How I Run a Pizza Pop-Up

so if you've been watching this channel for a while you know I've pretty much dedicated my life to Pizza over these past few years between making it at home several times per week working at a pizzeria reading about pizza watching videos listening to podcasts and now finally selling my own pizza I've been working tirelessly to perfect my recipe and the feedback I've gotten on it has been incredible so far with a lot of people saying it's some of the best pizza they've ever had it's taken me a while to get to this point though and each event I host takes a ton of time and effort to make possible so today I'm going to show you exactly how I operate my pizza popup and the first thing I need to do is prep my dough sauce and toppings and since I'm serving this food to the public I do actually rent out a commercial kitchen in order to do my prep work and I have it booked tonight so it looks like it's about time to head out so I'm on my way to the prep kitchen right now I've got it booked today and tomorrow for 2 hours each time so today what I'm going to prep is basically everything except for the dough so my sauce my cheese my different toppings and the reason I'm doing that is because today is only Wednesday my popup is on Saturday and I'm always changing up my dough recipe but this time I'm using using a preferment a poolish and so because of that I really don't need to let the actual dough rest for much longer than maybe like 48 hours so if I make the preferment today mix the dough tomorrow that'll be Thursday and then we got Friday Saturday and then the dough will be ready that's kind of the plan I just arrived here to the prep kitchen so let's get [Music] started all right so as you're probably starting to see already kind of the biggest hassle with doing these popups is really just the transport of everything this is all just equipment I had to bring from home because I don't have like a second pair of it here like this baking tray got like some squeeze bottles scale immersion blender tamb brro containers just a bunch of stuff so I'm going to start by unpacking getting some stuff set up and I'll get started on my sauce now while I do have to bring most of my own small Wares the prep kitchen has a lot of the essential large kitchen equipment like a gas range oven dishroom stand mixer and a commercial can opener like the one I'm using here which isn't 100% necessary but it does make my job a bit easier and it's just one less thing I have to bring myself so I'll just add my tomatoes to a bowl which I did buy a dedicated setup to keep at the prep kitchen then I'll just add my signature spices and Seasonings before pureing the sauce with my immersion blender transferring it into a clean container labeling it then throwing it into the walk-in cooler until the day of the event so all this is pretty straightforward I'm basically just knocking out task after task from my prep list until I get it all done or until I run out of time in which case I would just leave the rest of my prep for tomorrow now menu wise in addition to my regular Margarita pepperoni and marinara pizzas I also serve a specialty pie that I switch out every few months which right now is a fig bacon pizza so for tonight I have to prep my red sauce which is already done pepperonis which I also already did that's just a matter of portioning them into containers after prep my cheese garlic for my marinara pie bacon for the Fig bacon pie and my preferment so it can rise overnight to use in my dough tomorrow now I also have to prep my fig jam and lemon pepper dressing for the Fig bacon pie but I forgot to bring the ingredients for those so I guess I'll have to prep them tomorrow which isn't ideal but hey that's show biz baby now just like anything in a kitchen time management is the name of the game here and in this case since the bacon is the thing on my list that's going to take the longest and it's mostly hands off once I get it in the oven that's what I'm working on next so what I do to make sure the bacon ends up crispy on the final Pizza is pre-cook it in advance of the event so I cut the bacon up and throw it into the oven and while it bakes I can go ahead and work on my next prep tasks so that I'm not wasting any time and next on the list is shredding my cheese I like to shred it into large shreds rather than grating it these days just that it melts a bit slower in my oven and before I'm even finished with the cheese the bacon is done baking so I'll set that aside to cool before finishing off the cheese and then throwing the finished product into the cooler and once the bacon is cooled I'll just do the same thing divide it up and throw it into the cooler and then it's onto the garlic again this garlic is from my marinara pie which isn't ordered very frequently but I like to have it as a vegan sl/ dairyfree option for people and I like to use a mandolin to slice the garlic just so it's at the exact thinness I like and as consistent as possible and of course Safety First always so I'm wearing a chain mail glove here so I don't slice myself now what I haven't been showing is me periodically going back to the dish room to clean and sanitize all my dishes so I can give them time to dry before I have to head out which of course eats up a bit of time as well so at this point I've only got about 15 minutes of kitchen time remaining for the day which should be just enough time to complete my last prep item which is my preferment AKA my pish so all I do for that is combine water yeast and flour and then cover it up and let it rise overnight and this will be the only source of leavening for the dough I don't add any more yeast to the dough itself so once that's done I'll clean up all my prep areas which of course is a very important part of any kitchen work and then I'll head out for the night and by the time I get back I'm usually pretty hungry but it's like 9:30 p.m. and the last thing I want to do is start cooking a meal from scratch but fortunately I don't have to do that because I have some delicious healthy meals in my fridge from this video sponsor Factor if you're not familiar Factor provides well delicious healthy meals that can be heated and ready to eat in Just 2 minutes which makes them perfect for busy LIF Styles I know for me when I'm busy it's easy to just order takeout or Worse snack on unhealthy processed food but factor helps me avoid that Temptation Factor's meals are delivered fresh never Frozen to your door and they can be heated in just minutes in either the oven or the microwave not to mention they really are delicious so it leaves me with no excuse to go with other less healthy options Factor offers a variety of meals for different diet preferences between keto calorie smart vegan and veggie options or my favorite which is the Protein Plus meals because one of my big Hobbies outside of cooking is lifting weights and I'm currently trying to slim down just a little bit without losing too much muscle so factors meals help help me ensure that I'm getting enough protein while staying within my calorie goals but possibly the best part of factor is that it's actually less expensive than takeout and the meal plans range from 4 to 18 meals per week so you can customize them to your specific needs plus you can easily skip a week if you need to so head to factor75.com or click the link below and use code Charlie Anderson 50 to get 50% off your first Factor box and free wellness shots for life you get two free wellness shots from three available flavors for every order while you're an active subscriber so thank thanks a lot to factor for sponsoring this video and thank you for your support so I'm back at the prep kitchen bright and early the next morning this time to finish off my dough so I start off by weighing out my ingredients and in this case I'm making about a 25 Pizza batch now I like to use ice in my dough just so the temperature stays down and the dough doesn't over ferment so I'm adding that plus my water to my mixer Bowl then I'll add my pish which has risen nicely overnight and from there I'll just weigh out the rest of my ingredients and add those as well here I'm using flour diastatic malt powder salt and olive oil but like I said earlier I'm always changing up my recipe I also withhold the salt and olive oil until later in the mixing process so I get the mixer fired up and then add those last ingredients gradually when the proper time comes now since this mixer does mix relatively slowly it takes quite a while to reach full gluten development usually about 20 to 30 minutes so in the meantime I'll just do some cleanup and other miscellaneous prep work if I have any to do and by the time the dough is done mixing it does feel a bit on the warmer side so I'm going to transfer it into a separate container and then toss it into the cooler for just a bit unfortunately I also forgot to bring my probe thermometer so I couldn't see the exact dough temp but I've made this dough enough at this point that I can tell when it's a bit too warm so after 30 minutes in the cooler I'll bring it back out to start balling it up now in an Ideal World I'd also do a longer bulk fermentation but just due to the limitations of renting this kitchen space I have to get everything done within a 2-hour period so I pretty much ball right after mixing and the balling is pretty straightforward again I've only got about 25 dough balls to make here and I like to use these metal do tins to give each ball its own space to rise then from there it straight into the cooler for 2 days and with that all of my prep work is done so I'll just do my final cleanup before heading out and not worrying about anything else until Saturday comes around so that's the day of the event about noon right now I just went to my prep kitchen picked up my dough and sauces so now I'm back in my apartment because I need to pick up my oven which I've got on my dolly here along with some other miscellaneous supplies so we're going to go to the venue and drop these [Music] off [Music] [Applause] [Music] so yeah the oven transportation is kind of the most annoying part but I mean it's essential you can't Bake Pizza without an oven now once I get to the venue it's basically just a lot of unloading from my car and setting up fortunately this particular Brewery has a nice dedicated space for pop-ups though so there's a lot of equipment already in place but for me the first order business is always getting my oven set up and firing because I need it to be hot enough by the time service starts and you may recognize this oven because I made a video about it when I first got it it's definitely more underpowered than I would like but it's the only one I could find that's usable on a normal 110 volt outlet and can bake up to 18in pizzas the main issue with it though is the recovery time it tends to cool down a lot whenever I bake a pizza in it so to combat that I load up my oven with two Steels plus my biscoto stone in order to retain as much heat as possible within the oven so once that's going I'll get anything that needs to be kept cold into the cooler and then I'll set up my folding tables and to make my setup look nicer I cover each one with a disposable tablecloth which also makes clean up at the end of the night a lot easier since they'll catch anything that spills then I'll set up my sign to make it official and bring in the rest of the stuff from my car including the dough which I'll leave out on the counter to warm up to room temperature and right now it looks pretty good so I think by the time of service it'll be about perfect speaking of which I've still got about 2 and 1/2 hours until then so I'm just going to head out for a bit as my oven preheats and take care of some last minute tasks at home and 2 hours later I'm back to finish getting settled so let me show you how my workstation looks from my perspective once it's all set up and give you a feel for my workflow all right so I got my front table here stretching station here goes to the oven from there which has been preheating for about 3 hours and it's pretty much up to Temp still needs a little bit more time so you can see how long that takes after I Bak the pizza I'll throw it onto this screen to cool for just a minute when I'm ready I'll either toss it on here if I'm using it for slice slices or if it's a full pie order I'll bring it straight over here onto one of these trays and then go straight to finish it off then when I get in order for slices I can just grab them straight off of this tray and then I reheat them in this oven which is not mine just owned by the brewery here and then I finish off the slices or pies here with the post baked toppings let's take a look at the dough pretty good towel it's definitely more proofed up than it was before and it should be good for the rest of the night so you can see I've got a pretty efficient system even though I'm only one person working with the pretty underpowered oven in a small space I make it where GRE simply well so what I do at this point usually is bake up a few pies to get them ready for slices so that once I officially open at 5:00 I can just go ahead and bake full pies that get ordered since I can only bake one pizza at a time I kind of have to do it that way because I can't be baking up pies for slices and full pies it would just be too much and I would get super backed up so I'm going to get started on that I'll show you the first one that I make and from there I'm probably going to be too busy to film so I might have to save that for another video typically takes about maybe 6 minutes for the first bake usually that slows down throughout the night as the oven cools down a bit but of course while that's baking I got to keep moving so I'm going to go ahead and stretch out my next step and there we are first pizza of the night as you can tell it's a little bit underbaked but that's because this one will be used for slices so it's going to get reheated anyway if it were a full pie order I would have baked it a little bit longer but from here it's pretty much right into the oven with the next pie and I'm basically just repeating that process all night just putting pizza after Pizza in there since I am again just doing this by myself pretty much like in the weeds from the beginning from like 4:30 up until at least usually like 7:30 sometimes I even sell out like I said I got to get to it I'm running a little bit behind schedule today so if you haven't seen my New York style pizza recipe which is roughly what this recipe is based on you can check that out here either way thanks a lot for watching and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Charlie Anderson

Views: 70,978

Keywords: How to cook, how to become a better cook, how to become a better home cook, how to cok

Id: nuR6Ij2nhOo

Length: 11min 51sec (711 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 29 2024