As New York City continues to expand on its pizza offerings, with restaurants like Black Seed, Il Buco Alimentari, Loring Place, and Coco Pazzo all opening pizza offshoots over the last few months, Breads Bakery is getting in on the action—with a big name chef behind them. Wylie Dufresne, of the late, great wd~50, and Du’s Donuts (which remains closed since the March Lockdown) has debuted Stretch Pizza. For now, it’s popping up at the Union Square location of Gadi Peleg’s Breads Bakery, Tuesday through Thursday from 5 pm to 8 pm, pick-up only, after ordering in advance.
Dufresne is known for his scientific and experimental approach to cooking and was a major proponent of molecular gastronomy back in the early 2000s. But just like so many others, the award-winning chef turned to making pizza during the lockdown with his family in Connecticut. After an introduction to Peleg, the two decided to collaborate on the pizza pop-up, and the result is four 12-inch pies plus a calzone, including Dufresne’s version of a classic New York pie, the Couch Potato (pictured at top, with fingerling potatoes, sour cream, rosemary, scallions, aged mozzarella, and parmesan), and the New York-themed Everything (with cream cheese, aged mozzarella, everything bagel spice, and chives).
Here, Dufresne tells La Cucina Italiana about his pizza journey—including the shocking news that he’d never made pizza before—and more in this new interview.
How did you start making pizza? Had you ever made it before?
It was just a little over a year ago that I made my very first pizza from scratch. I wasn’t working at the doughnut shop and we were quarantined with my family of four and my wife’s sister’s family of four. So my role was to help out with children and provide nourishment for the eight of us, which seems to be in my wheelhouse. I was literally looking around in the basement, and I had done some work for Breville a while back and in exchange for the work rather than taking cash at the time—which maybe I regret now, it’s hard to come by—I took some equipment. And I had their fantastic pizza oven. I had never used it, it was still in the box, so I was like, well, let’s make pizza.
Wylie Dufresne (left) and Gadi Peleg have teamed up for Stretch Pizza.
So how often did you make pizza during lockdown?
Well, I didn’t really know how to make pizza. So it became not only a way of feeding the family, but also feeding my brain, and a creative outlet for me. As someone who likes a culinary project, and really likes to learn, pizza is an endless opportunity to learn. I found a new subject to throw myself at, and in my typical fashion, I threw myself at it kind of aggressively and what was an occasional pizza night became a weekly pizza night, became a biweekly pizza night, became a “please stop” from my family.
I don’t want to sound pedantic, but pizza saved me in many ways. I mean, I have a wonderful family. But in terms of not having a business and feeling bad for my employees, it was mentally tough. Pizza kept me stimulated intellectually and it was super fun. That’s an important part of it, too.
How did you go about learning the ins and outs of pizza making?
My method is to find as much information as possible from what I believe to be reliable sources. I have a somewhat scientific and mathematical approach to cooking, and I understand that some people see that as taking the soul out of it. But immediately, as you begin to make pizza, you start to hear people talking about percentages and hydration levels, so it was perfect for someone who thinks like I do. I bought several books and then I began to look online—there’s no shortage of pizza forums—and I came at it from multiple angles. And I was extremely lucky that in the process of posting my highs and lows of pizza making that some legit super-talented pizza makers began to comment on what I was doing. My inclination is not to call someone to give me the answer. I’m more like, this is what I’ve done, I’ve tried these 100 experiments, these are my results, this is what I figured out, and this is what I can’t figure out, what am I doing wrong? What am I not understanding? I’m probably at this point an above-average pizza maker but I am by no means a super expert.
Who did you consult with?
I took some online courses with Slow Rise Pizza. Joe Beddia of Pizzeria Beddia in Philly has been really nice to me. Joe Rosenthal, who is a mathematician who, even though he’s not a professional pizza maker, he knows a lot about pizza as a mathematician, so I kind of like that angle. He was very helpful. And then I bought Marc Vetri’s book, Joe Beddia’s book, Ken Forkish has a great book, and Adam Kuban has been a great contributor to the pizza world. There’s so many people who have impacted me that I’ve never even spoken to or met. I watched countless videos of Lucali, of Best pizza, of Di Fara’s, of Norma from Norma’s in Lancaster, PA, just watching them over and over and over again, even when I can’t be in person and ask questions, I pick something up. And there was a really sad story in that there was a guy named Tom Lehmann, who called himself the Dough Doctor, and he’s been an industry leader in providing information about pizza, and he sadly passed away due to COVID a couple months ago. He was another person who touched me, and I won’t even be able to thank him.
A Classic New York Pizza from Stretch Pizza, Wylie Dufresne's new pop-up at Breads Bakery.
How did you settle on your pizza style?
Having grown up in New York City, I’m most familiar with New York-style pizza. And not only am I familiar with it; it’s also one I particularly enjoy. But only having an oven that was big enough to hold a 12-inch pizza meant that I was trying to make a 12-inch pie in the New York style, which, New York-style is obviously a much larger pie. Even to this day, the idea of taking a ball of dough and stretching it 20 inches large scares the hell out of me. I’m just trying to really get a flavorful dough, a dough that behaves in a certain way. It’s been wonderful trying to figure out how to replicate a really delicious New York slice, but even that, there are so many people making excellent pizza here. It’s dangerous business getting into pizza. I don’t know why I did it, I should’ve stuck with doughnuts. There’s like four people making good doughnuts in New York City and four million making pizza!
How did working with owner Gadi Peleg and Breads Bakery come about?
I’ve lived in this neighborhood for 35 years and have been a fan of Gadi’s from afar for a long time, and then my business partner at the doughnut shop got to know Gadi and he introduced me, just as a friend. Gadi approached me pre-pandemic and was like, “Hey, why don’t we do something together, come by and we’ll collaborate on something.” And I thought, well that would be fun. It had been many years since I’ve done anything savory. And as much as I love doughnuts, I also very much enjoy cooking savory food. And so the idea of working locally with somebody was fun and intriguing. We just kept bouncing ideas around and nothing stuck. And then we all took a step back during the COVID situation, and then he reached out to me again, and I said, Hey, how about pizza? It wasn’t something that he knew I was into, so he didn’t really see it coming. We talked about what I had been doing and how they could help me make it better. I worked with the head baker, Darwin, to tweak it.
Now, Darwin makes the dough for us every day and he does in half an hour what I can’t do a tenth of in that amount of time, and he makes it look super easy. The folks at Breads are wonderful and extremely knowledgeable and have been generous with their knowledge. They took my recipe and helped me march down the road and make it even a little bit better. We are using flour that they use at the bakery from a company called Giusto’s. They make an amazing organic flour. We use one that’s high protein, high gluten, with a little bit of whole wheat.
Are you using sourdough?
I myself was hesitant. At home I didn’t go down the sourdough road because I didn’t feel like the force was strong enough with me to handle a starter and keep the starter alive. But with the assistance of the bakery, that greatly improved our ability to get a little bit more technical and we do have a little bit of a starter in our dough. But at home, I didn’t. I’m a fan of instant dry yeast, versus cake, which is tough for the home, and active is not something I recommend at all. And there are plenty of people that would say, Don’t listen to Wylie Dufresne, keeping a sourdough starter is much easier than he makes it out to be. But that being said, sourdough is not an integral part of a New York-style. It’s not part of the flavor profile that is typical of New York-style pizza.
What about the sauce and cheese?
For our sauce we’re using New Jersey tomatoes, and we’re still playing around with the cheeses, but right now we’re using whole milk, low-moisture mozzarella, and a little bit of Parm, but I’m wondering if it might be better with Pecorino, so I’m still messing around with that blend. And we’re also trying to take advantage of Gadi’s relationship and proximity to the Union Square Greenmarket. So we’re using local ramps, local potatoes from a farmer who I’ve been working with for 25 years, and we’ll continue on and work our way through other ingredients as they become available.
What equipment do you recommend for people at home?
I realize that the Breville pizza oven is not cheap, but that’s something that if you feel comfortable purchasing it, the return on that is pretty solid. But if that’s not possible, for under $200 you can go on online and get yourself a baking steel and a wooden peel and a metal peel and you can be making pizzas in your home oven that are pretty great.