort of a thin, shattery crust.
07:15We got to get pizza dough going and get those ingredients going.
07:18So we're going to start on that now.
07:20All right, we're in the prep kitchen in our basement.
07:24160 doughs for today.
07:25I typically want the dough that we make today to get used tomorrow.
07:31The fermentation is really different between same day, one day, two days, three days in the fridge.
07:37The purpose of a sourdough starter is to leaven the dough.
07:41So it creates carbon dioxide, which helps to make the dough rise.
07:46On top of that, there's a lot of lactic bacteria that live in a sourdough starter.
07:52The name of one in particular is called Lactobacilli San Franciscanus.
07:56It's named for San Francisco, which is partly because San Francisco is very well known for its sourdough.
08:04That bacteria is what gives it a lot of flavor.
08:07This guy, this is the Poulish, also pre-ferment.
08:10The Poulish, as a tool, helps me manage the acidity and give the dough a sweeter flavor that I like.
08:18For me, one of the things you taste in the dough of a New York-style pizza is often that
08:22sweeter, yeasty flavor.
08:23Like, traditional New York-style pizza is not naturally leavened.
08:27And then last thing we're adding before the flours is a little bit of commercial yeast.
08:32I know this seems complicated to have all three different leaveners, but I find that a little bit of that
08:37fresh yeast is just what helps give it that little bit of extra pop in the oven.
08:41And that is part of what, to me, gives it that thinner, shattery crust.
08:46We have three different flours in our pizza dough.
08:49This one's called Max's Marvel.
08:51Partly chose, I'll admit, because of the name, but I also really like this mill.
08:56It's Cape Valley Mills.
08:57This is actually a blend of three different grains.
09:00Love this flour.
09:01They mill it fresh for us.
09:03Anyway, Glacier Peak here.
09:04This is from Cairnspring Mills.
09:06This one's a much whiter flour.
09:08I love this flour.
09:09It's great.
09:09It's too strong for pizza, in my opinion, if it were 100% Glacier Peak.
09:14Higher protein's great.
09:15Makes a strong dough.
09:16You can stretch it.
09:17Because it's so strong, it's toothier and harder to chew.
09:21I don't really want to see someone having to rip it.
09:23And I think with a lot of New York-style pizza, which is typically using really strong flours,
09:28that's why your jaw is tired by the time you're done eating.
09:32So we're kind of trying to avoid that.
09:35Last flour, Edison.
09:36This one is a single varietal.
09:38This one is about 10.5% protein.
09:41Much softer overall.
09:43I like blending these three because effectively I'm kind of trying to get a protein content
09:49overall of about 11 to 11.5%.
09:51This one would be a little too weak on its own.
09:54This one would be too strong.
09:56This one has nice strength but is all whole wheat.
10:00But we blend them together and we get something really good out of the three.
10:04All right, these are all in here now.
10:07I'm going to get this started.
10:10Gluten is two amino acids and when you add water and mix them together, they bond and create gluten.
10:17In theory, if you mix it together and let it sit for like 12 hours, you'd end up with a
10:21pretty strong dough even without doing anything.
10:23I like getting it started, letting it rest, letting the gluten start to form on its own without having to
10:28over mix.
10:29So this one's just a couple minutes and it has no strength.
10:33It's not like tugging back at me at all.
10:35It's really shaggy, meaning like that doesn't look smooth at all either, but it is hydrated.
10:42And in the next half an hour, it will become a much smoother, stronger dough even with no effort.
10:48All right, so we're going back in.
10:50This has rested about 30 minutes.
10:52It's still pretty shaggy, but in terms of strength, we've actually got development here.
10:57So we're going to do the final mix.
11:00And now that I see it kind of coming together, I'm going to add in the salt and then olive
11:05oil.
11:06I like adding a little bit of fat.
11:08It helps keep the crumb a little bit more tender.
11:10All of our olive oil is from Truly, which is based here in California.
11:14You know, we could use Italian stuff, but I feel like we're in California.
11:18We should use California stuff.
11:20And I love the flavor.
11:23At the end of the mix, this is looking really nice to me.
11:26So this is what's going to come out.
11:27Hold that.
11:30All right, dough for 160 pizzas is set.
11:32Now I've got to get some sauces started.
11:36I wanted to do vodka sauce, but I also wanted to make things a little easier since we already
11:43make four different sauces for six pizzas, which is a little crazy.
11:47So we make our wine sauce for the Drunken Sailor, which has white wine in it.
11:53So we're going to use some of the wine sauce as the base basically.
11:57But we're starting it with Calabrian chili oil.
12:00We use Calabrian chilies on top of the spicy ronnie and we strain off some of the oil.
12:05And then we have all this oil, tons of Calabrian chili oil.
12:08So we're always looking for things to use Calabrian chili oil for.
12:13While it's still relatively cool, I'm going to add in gojuchang, a fermented pepper paste common in Korean food.
12:21It's going to get really aromatic and definitely imparts a little bit of heat.
12:26So we have like a nice fry here on our gojuchang, so I'm going to deglaze this with the wine
12:32sauce.
12:34Our red pizza sauce for the marron and the spicy ronnie is a pretty classic raw tomato sauce.
12:41It's tomatoes, salt, a little olive oil and a little water and we blend that together.
12:46Tomato is such an amazing flavor on its own.
12:48It's got umami and acidity and sweetness.
12:51It's kind of got everything right there.
12:53But the wine sauce, we sweat some onion and garlic, add in oregano and chili flake, deglaze with white wine,
13:00cook off the alcohol a little bit and then add our tomatoes and bring that up.
13:04So a little bit more of that rich, more caramelized tomato flavor in that.
13:09I kind of want everything to come together.
13:11And as I stir and the heat comes up, it'll kind of all get emulsified in there.
13:16While this is happening, I'm also going to get mushrooms for our mushroom cream going.
13:21Basically, we take all the scraps from when we break down the mushrooms and we're going to season that with
13:28some oil, some salt and pepper, roast it right now.
13:31We're going to get a little rosemary in there before it's done roasting.
13:35And then that's all going to get blended with some red onion and cream.
13:38And that's going to make the base of that mushroom cream.
13:43Just throwing this in.
13:44Pretty simple.
13:45Nice thing about having a pizza oven is you can roast things really hot.
13:50We got them already for me because I'd worked with them more in the past, which is an electric deck
13:54oven.
13:54This is a really old building from 1892.
13:57So we did not have enough electricity for that.
13:59So out of necessity, we went with gas.
14:01And I'm very, very happy that we did, actually.
14:04This oven's awesome.
14:06A lot of the old school, like the Baker's Prides, it's one really thick stone.
14:10So it takes a really long time to heat that up.
14:12And then the first few pizzas usually just basically burn the out of the bottom because it's so hot.
14:18And then once you're in service and you're firing a lot of pizzas in it, you've pulled a lot of
14:23the heat out of the stone.
14:24And it takes so long to reheat that entire stone because it's so thick that it's really hard to catch
14:30up if you're really busy.
14:31But the way Moretti designs their oven is that there's the three stones on each deck that are what you're
14:37landing your pizzas onto.
14:39Then there's like an air gap beneath that.
14:41And then another set of three stones.
14:43It's able to trap a bunch of really like superheated air in between the two layers of stone.
14:49And so it's sort of constantly replenishing.
14:51We put pizza screens like in the back of the oven.
14:55So we'll fire onto the first row.
14:58And then once it sets, we move it to the back on two screens.
15:02And that allows the top to get enough color before the bottom is too burnt.
15:07Even with a really busy service, this oven keeps up really, really nicely.
15:11So this was just at like a pretty gentle boil.
15:15And I'm going to just get the cream in.
15:19The satrail special went on the menu.
15:21It was supposed to be one of our seasonals just when the green garlic came in.
15:25And it's quickly become one of our most popular pizzas.
15:29It beats spicy Ronnie in sales a lot of nights, which it's hard to beat a pepperoni pizza in sales.
15:35So it's not going to leave the menu anytime soon.
15:38Our sauces are all set for the moment.
15:40So I'm going to run downstairs and we're going to start dividing and shaping dough.
15:45This is from today.
15:46So this is the same one that I mixed.
15:48So it's had about an hour and a half bulk fermentation right now.
15:52You want to build a lot of structure because pizza dough is going to be sitting and proofing for a
15:57pretty long time.
15:58So I'm going to kind of like bring these rougher edges in and I'm kind of like tucking and springing
16:04back to where I can work with it.
16:07And then giving it like a little bit of a quarter turn each time I push it and then trying
16:12to seal that bottom.
16:15And then it goes in the dough box.
16:17If we were to bake this dough right now, it's still pretty under fermented.
16:21There is some activity, so it would get a little oven spring, but it doesn't have a ton of structure
16:25yet.
16:26It would definitely just bake like a blob.
16:27And honestly, the biggest thing is just from a flavor perspective, you get so much flavor from the fermentation time.
16:34I'm the fastest at this.
16:37Yeah, I mean, I've shaped at this point tens of thousands is not an exaggeration, potentially a hundred thousand of
16:45these in my lifetime.
16:46So it's just about practice and it takes a little while, especially this is a stickier dough.
16:52So this isn't like a beginner level pizza dough to work with.
16:57We're going to be shaping here for the next 20 so minutes.
17:00So we'll be finishing this up and then we can go get some pizza ready.
17:06It's 430.
17:07Just about time for pre-shift.
17:08We're mostly set up on the line, so we're going to go meet with our front of house staff.
17:11Hey, everybody.
17:12Welcome in.
17:13Hope you had a good day.
17:14Welcome back, Eileen.
17:15We're going to go over our notes for the day.
17:18Food wise, we don't have any major changes.
17:21We talked about very, very minor change that the Fresno chilies are serrano chilies now on the crudo.
17:29So we're going to start with chicken this coming Tuesday as like a one day.
17:33We're just going to do it on Tuesdays, I think, for now.
17:36Want to also just say thank you.
17:39And that's all we got.
17:41All right, guys.
17:44We're set up here on the line.
17:46I'll be expediting here at the pass.
17:48I like to expedite, but we'll also work the oven.
17:51Some days I'll stretch and open doughs kind of wherever is needed.
17:55It's 4.55.
17:56We open in five minutes.
17:57Thank you for spending the day with us, but you've got to leave.
17:59We'll spend $4.55.
18:02We'll be expediting here at about 6th District of the year.
18:03See you guys.
18:03See you guys soon.
18:03Have a prevaleza.
18:03who'll help you to find you.
18:04I have an email with us.
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