A Better Life New York
Steve "The Judge" focuses on the art of enjoying yourself through food, fun and frolic. Steve conducts live Interviews on many popular and controversial topics. Steve has candid conversations about fine dining to BBQ, cigars to cars, history making events and everything in between. Recently, we added a special monthly addition ion collecting Antique Phonographs with experts Wyatt Markus, and Collector/Dealers Joe Hough and Tracy McKinney. Sponsored by Premium Botanicals the maker of Herbal Spectrum a line of full spectrum Hemp based CBD products. http://www.mypbcbd.com
A Better Life New York
From Pandemic Pastime to Pizza Perfection: Jimmy Hank Pizza Shares the Art of Craft Pies and the Rise to Frico King, Jimmy Hank Pizza Interview Part One!
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Who says a pandemic hobby can't rise like perfectly proofed pizza dough? Jimmy Hank Pizza, a charismatic home chef who turned his pizza-making passion into an art form, joins us for a saucy and inspiring conversation. From the tale of George, once a pizza skeptic turned devout fan, to the secrets behind the perfect crispy crust, we knead through the elements that transform a simple slice into a gourmet experience. We reminisce about the good old days of childhood pizza parties and discuss how even the humble Pizza Hut played a role in our pie-loving paths. You can find Jimmy on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/jimmyhankpizza
Our doughy dialogue with Jimmy dives into the technical yeast of pizza perfection, exploring everything from the merits of steel versus stone in achieving that dream crust in your home oven to the science behind selecting the best flour for your dough delight. We also dish out advice on using pizza screens and why active dry yeast might just be your new baking best buddy. Whether you're a seasoned home chef or just getting your hands floury, Jimmy's journey from New York-style slices to Sicilian squares is loaded with tips to elevate your home pizzeria game.
The crust of our conversation, however, is all about Jim's meticulous method that crowned him the Frico King of Detroit-style pizza. Sharing his logbook of variables, from atmospheric conditions to cheese choices, Jim's approach is a masterclass in culinary precision. His story of social media stardom is a slice of inspiration, reminding us that a dash of dedication and a sprinkle of creativity can turn a weekend hobby into a competitive craft. And if you ever doubted whether to toss your hat into the competitive cooking ring, Jimmy's leap from observer to competitor will have you reaching for the pizza peel.
Hello everyone, this is Steve from A Better Life. This podcast is brought to you by our sponsors, premium Botanical. They are the makers of Herbal Spectrum, which is a full-spectrum hemp-based CBD. They make salves, liquids and they have a great mixed berry gummy. You can check them out at wwwmypbcbdcom. Now our podcast. Hello everyone, and welcome to our podcast, a Better Life with George and Steve. This is a special episode. It sure is, george.
Speaker 2:How are you, I'm great. Please introduce a special episode.
Speaker 1:It sure is, george. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm great, please introduce our special guest Absolutely A good friend of mine, Jimmy Hank Pizza. Welcome, Jim.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you, Pleasure to be on.
Speaker 1:Now I got to tell you Jim George always told me he's never really cared for pizza. One day we're here and I order pizza because we're in a rush and he used to cook, cared for pizza One day. One day we're here and I order pizza because we're in a rush and he used to cook or I cooked. When I cooked he complained. But because he's so picky, the kitchen's too messy, the pots are in the wrong place. So then we just ordered pizza because we didn't have a lot of time. And then he loved the pizza and he made it. He made me order it every. We ordered it almost every week and in between and talked about it in every episode.
Speaker 3:Was that the? Was it Hartsdale House of Pizza? Hartsdale House of Pizza? Yeah, he was sending me pictures of it and I got to say it looked fantastic. I'm glad he's turned the corner on his opinion of pizza, because that's all it takes is, once you have a really good one, even if you weren't a fan of pizza or an enthusiast, that's all it takes, and that's where a good pizza is going to differentiate itself from a bad pizza.
Speaker 2:That's true. That couldn't be any truer. All pizza is not equal, let's put it that way. And this pizza that Steve brought in. I sent you the pictures and immediately there's telltale signs of a good Kraft pizza. People who care? The sheet that you noticed right underneath. That's a talk about it, jim. What?
Speaker 3:is that? Oh, you mean the liner in the box? So, yeah, so there's, yeah. So it's crazy that guys that know and when they see something they're like, oh, just seeing that you know it's a decent pizza, or that they care about their pizza. Because there's a box liner company called Perfect Crust and they really started blowing up over the pandemic in marketing their unique pizza liner.
Speaker 3:Usually people just throw like a wax paper or some sort of there's like the corrugated You've probably seen the corrugated cardboard so it just keeps the pizza off of the cardboard and gives it a little bit of airflow. That box is what you call a coffin, right, exactly, 100%. Yeah, you throw a hot pizza in a box and you close it. It's just going to steam to death in there and all that moisture you got to release that moisture from the bottom to keep the crust crispy. And that's where Perfect Crust they re-imagined the liner and their thin paper. But they have a little bit of a corrugation. I wouldn't really call it corrugation, more like a relief. There's some bumps in them and stuff, but they're also low profile. It's a craft thing. They were really marketing to people that were into the craft and it caught on. They're doing really awesome, so it's a unique shape. So if you see that under a pizza, they're doing really awesome, so it's a unique shape.
Speaker 1:So if you see that under a pizza, you know it's going to be a good pizza. So, Jim, before we get into the 8 million questions we probably have about pizza, maybe we could just give us a little bit of your background. How did this life of pizza come to be?
Speaker 3:Man, it was all born out of the pandemic. I've been a fan of pizza all my life. I'm sure, like most people are, you grow up eating pizza as a kid. Unfortunately for me, I didn't grow up in the New York City area where I had an amazing pizza spot on every corner. So I'm in rural Pennsylvania. We had Pizza Hut. We had the chains Back in the day. The treat was go to Pizza Hut, you get their signature pan pizza and you play Ms Pac-Man on the tabletop arcade and you had your Coke and the Red Cup and you were living life. Man, I miss it. I'm going to tell you I miss.
Speaker 2:Pizza.
Speaker 3:Hut. Those are the first memories of pizza, right, and then fast forward to married, have kids, pandemic happens. I wasn't really. I dabbled in it here and there, baking and pizza, but nothing serious. And then pandemic happened. Have all this time on our hands, we're stuck inside. So it started with bread. I just started baking bread, started exploring that messing around with different types of breads, and then I got to thinking. I was like maybe I should start trying pizza, because pizza is a little bit more versatile than bread. It's bread. You make a really good bread, you have a sandwich, whatever, but pizza is really limitless when it comes to creations and styles and toppings and whatnot. So, yeah, I just took a deep dive and it just has been going since early 2019.
Speaker 2:You can say, the American pizza renaissance is happening right now, all these regional styles of pizza from obviously New York style, but then we have the Chicago, but then a subset of Chicago. You have the Detroit style, which you're really versed in and that's become your call sign.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I started out I wasn't really even focused on this style and I didn't really know anything about it. I started out doing what you would call your typical New York style, because that's a ubiquitous pizza style of America right Around like 16 or 18 inch thin crust with a little cornichon to grab on to, and so I started figuring that style out and then I was like, okay, what, what's next? And that's the cool thing about pizzas there's so many variables like so many styles, so, um, and all the doughs are different. I I can't even think of what the next style was that I tried. It might have been like a sicilian or something like that, like pan so, but a little more.
Speaker 1:What were you cooking it with? How are you doing it?
Speaker 3:how did you get to the just home oven, like I started out just doing in a home oven. You have a stone. I had a stone. Stones are a little bit weird because everybody like thinks they need a stone for their oven, but then I figured out early on that a steel is the way to go. You want a piece of steel because it'll heat up quicker and it'll retain the heat better, and it will also recharge the heat faster as well too.
Speaker 3:So if you're making multiple pizzas, it won't lose its heat as quickly. So, yeah, so everybody thinks like stone, like you get your stone like at Target or Bed, bath Beyond or whatever, like they're everywhere. But a steel is really the way to go if you're going to be baking in a home oven.
Speaker 1:I've seen that. So what temperature did you use? Just out of curiosity.
Speaker 3:Just crank it like 500. My oven only goes to 500. Some will go to 550. But the cool thing about the steels too is you can crank on a broiler. Just crank that top heat and the steel will actually get hotter than your oven will go.
Speaker 3:Like you can get your steel to 650, even if your oven only goes to 500. You just blast it with the broiler. So yeah, that was the thing. I messed with that for a while. And then another thing that's really good for home baking is you've seen the pizza screens which, like every pizza shop has them.
Speaker 3:You can buy them for five bucks on Amazon. Even if you don't have a steel, a screen is awesome because it's almost like a cheat code, because you can stretch your pizza out and you have a perfectly round template to put your pizza onto, and then you don't have to worry about the stress of launching your pizza dough like on a peel. A lot of people have trouble, especially starting out launching that pizza, and it's going to stick, and then it's not going to be round, it's going to turn into a calzone, worst case.
Speaker 1:So what about flour? So what about flour? In the beginning did you, because I know my friend started a pizza place and he had the regular ovens that every Italian place. I almost used the slang term every. Italian place uses and he was trying to make more artisan pizza and he started using 00 flour and all that things and then he learned that his ovens didn't get hot enough to use those kinds of flours, that he needed to switch to a fine crafted all-purpose flour and it changed his pizza completely.
Speaker 3:Yeah, flour is huge. That's one thing like it's misleading in a lot of ways. Of course, on the Internet there's all these Facebook groups and it makes me laugh because there's these pizza groups where people are like, oh, you got to use double zero flour if you want to make pizza. I'm like you only want to use double zero flour if you're trying to go for a true Neapolitan 90 second bake at 950 degrees Fahrenheit, like that's the flour you want to use. That is not. You don't want to use double zero. If you're doing like a New York style, like you want to use almost like an all purpose or you can even blend like an all-purpose and a bread flour, you want something with a little bit more protein content.
Speaker 1:That's going to give you this structure and you're going to get a stronger, significantly higher in protein.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're going to get a much stronger dough, and that's because of your equipment.
Speaker 2:Right your home oven you can only get to that 500, 550 mark. So you need flour with, and I've actually heard some guys add a little bit of sugar so you can get that leoparding and and all that char well, yeah, and some will add and a lot of flours are already malted some people add diastatic malt to get that coloring too, which helps.
Speaker 3:I've messed with that too, and it definitely works I've done that too flour is everything and, and knowing the work, the right flour for the style that you're using or the style that you're making, makes a huge difference. There's no one flour for just pizza.
Speaker 1:Did you use regular yeast? You didn't use the instant yeast, right? No, I just used active dry and.
Speaker 3:I still do to this day. I dabbled in sourdough a little bit. It wasn't for me. I made my own starter. I just couldn't get in the groove of feeding it and maintaining it. I do still have my starter in my fridge. I can revive it anytime I want. You have it frozen or do you keep it just in the fridge? It's just in the fridge. Yeah, I'll just dump off the hooch every now and then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you take it and put it in the freezer. You can leave it in there for a decade still.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:My starter's really old. I was lucky I got starter from Boulez when I was there once taking a class.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:He gave me some of his starter. I went in his basement I shouldn't say it's not really a basement, it was a kitchen he had a 55-gallon drum of starter and the thing was like alive, you could see it coming out. It was like a science fiction movie. And he took a Chinese container and put it in and gave it to me. And then I added that to my starter and it made a significant difference. It certainly is. And then I have two I starter and it made a significant difference. It certainly is. And then I have two. I have one that's organic whole wheat and then the regular.
Speaker 3:So I like that. You said organic whole wheat, because so what I landed on, rather than doing sourdough, is I do a poolish and I blend 50% whole wheat organic whole wheat with 50% of the flour that I'm using for the pizza that I'm making. So typically, when I'm making a Detroit style pizza, I am using King Arthur, sir Lancelot, which is a high gluten bread flour. It's like 14.5%. It's super high protein, yeah.
Speaker 1:I've never used it, but I've seen it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a very strong flour and it's really good. King Arthur flours are amazing because they're super consistent and you can find them in any grocery store in the United States and the flour is going to be the same For us. It's local, it's produced in Vermont. I like keeping things local. That's the other thing If you want to really get into weeds on flour.
Speaker 3:The crazy thing about those Italian flours most of the wheat is grown in the US, it's shipped to Italy to be milled and then they're shipping it back. So it's like this flour is traveling like 10,000 miles, like why we make amazing flours in the United States. All the wheat is grown here. So why not go? You're getting the American wheat, it's getting milled in America and especially if it's a local, like if it's something on the East Coast, you're going to get that the flour is going to be fresher. So I'm a huge fan of King Arthur. I've always used it. I've tried other flours, but I always come back to it.
Speaker 1:So there's a local by local Hudson Valley, by us mill that you could go up and get their flour, and their flour is exceptional. It's like an old mill, an old grist mill, that's not even run with machinery. They do it old school.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's cool. So it's actually on the water. So the water churns the thing and churns it whatever. There was one of those when I used to live in Vermont. There was one of those there too, but I didn't realize what I was missing when I did it. That's important. Okay, you bake bread, you're baking pizza. I'm not quite sure how you get to the obsession part.
Speaker 3:I guess the obsession came when it was a combination of things. It was like pandemic cooped up inside, can't go and do anything. Social media got really big. There was a huge surge in social media activity at that point. So I started just searching pizza on Instagram, facebook, whatever. I think this was even before TikTok. When did TikTok come out? I think it was before TikTok. Instagram was like the big thing then and still is to a point. But so, yeah, I just started searching pizza and the styles and what style to do next.
Speaker 3:And then I started seeing Detroit style, which Detroit style took a crazy trajectory upward. Nobody knew what Detroit style was eight years ago. And then Sean Randazzo, who basically put it on the map, guy Ressa solely passed away a few years ago. He won the best pan pizza in Vegas. I think it was like 2017, maybe and that sort of put it on the map and really people were like Detroit style what's this? This is pretty unique. There's nothing like it. So it started to spread outside of Detroit and then other people started putting their own spin on it and it really intrigued me. I started seeing it's got like the caramelized cheese and the thicker crust. So I started following guys that were specializing in that, and then I was like I became obsessed with trying to get that cheese crust exactly like just that caramelization, like nailing that. So that's how I just honed in on that style.
Speaker 2:And little by little, and now you're known as the Frico King.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, so that was. You know, it came just iteration after iteration, trying different cheeses, trying different things, different temperatures, different parbake, not parbake just so many different factors. And then I finally I can go back in my Instagram feed and I can scroll back and I can point you to where I got it and I was like that was where the light bulb went off. I was like, holy shit, there it is. And then from that point on you can see like all of my pizzas that I posted were the same and I kept most bakers keep a notebook, like if you're working on a recipe or you're trying to figure something out, you keep notes. I'm sure, steve right, Like you're into sourdough you keep notes like the type of flour, the hydration, how long you went in your fermentation, because the only way you're going to know is to refer back and see what worked and what didn't work.
Speaker 1:And if you don't refer back, you find you stray. You don't refer back you stray, you don't even realize you're straying. There's things you forget that you don't do, and I cook barbecue. So I have a huge smoker. It's not huge but it's big. I could do 10, 12, 15 racks of ribs in one shot, full racks. And same thing, what the weather is, what the temperature is, what the humidity is, what did I do? How long did I dry? All those things went down and then you start as you refer to them, you build that process, and that's the same thing with bread and I'm sure it's exactly with pizza.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100%, and you don't want to change more than one or two variables at a time because then it's hard to isolate what worked and what didn't work. So, yeah, so that happened and luckily I stumbled upon it pretty early in my whole Instagram journey, because I started the page what was it? I think it was September of 2020, where I was just posting pizzas to my personal page and people were liking them and stuff and I was like, oh, there might be something here. So I started the Jimmy Hank pizza page separate, where all I did was pizza, and it started growing not crazy. But it was like, oh, there's something here. So I just started doing that more and posting my process. And, yeah, so it just became a hobby that grew into more of a side hustle to where I am now.
Speaker 2:So, steve, I've known Jim for most of the pandemic and probably a few years prior, and I've watched this metamorphosis of his journey becoming this pizza wunderkind. The moment he started talking about hydration and then a 72-hour fermentation process, I was like uh-oh, this guy's going way deep down that rabbit hole and, little by little, the following's growing. The other day, I think, one of your posts, jim, it hit 13 million clicks.
Speaker 3:It's been crazy because social media is such a weird thing. Love it or hate it, it definitely has a place and a purpose and for marketing it's very powerful. And I was slogging along like doing my posts and getting a couple followers here and there, and then at one point I don't even know when it was I was like you know what I'm going to post every day for?
Speaker 3:like 30 days and see what happens At the same exact time every day. So 8 am every day, I would schedule posts. I would the night before put something together, post it, and this just came out of. I have this huge library of photographs, which is a whole other story, but I'm a photo nut as as well, which was another hobby. That sort of the light bulb went off and I was like, why don't I just start taking really good pictures of my pizza, because I have all this gear.
Speaker 1:So I started what kind of camera you use. Come on, let's get I have a sony.
Speaker 3:I have a sony a7 4 full frame.
Speaker 1:You're right, I have a. I have an fx3 which I just upgraded.
Speaker 3:I was always a canon guy, always canon guy from like the beginning, like I used to do skateboard photography when I was a kid. That's like where I got started in that whole hobby. But yeah, so I love the Sony, I'm loving it. But yeah, so I morphed the photography into the pizza game and started building this whole library of pizzas. So I was like all right, so I had all this library of stuff. That was like, okay, I can just post a picture every day, and that's the other thing.
Speaker 3:Social media doesn't have to be stuff you did today. You can go back and pick stuff from your library and post it, nobody knows, just post it. So I started posting stuff every day, just come up with a little one-liner what it was. And then things started growing more so, getting more engagement. So I continued that, trying different things here and there, and then fast forward to I guess it was December of last year or two years ago. I had a reel that went crazy. It didn't hit a million, it was like 600 and some thousand. And I was on vacation, we were in Aruba, and I saw this reel started gaining all this momentum and I was like holy shit, what's going on and got a ton of followers from that. And then this past January is when I hit a crazy streak this reel and it's a stupid little six second clip of me sliding the spatula into the pan to release the cheese frico, that cheese crust it's at 25 million views now.
Speaker 2:That is insane.
Speaker 3:And from that one reel alone I think I got 20,000 followers. You can see the analytics and it's still going. And I have multiple reels. Some of my friends I'm pretty good friends with some good pizzas We'll call them influencers, even though I hate the term.
Speaker 3:They're like just they're like post another one that's similar in style but different, like all right. So I post another one and, sure enough, it caught and it like that one's at 5 million, whatever. So I posted three or four that were like very similar but a little bit different, and it's just something like that's how the algorithm works. It like catches the visual appearance that is similar and it just pushes it out to people. So, yeah, it's just. It's really interesting how that shit works. And the following has been crazy since January this year and it's with followers. They're basically currency in the social media world. So now people reach out for endorsements. They want to like work with you on products and whatnot. So it's that's like the other part of the side hustle to making actually making pizza that people can eat. People are like consuming the pizza online visually.
Speaker 3:So it's like those two different like streams of revenue are working out out of this crazy side hustle that came out of a pandemic. It comes from passion.
Speaker 2:It comes from persistence, consistency. You're making pizza for your family and then some of your neighbors said they were interested and so you start baking for some neighbors and then all of a sudden it became the neighborhood. You would have guys come over and make orders and there's plenty of apps out there where you can schedule. So you had scheduled pickups and whatnot. And then you put yourself even further out there and you went to Vegas and competed last year for the first time and then this year you just came back and we caught up on our group chat and I said why don't you come on our podcast and talk about your journey? So it's funny.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about Vegas for a minute. So did you do other competitions before you went there? Yeah, no, so paint the picture for us. So how many people are competing? Where is it there?
Speaker 2:Is it invite or do you submit your application? How did you?
Speaker 3:get involved there. So I'll go back to the beginning. So the first pizza expo I went to in Vegas was let's see what we're 2024. So it was, 2022 was the first one, and I just went out. I didn't compete, I just wanted to go because they took a pause for COVID, obviously. And then the first one after the COVID startup was like a mini expo. It wasn't like the full-blown thing because it was like still like people weren't traveling, especially the Italians.
Speaker 3:I remember like Italy was really locked down during the end of COVID. They did one and I remember following people, like my friends on Instagram, following people that were going to it, and I'm like man that looks really cool. Everybody's together, hanging out, like all these people that you really only met online and chatted with about pizza and you're just like nerding out about hydration and fermentation online. They're all hanging out together, and so I was like I got to go next year. So I made it a point to go, but I didn't compete Like I didn't even know about the competitions. Really. I just wanted to go to experience it. So I went. It was awesome, got to hang out with everybody and it's basically a trade show, typical trade show that's on a convention center floor. You got all your vendors, from your equipment to your ovens, mixers, dough rollers to your cheese vendors, your pepperoni all the big guys are there Hormel Grande, Cheese, everybody. So you get to meet people that you've only met online.
Speaker 3:In addition to making connections with vendors and the other, the cool thing about it is now these vendors are really like embracing the small guys like me, because before COVID I couldn't get a call with any of these guys. They were like oh, you're only going to buy like 60 pounds of cheese a month. We're not going to talk to you, we're talking pallets, we're not talking to anybody that's not buying a thousand pounds of cheese a month. So that was cool. And then I saw the competitions and some of my friends were competing. So then the following year I was like, oh, I was like maybe I'll do it. And one of my best Instagram sort of mentor guys who lives in Pittsburgh Eddie Staluski, eddie's Pizza he was like just do it, man. He said what do you have to lose? Just do it. It's fun. Like just go for the experience. Like just go in without any expectation and just have fun with it.
Speaker 1:That's the end of part one of our interview with Jimmy Hank Pizza. Thank you all for listening and we'll see the finish in the next episode From George and I. Thank you all.
