SETH: Chef.

ANDY: Hey, Seth.

Good to see you, man.

Welcome to the kitchen.

SETH: Good to see you as well.

You are the Andy I've heard about.

ANDY: I am.

I am the Andy of Andy's Pizza.

Some people think that it's just a name, but I exist.

SETH: All right, it looks like we'll be making a little bit of a mess with some flour, but, uh, I'm excited.

What are we making?

ANDY: Flour's part of the uniform.

So get ready.

We're going to make a burrata margherita pizza as our signature dish.

All of our dough goes through a three-day process to really make a great first step as we come in and we set our rim.

We're looking for something nice and even.

This is my favorite part.

This is where you come up on the back of your hands and you stretch a pizza.

I've been doing this a long time.

One of my favorite party tricks is to look you in the eyes to stretch this and I can feel it on the back of my hands.

I can feel how cold the dough is.

I can feel how it's opening up.

I know that when I go to lay this pizza down that it is going to be an 18-inch round on our peel.

SETH: Some people learn how to juggle, other people learn how to make a perfect 18-inch pie.

ANDY: That's right.

Everyone has to have a party trick.

SETH: It's beautiful.

ANDY: So we start by treating our crust a little bit just to make sure it's perfectly delicious.

I'm not going to tell you what that is, but I know that you'll enjoy it.

SETH: Little trade secret.

ANDY: Little trade secret.

Next up is our tomatoes.

Um, his is Stanislaus tomatoes from Modesto, California.

They're known because they're getting these peak freshness tomatoes from the fields to the can in six hours.

And this is just tomatoes.

SETH: No other ingredients.

ANDY: There's no salt, no oil, no garlic, no nothing.

It's sweet.

It's a little bit acidic.

This is an eight-ounce scoop.

This is a 22-ounce dough ball.

We make sure that the right amount of toppings go on the pizza so it can stay crispy.

SETH: It's an exact science.

You're not winging it here.

ANDY: Yeah, that's right.

And this, this is called the spoodle.

SETH: The spoodle.

ANDY: A mix between a spoon and a ladle.

This flat bottom really helps me make sure that there's no streakiness in the pizza.

I don't want this pizza to dry out.

So we do a little bit of the shredded mozzarella just to add a little bit of fat.

But this is going to help keep a lot of that flavor in that sauce so it doesn't cook out in the oven.

SETH: And you are right.

That does look like that much.

ANDY: It is just a little bit.

That's right.

I'm going to go ahead and get our traditional fresh mozzarella.

This mozzarella is from a company called Grande Cheese.

They're from Wisconsin.

They really care about their farmers and their cows.

They've got pedometers on those cows.

You know how many steps they're taking.

A pizza that's as simple as this, you've really got to be careful with what goes on it.

If it's not good, the pizza's not going to be good.

While we've been sitting here chatting, this pizza has been sticking to the bottom of this wooden peel.

Since the dawn of pizza, every New York pizzaiolo lifted it up and blew under it.

Then COVID happened.

Guests are looking inside this open kitchen saying, "Don't blow on my food."

My cashier, Jose Miranda, turns around and says, "Chef, use a squeeze bottle."

And sure enough, when you shoot that under, it separates that dough right from that peel.

SETH: Are we going to name the technique after him?

ANDY: We have.

He's in all the training materials.

SETH: All right.

ANDY: All right, Seth.

Let's take this to the oven.

SETH: Let's do it.

All right, so we got a conveyor belt going on here.

ANDY: Yeah, so, this has slats of stone on it, almost like tank treads.

So we're still getting that stone oven bake with the convenience of the stone conveyor.

And so this is going to ride through at about 700 degrees.

SETH: So traditional conveyor belt oven is going to get up to what temperature about?

ANDY: They only go up to about 550 degrees, and they're chain, right?

So it's actually jets of air passing through chain link.

But that true contact directly on the stone is what gives you a super crispy pizza.

Let's head over to the other side.

SETH: Let's check it out.

ANDY: All right, so this is where we get our final touch from the cook, right?

So, we want to make sure that that pizza is evenly cooked all the way around, and we'll give it any finishing adjustments here.

SETH: What kind of color are you looking for on that uh, that crust?

ANDY: We're looking for this brown spotting here, right?

And so we want the crust to be fully brown, and the goal is to keep this on the oven for as long as you possibly can.

You want it on those stones.

You're going to get a crispier pizza.

So this looks just about perfect.

Let's go ahead and get this topped.

We want this pizza to stay crispy.

So you'll see we put it right on that cooling rack there.

Now, what's important to know is that I can pick this up and look at the bottom.

And I can see that it's nicely done and is very crispy.

SETH: Do you have fingerprints left?

ANDY: No, I don't.

Yeah, cops will never find me.

Fresh basil to start off our margherita pizza.

We always use whole leaf.

Anytime you cut it, you start to lose some of that essence.

And, in this pizza, you want every bite to be a little bit different.

Sometimes you get a full basil leaf.

Sometimes you get just tomato sauce.

Sometimes you get a lot of cheese.

So now that we have that down, we're going to give it a cut before we finish with the rest of our toppings.

SETH: I like the sound that it's making just going right through that crackery crust.

ANDY: Next up is our burrata.

So clean hands always.

Someone actually hand-tied this knot, and I'm going to lay this down in the middle.

Now, burrata is fresh mozzarella cheese filled with a stracciatella of mozzarella cheese, and that has that extra creaminess to it.

SETH: It's like mozzarella in a mozzarella purse.

ANDY: It's mozzarella in a mozzarella purse.

And we are just going to make sure that we spread nice bites all the way around our pizza.

You certainly don't want to cook this.

This is a textural experience that you're trying to get.

This is our 100% extra virgin olive oil from California.

It's in one of our finer bottles here to show its quality.

You want enough of this that you are actually taking a bite of some olive oil.

It's spicy.

It's peppery.

It's adding its own notes.

It's not grease that you're supposed to blot off.

And then this is Parmigiano Reggiano.

We always use 24-month, and we really like this feather shred.

And so we're going to come around and finish our pie.

SETH: And I want to eat it.

ANDY: Pizza goes best with beer.

So we're going to have a couple of cold beers while we're here.

We're going to drink them out of the same containers that we drink in kitchens.

I'm not sure you've ever drank out of this container before.

SETH: This will be a first for me, Chef.

But thank you for initiating me in the ways of the kitchen.

ANDY: Cheers.

SETH: Cheers.

ANDY: So let me show you real quick.

We're going to come in, and we're going to pick up this slice.

Even with the weight of the burrata, this holds.

If I'm bending here, this tip didn't break.

That's what I'm looking for.

SETH: I'm going to give it a go, Chef.

It holds.

It holds.

ANDY: That's right.

That's right.

SETH: Hot damn.

I know we started with great tomatoes, olive oil, cheese, but the basil, nice and fresh, and that burrata, a nice, creamy consistency.

This is just on a whole nother level.

ANDY: This is a craft we work at every single day.