Is my pizza better than the most expensive restaurant in LA? In the red corner, we got the cheapest pizza in Los Angeles. We got everyone’s favorite takeaway. We got the $7 Hot and Ready inflation be damned, it’s still pretty cheap, from Little Caesars pizza. Imagine how cheap it could be if the founder didn’t pay Rosa Parks’ rent for the entirety of her life, that was a real thing that happened, in the blue corner, we got the most expensive pepperoni pizza in LA. This is the $70 pepperoni pizza from Gjelina Take Away out in Venice. This is the fanciest of the fancy, and, boy, that looks good But what you haven’t seen yet. Those don’t move very far. We are going to see if my homemade version of pizza can beat the most expensive restaurant in LA, or we’re gonna see if the cheapest pizza in LA is just as good. We got a judge that’s gonna taste all three of them blind. I sure have my work cut out for me, but I think I can do it. You guys know why? Why? Because I’m fueled by Petrol. It’s a band that I met outside of a dive bar in Philly. Shout out Petrol. Let’s get cooking. Yeah, I think if Mythical wrote a cookbook, it’d be really stupid. It’d probably, it’s right behind me, isn’t it? Is that right? Is that what the meme is? We did write a cookbook, and I’m really proud of it. And there’s even, at least one pizza recipe in there. We did the seven layer dip pizza. There’s gotta be another pizza recipe. Dorito calzone recipe, that’s kinda like a pizza folded in half. But we worked really hard on it, let’s flip open a random page. If you can dream it, you can deep fry it. And Rhett’s shoving a banana in my mouth. I don’t remember that happening. That happen? Check out the Mythical Cookbook wherever you buy cookbooks. Okay, we gotta get down to business right here. This is a personal grudge match for me, because Gjelina, the restaurant, does a very expensive pizza. Their servers have always been very mean to me every time I go. I kinda like it. I kinda like being put on edge. But I do wanna take them down a peg. So we’re gonna make a little homemade sauce. Real simple like with it, I like to start with a mixture of butter and olive oil. That way you get the best of both worlds. You get the little bitterness from the olive oil and then you get a little of that creamy saltiness from the butter. The thing that this is gonna do, it’s gonna make your pizza taste like butter, which rules. Do that. We’re gonna get the butter. So we’re gonna get the butter melting with the olive oil. I’m just gonna manipulate it with the stick. You want this on, like, somewhat low heat, and then you’re gonna get some garlic sweating in there. You don’t want any browning on your garlic. You’re just gonna let that work. No, you know what? Just cause people were being weird about me doing the meme, I’m gonna add the fish sauce directly to the butter, so it’s gonna perfume the entire kitchen. You’re welcome. I like adding fish sauce to my tomatoes. Tomatoes already have a fair amount of natural MSG, but fish sauce is just gonna really reinforce that. So the things you want from the tomatoes, you want acid, you want sweet, you want that, MSG, you want that glutamate action in there. Waft it in. You happy now? Anyways. Tomato paste! We’re gonna dump a bunch of that in there, because this is just gonna thicken it. This is gonna release too much liquid. These are, puréed tomatoes. So you want tomato paste in there. Most places, like Little Caesars, they’re just using tomato paste and, water for their pizza sauce. We’re gonna toast up some of that tomato paste. Keep getting, like, a little bit of that caramelization going. Boom. We got pizza dough. We have yeast and water. That, science. Come on, man. Chemistry. Yeast is a bacteria that consumes sugar and then turns it into carbon dioxide making doughs rise? Dude, let’s go, man. I didn’t deserve that F in chemistry. I did, I didn’t do any of my homework. Tomato paste, caramelized, butter, toast up that garlic. Boom, drop in the tomatoes. Again, it’s gonna be super simple. I’m gonna add like a half a teaspoon of sugar. I don’t want this to be a sweet tomato sauce. But again, someone once told me that their Italian grandma told them that Ricky’s cheating on Florence. No, that a little bit of, ow, ow, dude, that burns. That little bit of sugar counters the acid in tomatoes. I always add a little bit of sugar. Then we’re gonna season it with a little hefty pinch of salt. And then basil. I don’t necessarily love a ton of basil with my pizza. I don’t like fresh basil torn on top. But what I do, get out of town, man. Is, I just throw whole basil leaves in there to perfume it with it. Cause I think it does give it some nice little aromatizing. Yo, what if I don’t beat Little Caesars? I can never show my face in Burbank ever again, man. This is the hub of Little Caesars in all of Southern California. Let’s give it a little taste. I got a, I don’t know where this butter knife came from. God. Why does that already taste so good? I’m gonna drop a little bit more sugar in there. Yeah. We’re gonna let this cook on low for about 10 minutes just to get some of that moisture out of there. Just to let the flavors kind of get to know each other. You know, it’s like seven minutes in heaven, except I was never invited to this party. So I don’t really know what they did in there. What’d they do in there? We were eating cheese and crackers. Hell yeah, dude. I know what you mean. Cheese and crackers, huh? I don’t know what you mean. Okay. Sauce is going to hang out. Dough. Dough. So what we’re gonna do, we got AP flour. That is all purpose flour. I’m roughly an all purpose human. No, I’m like really a single purpose human. I’m like a tri-purpose human. Like, I can, I can vibe, I can cook, and I can lift weights. That’s about it. So we got bread flour and AP flour in there. Bread flour has a higher gluten content. Gluten is the structure that. Stop yelling at me! Gluten is protein in wheat that is going to provide structure in your dough. We’re gonna add a little bit of salt in there. We’re gonna add a little bit of sugar because that is going to help the fermentation process. And then we’re gonna take the yeast that has been blooming in the water. Oh, they make machines that do this for you? I don’t trust them. I don’t think that any machine can apply as much pounds per square inch as good old fashioned bro split in the gym can. So what I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna mix this up. Until this forms a nice dough. I’m gonna drop some olive oil in there. You’re gonna use some sort of crude instrument. I feel like I wanted to use a fork, but I only found a knife. And then I’m gonna get this dough together. I’m gonna knead it by hand for about seven minutes. You’re gonna watch all seven minutes of that while three mid roll ads go by. And if you don’t buy Huel, I’m gonna be so mad. Let me ask you folks over there. You guys, you guys cook? Yeah. I feel like sometimes the, the dough hook, it doesn’t grab onto the dough and actually knead it. You’re doing it wrong. What do you mean I’m doing it wrong? What am I doing? Mine always hooks. Yours always hooks? What are you doing that I’m not doing? I don’t know. I went to culinary school What do you, what did they teach you in culinary school? You gotta throw the dough in there faster, throw it in there slower? I think I know what the problem is. Is it possible that the dough hook is from another bowl? Yeah! My bowl’s also bent. At home. Go to the doctor. Technically you can’t break it, you can only sprain it. Your bowls? What are you talking about? Boo! All right, we got some pizza dough. You want it. It’s gonna hydrate as you actually knead it out. You’re elongating those gluten fibers all that stuff So we’re gonna take this and this is how you knead you want to, can we see here? I’m gonna tuck this in so you can see the hip motion. What? What do you mean? What? That’s not like dirty I have jorts on for crying out loud. So what you gotta do to really properly knead dough You want to take the heel of your palm and you want to like drive it through the dough, and the way that you accomplish that is by dropping that left hip and then the palm heel follows it. So you’re here, drive that left hip, drive that left hip, drive that left hip. And you’re just, you think a machine can do this? Not any that I’ve seen. Not any that I’ve seen, Nicole. How many, how much time I got left? Like six and a half minutes. Well put the timer on because I’m doing this for six and a half minutes and none of us can leave. You excited for the House of the Dragon finale? Yeah. Can’t wait to see which house renovation the dragon chooses. Yeah. No, no, no. Don’t stop. Don’t you, don’t, don’t you dare cut those cameras. You guys see Michael Phelps watch Léon Marchand break the world record? Start crying. I was alone in a Chili’s watching and I started crying. What else is going on? What else is going on in current events? You guys see what Trump said? Damien doesn’t know who E-40 is. What? You don’t know who E-40 is? Where were you? Someone tell him when to go, and it’s now. We got giggly bits over there, bleep, bleep, bleep. What, pig boy? Sorry, that was a dramatic reenactment of a scene from the movie Major Payne featuring Damon Wayans. It’s a fantastic movie, and I understand that what he says is aggressive, and he said it to a child. What I’m trying to tell you is we’re about to make a pizza. If I poke you in the stomach you go, like the Pillsbury Doughboy. Has nobody seen Major Payne? You have, yes! You are a person of culture. Can we get serious for a second about pizza? I’m gonna unfurl the pizza dough. I’m gonna get a little bit of flour down just in case it sticks. I’m gonna try and stretch it out. It’s wet. All right. So our goal here is to turn this into a, sorry, you’ve seen a pizza. We’re gonna start kneading this out into a circle. Fantastic. It’s a little wet. I love Little Caesar’s pizza. I love cheap pizza. I grew up on it. I grew up eating Little Caesar’s out of the Walmart. You know, was it Walmart? No, Target. They have McDonald’s in Walmart. They have Little Caesars in Kmart, not Walmart. Was the Kmart. But I also do love fancy pizza. I think when the taste is actually worth it, that is a beautiful, beautiful thing. However, I’ve been burned by a lot of fancy pizzas where the taste is indeed not worth it. But I think when you’re making a homemade pizza, you can use little tips and tricks, like I got low moisture moz, which is like the good New York style. We’re not going for like Neapolitan style. Nobody can really do that in a home oven. And so we’re going for like a nice, big, floppy, New York style, low moisture moz, plus, you put some buffalo on top of that. That’s how you get like, that combination of that delicious, milky, dairy freshness from the buffalo, and then you get the salty chewiness like the old Costco pizza. That’s the official California style pizza, is Costco pizza, by the way. Beautiful. Roll this out, you know, a lot of people don’t like Rolling out pizza dough. Use whatever tools you got, except for a stand mixer. Don’t use that. Cool. And now, now you’re just gonna use your wrist to kinda, you wanna get the legs into it, though. This is, this is not for the bit. This is an earnest attempt to stretch the dough, but keep a crust. And you don’t want to hinge, you want to elevate using your quads. I think this is good. This is about where I want to be. Heck yeah, keep a little bit of a crust, but we can form that onto our pan. Speaking of which, pan. I’m not going to put any lube on it. I’m going to go dry. Yes. That’s what I want to do. I’m just going to drag this on. We want to stretch edge to edge, because again, we’re just going big old floppy pizza right here. Hell yeah, dude. I may have gone too far in the stretching. I feel like other people saw that happen. And that’s fine. I’m just going to crimp the crust right here. Yeah. If you’re making pizza at home, a lot of people use pizza stones because we only got an oven. We’ve cranked it to 550 degrees. Which is the hottest that a lot of conventional ovens go. Neapolitan ovens will go up to 900 degrees. I know a place that cooks their pizzas at a thousand degrees, which like, it’s kinda crazy, man. But pizza stones can help you add more heat to the bottom of it. But then you gotta worry about having a pizza paddle and like hooking the pizza in there. And sometimes it does get a little annoying. Send it. Don’t care. Don’t care, we’re cutting off the excess dough. I’ll save that later, I’ll make donuts out of it. Meow. My cat gets this glazed over look in his eyes and he just goes. I did it. That’s what I want. Guys, does this looks like? No. Is this is gonna look like? Alright, alright, I’m good, I’m good. No, the pizza, this is it! If I can’t, no, there’s no savies. No, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna lie to the people sub in a pizza, this is the pizza that we’re making and we gotta beat him. Oh, basil’s still in there, I forgot to pull it out. Shoot, I got sauce on my crust. All right. You’re gonna take the ladle, you know, start from the inside, and you’re gonna do one of these. Now I want to slop more sauce on there. Big sloppy sauce guy. You’re not trying to go fully edge to edge, but you do want to push it pretty close. You don’t want just bare bites of pizza. I don’t know what to do with my offhand, so I’m here. New choice! Pass block, okay. I’m gonna take a bunch of low moisture moz. So this is like the stuff that doesn’t come swimming in liquid, but also isn’t just pre-shredded in a bag. It’s in like nice packaging, but it’s also hard. You know what I’m talking about? Look for a block of low moisture mozzarella and shred it yourself. This will take your pizza to an entirely different level. We’re gonna give it like a nice blanket right here. I want a lot of cheese, cause like, you can kinda make up for a lot of blemishes if you just got a ton of cheese. That’s a rule in all cooking. I think Auguste Escoffier actually said that. He said, cheese it up! Except in French. How do you say that? Anybody speak French here? Fromage it up, dude! Is, I think, what he said. There, I want full cheese coverage, but we do got the buffalo moz going on top as well. But this is actually gonna create like a protective leathery cheese barrier. for the buffalo moz because buffalo moz weeps a lot of moisture. That’s why they call this low moisture moz. So we’re just gonna rip the buffalo moz with our hands, dot that on there. Are you guys excited to eat pizza after this? Yeah? I’ll try. I’ll try to make it taste good, I hope it does. I came into this pretty arrogant. I’m not gonna lie. I was like bro, I make pizza at home, but I forget that i’m the only one eating it at home I don’t think i’ve made anybody a pizza in a while That went right to the back of the throat. Okay, one more. Damn, okay. Pepperoni! Here’s the thing, pepperoni in Italian literally means, crushed red pepper. They ain’t really got no pepperoni in Italy. It’s a very American thing. I’ve never been the biggest normal American pepperoni guy. So what I do is I get a random spicy salami. This is Calabrese salami, which is kind of like pepperoni, but I think it generally tastes better. You can get Soppressata. You can get finocchiona salami. You can get whatever you want. I just don’t love using normal ass pepperoni. So I’m going Calabrese. It’s going to read a little bit fancier. Like if you got friends coming over, you can charge them more. When your friends come over, you charge them for food, right? Is that normal? No? I just got a collections bucket. I hire an old woman to walk around with it like it’s a church. So this is not only going to have lovely little bites of salam, but the grease is actually going to season your pizza. Not only that, I’ll take a little bit of salt, get a little salt all over the top. Why not? You got unsalted cheese in there with the buffalo moz, a little bit of salt. We are going to pop this in a 550 degree oven until it’s done, like pizza you really gotta just go by look. Once it’s brown and crusty, do it. I’m guesstimating a solid like 12 minutes. We’ll see how it actually shakes out. I’ll keep you posted. I’m gonna top it with some olive oil, some other fun stuff, but right now, send it! Check back. It’s been 12 minutes and the pizza is done and I’m very excited because I can smell all of it and you can smell, it’s like the entire pizza has been confit in the salami grease. You gotta act quick though, so what we’re gonna do right now, no, first we’re gonna go pecorino. I think pecorino is just Parmesan, but better, it’s got a little bit of a sharper taste. You want the pecorino, also we did great garlic with this, but now it’s just garlic scented pecorino. You want this to absorb into the hot salami grease to kind of create a little bit of a sauce. It’s like a self saucing pudding like they got in Britain except this is America, baby. We got self sauce and salami grease. Fantastic. Also while it’s hot, oregano. I don’t like basil on top of my pizza. I like oregano, I think oregano and tomatoes is a good combo. Kind of make it rain. Always oregano your pizza from afar, that way you get a nice good spread on there. Yeah, just let it float down. I got some in my eye, but that’s fine. Figure that out when I get home. And then the final trick, you gotta dazzle them with BS if you don’t have a $20,00 Stefano Ferrara oven, imported from Naples. We don’t have that? No, so what we do got is garlic butter. We got a little parsley, fresh garlic, and some butter, and we’re going to brush that. All over here. A little bit of green specks always make your food taste better. That is something that I fully believe. Raw garlic on pizza, there’s no better combo. Why am I breathing so heavy on this pizza? Oh god, you can smell the garlic. Like when you put stuff on top of hot stuff, the heat is an ingredient. Like it sort of blooms everything, it’ll coat that in. There we go, that’s it. Just for good luck. Butter off your pizza. Here we go, this is my best attempt at making like the best damn homemade pizza you can. I got the Calabrese salami, two kinds of moz on there, a little homemade sauce, some garlic butter. I think we got a dang fighting chance at this, guys! Come on, everybody get excited, we’re eating pizza, it’s a pizza party at the office! We cancelled Christmas bonuses but you’re getting a pizza party, it’s like having a real job! Wait, what? What? Boo! Oh, you guys didn’t get the memo? Gwynedd Stuart from sporked.com, welcome back. Hey, Josh. Hey, what’s up, dude? We got three pizzas underneath these cloches. We got one from the most expensive pizza restaurant in Los Angeles, one from the cheapest pizza restaurant in Los Angeles, and then one, it’s a pizza that I made. Okay. This is a New York style pepperoni pizza. So none of the fancy stuff. None of those squash, blossom, fancy Neapolitans. This is all New York style. Are you a pizza person? You think you got a discerning pizza palate? I think I do have a discerning pizza palate. I’m concerned about getting New York style pizza in LA though. She is indeed walking here. It’s different. Yeah. Yeah. I did my best. We got a conventional oven. If you want to pop that blindfold on, I’m gonna gingerly feed you the pizzas. Please do it gingerly. It’s gonna be so ginger, you’re gonna not know what hit you. Okay. Alright, going to first pizza, you ready for it? Yeah. I’m gonna, okay, I’m gonna kind of, there’s no way to do this that isn’t weird. I’m gonna kind of fold it, and then I’m gonna like do like a. Sideways? Chugga chugga choo choo. No, it’s gonna go tip first. Oh God, help me. Gwynedd, just eat the pizza, it’s coming in. You’ve eaten pizza before, I’m sorry. Watch the tip. Okay, now you gotta go a little deeper than that. You gotta go a little deeper. You gotta, here, go that way. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Oh my God. It’s really good. It has so much cheese on it. And it tastes very garlicky. What do you think of that? I taste some garlic. It’s good. The bottom crust is, like, It’s not doing that New York thing though, but it still tastes really good. I love the quality of the sauce. We’re going to go right for the next one, Gwynedd. Okay. All right. You’re coming to, like, you got a wide mouth, all right. Oh, what a flop. Yeah, I don’t know what else to tell you. Not what I expected. Okay. Well, I don’t know on what planet this would be New York style pizza. But. We use New York liberally. It’s like a lowercase. It’s like N-U with an umlaut like nü metal. I love that. Nü York. Okay, this tastes like convenience store pizza to me. I really hope you didn’t make that one. But I’m pretty sure you didn’t. All right. We got the last one coming in. I have my eyes closed under here, but I like that you don’t trust me to just close my eyes. No, not at all. Okay, okay. Coming in. There you go. Again, you gotta go kind of, you gotta go kind of deep on this one. There you go. Okay. I know I don’t have to eat it, but I’m hungry. There’s a lot of crunchy stuff in this. What is that? Like vegetables? There was a nominal amount of vegetables on this one. Like, what, what do you mean? Like, the vegetables aren’t the star, but they do exist. Weird! Okay. Interesting. I like it. You like it? You love it? Would you like to go back to any of the pizzas? I want a bite of the first one again. All right, we’re coming in. It’s, this one’s fully folded now. Okay. I love that one. Here’s what I want to tell you. Is that, that one is my favorite. And I think it, I don’t think it’s like a 10 out of 10, but I think it’s like a 9 out of 10. Okay. The second one was the one that. I thought tasted kind of like convenience store pizza. And I’m going to give that one a five out of ten because, and I think that’s still like a fine score because it’s still pizza. And pizza is always good. Is that true? I think people always say that but I don’t know if it rings true. No, pizza is like sex. It can be bad and I cry after most of it. Let me taste the, the third one one more time. Coming in. Chugga chugga chugga chugga choo choo. I’m hungry. I like this. But I don’t think it’s a faithful interpretation of New York style pizza. What if I said instead of New York, just like big round. No, it’s too late. Okay, gotcha. It’s still good, but it’s not doing like a huge amount for me. I like the taste of the crust, but it doesn’t have that crispness that, that pizza should have on the bottom. If it’s not Neapolitan style pizza, cause then it’s just all floppity, right? That’s true. Am I talking too much? Little bit. Okay. What is your score out of 10 for the third pizza? I’ll say 8 out of 10. Officially you got the middle as a winner. Can you name which the cheapest, the expensive and the homemade ones were? Okay. I think that the cheapest one is the one that I gave 5 to. I’m pretty convinced that’s maybe from 7-Eleven or something like that. Okay, and then the garlicky tasting one that I liked the most. I think that is something you made. Gwynedd, open your eyes, take off the blindfold. You are absolutely correct. The cheap one is actually Little Caesars, a good ol’ Hot and Ready. I haven’t had Little Caesars in so long. They used to be in Kmart’s in the 90s. We were just talking about it! Oh my god, okay. And then this one, yeah, this is homemade. You know, normal, standard oven, baked at 500 degrees. We put a little bit of Calabrese salami on there, a little bit of garlic butter on there. The garlic butter is so good. I’ll tell you what I did, is I actually just flapped the garlic butter all over the pizza at some point and then, this, we kind of did a number on that. What is that? Gjelina Take Away actually. Really? Yeah. Too much crunchy stuff. Falling off. Get the crunchy stuff out of there. That’s incredible. – Thank you. – I’d eat that all day long. We have so much left over. Please take it. Can’t wait. Gwynedd, thank you so much for being an honest and impartial judge. I’ll pay you in the parking lot. And thank you so much for stopping by the Mythical Kitchen. We got new episodes out all the time. We’ll never die. Visit sporked.com Oh, that too. The Mythical Cookbook is finally here. Order your copy now at mythicalcookbook.com and make any kitchen a Mythical Kitchen.