Brooklyn’s Hottest Pizzeria is Reinventing The New York Slice

When I first got the pizzeria in 2017,

I never made pizza before in my life.

It was a learning process.

The way that we approach the dough is not very simple.

We use in a preferment, we use in our own style here.

Dough is like us.

Some days you have a headache,

some days you don't want to go to work.

It's mostly waiting time.

So we try to fill it up doing other pastry,

olive oil cake, mille-feuille.

We have the bomboloni, we got the focaccia, gelato.

So it's a good amount.

On a busy day with a line out the door

probably can serve 1,000 to 1,200 people.

There is nothing better than make dough,

make pastry, make people happy.

It's beautiful.

[gentle music]

[door clanging]

[speaks in Italian] I'm Massimo.

I'm the dough man here in L'industrie

and today we're gonna make some dough.

Welcome in. It's already late.

Let's go, guys.

[upbeat music]

This is my beautiful shop.

This is Theo, Ricardo, Alex and Gabriel.

We usually get here in the morning at 5:30

to do all the production, but it's 6:15 guys,

let's go make some focaccia.

[upbeat music]

Okay, guys. [container thudding]

Let's go. This is our preferment.

We usually use for the focaccia. It's called Biga.

We make it the afternoon of the day before.

Flour 45% of water and 1% of yeast.

You have to do more step when you work

with the preferment bag.

The flavor profile of the dough is totally different.

You definitely have a better result.

You can smell the alcoholic fermentation of the biga.

If you're using a biga, you're gonna have a dough

that is a little bit more tight and you have more structure.

That's why it's better if we use it with focaccia bread.

With this one, we're gonna make pizza in pala.

We're gonna do two forchetta.

Love to do sandwich with this one.

We have to add more flour now.

So let's go. [paper bag thudding]

In our focaccia, we usually use whole wheat.

We just gonna use a like a 1% of sugar inside.

The yeast inside the preferment is very weak

so you wanna add something

to that kind of like, wake up, you know.

It's like an espresso for humans, you know.

we gonna add some fresh yeast.

We can start [cover clatters]

mixing the flour. [upbeat music]

We give it like 30, 42 seconds, we gonna add the biga

and then we start with some water

and we try to build the gluten together.

So when I open the pizzeria, I call a guy from Rome

to learn how to make pizza.

That was one of my first day.

He explain me how to use biga and all the preferment.

And then during the years, we always modify a little bit

of the recipe.

I wanna just show you like how the dough

is different right now.

You see how the gluten is ready to accept the salt now.

When you go with the salt and water,

all the dough breaks apart and then it comes together.

Listen to classic music.

This one, the sounds of the dough slapping inside the mixer

is very relaxing.

[Massimo speaks in Italian] [classical music]

I'm a morning guy so I love come here

when it's dark outside, it's the best part of the day.

I feel the way that it looks the dough,

we say in Italian, that is in Corda, I mean, so straight.

It didn't break apart. This one is very satisfying now.

Look how you shine. It's great.

We have to wait that it double in size.

Then we divide and we shape it.

I'm gonna start measuring ingredients for the pizza dough.

[gentle music]

Who's that? Spider-Man.

It is a spider. The movie, you know the family.

And then I have always Santos

and Andrea Pirlo always watching us.

You know when we make dough, this is the maestro,

this is the real maestro.

I'm a big soccer fan.

How many poolish we have, Ali?

[Ali] Three and a half.

So we know already in this morning

we have three and a half preferment inside the Proofer.

Poolish is the liquid preferment. We use it for our pizza.

With the poolish, you're able to get more extensibility

in the dough so it's easy to stretch the pizza, right?

So we have to measure all the ingredients

[paper rustling]

to basically make 175 dough.

So first steps, [paper bag rustling]

you're gonna measure some double zero flour.

It's gonna be 35 kilo.

I move here in 2014 from Italy

and the reason why I move here was to play soccer.

I didn't do that great. So I start working in a restaurant.

I never meet pizza before in my life

or never working to a kitchen.

[metal clanging]

The first months too. It was terrible.

I remember I don't know how to do nothing. Zero.

But I figured it out with time. Pizza is pizza.

The difference is the temperature that we bake here.

I don't understand all this New York culture.

They say, Oh, this is New York style, this is Roman style,

this is Neapolitan style.

With this dough, I can definitely make Neapolitan style.

If I go into bacon it over that is 450 Celsius.

You know, you're making Neapolitan style.

The way we bake here is around 3:40.

We do everything in Celsius here.

I don't understand Friday night, I don't understand pounds.

I think the measure here in America,

they're very like...

I don't know why you guys, you wanna complicate your life.

Do everything in grams, do everything like in centimeter.

It's so easy.

Gabriel, how many flour you think we order per a week?

What is it? 2,000 pound a week?

[Gabriel] Even more.

Next step we gonna create an autolyse,

autolyse in Italian.

The autolyse is you go in with like 60% of water,

you mix it for a couple of minutes

and you let it sit for an hour.

You're gonna have a better structure in the dough later on.

This is a water meter that helps me

to get the right temperature of the water.

My flour right now is at 22.

[cover clattering]

So you probably want to go higher than 25.

It's gonna help the fermentation.

[water spattering]

[gentle music]

[cover clatters]

We gonna wait for an hour.

In the meantime, we have time to go bake the bread.

Let's go, guys.

Ah, the proofing is not ready yet, you need some more time.

[gentle music]

So we're a little behind with the schedule for the bread.

So we're gonna step into the mille-feuille.

It's puff pastry dough.

Flour and water.

We put some vinegar in to give a little bit more taste.

The next day we start folding it with the butter.

We have to keep going in the fridge all the time.

That's why we start couple of days in advance.

So the reason why we're doing this dessert

is always like a learning process.

It takes us a lot of time to figure it out.

Why we wait in the morning for the dough?

We have time to learn other pastry.

We bought a book with pastry and we learned how to do it.

Now all the fold are done. We just have to stretch it.

We have to be like delicate.

You don't want to break the dough right now.

We're gonna fill it up a little with Chantilly cream

and then vanilla whipped cream.

It's gonna grow and you're gonna be able

to see all the layers and it's gonna be crunchy and soft

at the same time.

How do you hold this one? I don't even know the name.

How do you call it? I don't know. Uh, poker.

Come on, whatever, you do the whole.

Otherwise, it will like grow so much

and you will have a big puff pastry dough.

With this one, you're gonna be able to keep it lower.

I like to bake it when it's cold.

We put another parchment paper on top, another tray

and so it helps to grow even.

We bake it at 200 Celsius for about 15 to 16 minutes

and then we remove the top.

I think with the bread, we're almost ready.

[classical music]

My partner Nick is a daily guy.

When they're coming at 11:00,

we make sandwich with this stuff

and we change sandwich every day.

It really depends what we got every morning at the shop.

This is our simple pizza dough.

We fold it in the money and we make as a hero.

I wanna make sure that it's not stick in the board

so I give it a little flip-flop like that.

Again, pizza is bread. It's the same.

You know, you just have to tap it with good ingredients.

We're gonna live it out for like 10 minutes

so it helps to create the skin

and it's gonna be easy to cut off.

So now before we go with the bread,

our beautiful olive oil cake is ready.

This is one of our best seller here at the shop.

Making dough and pizza is mostly waiting time

so we try to fill it up the time doing other pastry.

[Nick] We will do 40 olive oil cake,

gelato 200, 300 serve a day, 50 brioche when it's busy.

It's a good amount of pastry for the pizzeria.

You wanna first just have a little cut

and then you wanna go under the skin.

It helps to open the bread inside the oven.

So you're gonna be able to see all the structure inside.

[gentle music]

So now we're gonna go in, it's 245 Celsius right now.

You got it. [gentle music]

[tray rustling] [gentle music]

[oven door thudding] [button beeps]

[steam hissing]

This steam helps to open up the bread

and to have a golden crust.

It's an amazing oven, is a Moretti electric.

We're able to change the temperature up and down

so we can do a lot of different product.

So you see, you have a stone here,

you have the element on top.

You also have element in the bottom of the stone.

So with this tool,

you're able to really control the temperature.

We need to have an oven that at least holds like 300 Celsius

is more important how to keeps the temperature

and I feel with this oven we can keep up.

You see the cross is start to get that gold color

in the back.

So we're gonna open the valve.

So all this steam is gonna go outside.

Then it's gonna dry out the product.

[gentle music]

In the back, it's always more hot

so you want to turn that half baked.

The bread is ready, guys. [tray rustling]

[gentle music]

[bread rustling] [gentle music]

This one opened really good.

It was a good cut. [knife scraping]

[gentle music]

Now, we have the best part of the day.

What is that? It's a blower.

So we can clean the oven.

[blower whirring]

I mean, why not?

So now we divide the focaccia.

[gentle music]

This is the batch of the focaccia that we made it before.

That is double up in size so we can divide it.

So we spread our scale with semolina.

With this one, we're gonna make pizza in pala.

So the flat focaccia that we bake right into the stone.

This is what we do it.

[person speaks indistinctly] Flip it.

So it's about 800 going like this. Boom.

Now, we're gonna have some forchetta.

Forchetta is the pizza that they do in Rome in the pan

and they bake a one on top of the other one.

We're gonna have three focaccia.

We're gonna do two forchetta.

Now I give you the form to the focaccia right now.

[gentle music]

I want give it a rectangular long form

so it's easy later to stretch it.

I wanna close the dough and then put it in the bottle,

so I actually stay closed,

you know, very important to close the dough.

This one is gonna go in the Proofer

for the last fermentation.

It's 9:00 AM now.

We're very behind, but I'm gonna clean the station

and we're gonna go finish the pizza dough.

[gentle music]

We're trying to get ready with all the ingredients, guys.

We measured the olive oil. We already measured the salt.

The preferment is ready, we double up in size overnight.

The grows is made it from a four kilo of flour

and four kilo of water.

And you can see that it is ready when it start

to fill down in the middle.

Look. Now it's perfect to use it.

We're gonna put inside the poolish now.

You given time basically to flour to absorb the water.

The poolish, this one is created with the fresh yeast.

Guys, can you remove the tray of the mille-feuille?

Yeah, the 60 minutes are done.

So it's gonna remove the tray

and we gonna put some sugar so it caramelize.

Okay, the last poolish, that one is the starter.

That is probably like five, six years old.

This is the sourdough starter,

we created here in the pizzeria.

This is more for like a flavor profile.

I wanna taste a little bit of sour in my pizza,

you know, but not too much.

That's why we all use a 5% of this.

[cover clattering]

Now we're going to mix.

[classical music]

The dough comes together.

Now my next step is adding the salt.

It looks a lot but it is 3% of the amount of the flour.

Help it with some water.

We gotta go with some more olive oil.

We bake it in electric oven

and it tends to dry out the pizza a lot.

So we need some fetch.

We're gonna go for a minute at the second speed.

[mixer whooshes]

Now, we're building like strain into the dough.

[gentle music]

[cover clatters]

All right. Look, the bubbling.

I mean, this is what's nice. Look.

Almost like double of the size. It's gonna grow.

In the meantime, my guys, they're gonna help me

to stick it out the dough.

[classical music]

It's about 10:00 AM, we're gonna go make some gelato.

[classical music]

We're dealing with the delivery flour right now.

[Kitchen Staff] Oh, nevermind.

People don't think we pay our bills,

but we pay our time, right Blair?

Yes. See.

Technically, I don't work in a pizzeria, I'm a fireman.

We just put out fires all day.

Hi, guys, this is Nick.

He's my partner- Hi, guys.

Of L'industrie Pizzeria.

He is the sandwich guy that we were talking about before.

I'm the one that make sure we have integrity

in the streets of New York with pizza.

We're gonna make a batch of Pistachio Gelato 2020.

When we were a little shop where I went to Chicago,

I took a class.

I didn't learn nothing because it was only

like two, three days.

But then when we reopened the shop,

we get a Soft Serve machine and we start to make gelato

and it's been doing very well and we've been learning a lot.

This is the first step. We put milk on the store.

Heat up to 45 Celsius so it helps to dissolve better.

And emulsify in the product.

The secret is basically to use good milk,

the temperature drops down [hand thudding]

and slowly we have to go up to 85 Celsius.

Now we go with this beautiful pistachio,

is a 100% pistachio paste from Sicily.

It is kind of expensive and also we gotta use it probably

like between 10 to 8% each base.

So now we're gonna blend this one.

[blender whirring]

We blend it. I let it go for a couple of minutes.

And now it's hot but [blender whirring]

very good. [blender whirring]

Now, we're gonna let it cool down this one.

I'm obsessed with gelato.

We wanted to have gelato ready and serve at the moment.

That's why we chose the Soft Serve machine.

[gentle music]

And we can go into bake some focaccia.

[gentle music]

So here we have the dough that we made it

before the focaccia that it's basically ready.

[tray whooshes] [tray thuds]

Focaccia or Pizza Bianca, whatever you wanna call it.

At the end, it's the same dough

but you can do different products,

you know? [hand tapping]

This one we're gonna bake it straight into the deck

without any pan.

Go with some olive oil.

You see? [pizza cutter thudding]

You wanna create some hole so it doesn't grow too much.

And then we go straight to the oven, we stretch it more.

When I'm pushing the dough down,

I try to move the air around.

[pizza cutter thudding]

I just want to make sure I have an even product.

When we started working together,

he was focusing on the dough,

how to make the pizza dough best.

When he kind of got a little complacent with that,

it was all right, now, let's start making pastries.

And then we started making more pastries

and it was ice cream.

And then you know, everything he does,

he's like very obsessive with.

So I think he's been pushing the envelope more and more.

Traditional Roman style pan is a blue steel pan

that we have to bake it for like three, four times

before you use them. [tray thuds]

So the balance between crispy outside

then creamy inside the dough is gonna be super delicious.

This is the same dough,

but we're gonna cook it into the pan.

This is gonna be the bottom, right?

If you let it relax for a second,

it's gonna be easy to stretch.

And you bring the dough into the corner. Olive oil around.

Now, we stretch this one.

Again, we remove the flour. [hand tapping]

You don't wanna have too much flour on top.

So you have that taste of bun,

you're gonna still create the hole.

[pizza cutter thudding]

After you bake it with the olive oil in the middle,

you're gonna have a middle that is very creamy and soft

and it's crunchy outside.

So it goes well with the mortadella.

You know, prosciutto, hot cheese.

Focaccia is ready? [pizza holder clatters]

I like well done a little bit.

I like crunchy stuff, so I like it to go over a little bit.

You can finish it with some extra olive oil

and more than sea salt.

[classical music]

It's very hot.

[classical music]

[pizza whooshes]

So now I'm gonna cut the middle.

[classical music]

That's what is we're trying to do.

You see the middle, how it's like buttery and soft?

[classical music]

Let's finish this one with some mortadella in your hand.

[classical music]

Changing again the temperature of the oven

so we can start make pizza later.

[classical music]

[blower whirring]

We expect the big day. We're gonna try to get ready.

We're gonna start making some pizza for the house.

We remove it gently from the dough tray,

dust it up with flour.

It helps you to have a round shape.

Then you go into the marble, you slap it,

you remove all the flour

and then you stretch a little by little.

You have to be gentle.

The gravity helps to stretch it though itself.

This one is probably about like 17, 16 inch

and then after, you add the ingredients,

the tomato and the cheese.

You can even stretch more. One full spoon.

You see we spread the tomato, like, we live a little bit.

I like the cornichons, the crust.

Branded mozzarella from Wisconsin.

You don't want a cheese that is a lot of milk inside.

It has to be low in moisture because you have a long bake.

It's gonna be soggy on the pizza basically.

I don't like to go super heavy with cheese.

With too much cheese, you kind of like cover the quality

of the pizza. Yeah.

The way we make pizza is almost like a garde manger station.

[pizza holder clatters] Here, no toppings.

Just someone focusing on making the best pie they can make.

And when it comes out of the oven, the guys will cut it,

put the toppings on there, reheat it,

and then when it comes out, garnish it post-bake.

We do that. So it stirs the quality.

Like you don't want a pepperoni pie

that's been sitting out all day, right?

And the best part about we never have waste.

We only making what we need.

You see when I say not too much cheese,

that's what I like.

The caramelization of the cheese and the tomato.

It's crispy and juicy at the same time.

Yeah.

The baking time here at 3:40 is about five minutes.

We gonna get probably around 10 pies.

Right now, between six, seven red.

We're gonna have one, two white and enough to start the day.

And then we go a little by little

with the flow depend how it's busy.

So guys door is open 12 o'clock.

We don't have that much space

so unfortunately have to kick you out.

But thank you so much for joining me today.

Come visit us and taste the pizza.

Look, it's amazing.

[upbeat music]