...was a pan pizza. Host Kristen Miglore talks to Charlotte Rutledge—the brains behind King Arthur Baking Company's Crispy, Cheesy Pan Pizza—about the development process (yes, Pizza Hut was a guiding beacon) and which recipe they're championing for 2021.
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Genius-Hunter Extra-Credit:
See you in two weeks, genius-hunters! I'll most certainly be baking these cinnamon rolls; let me know how yours turn out at genius@food52.com.
Kristen Miglore: Hi, everyone. Looking back at this year, I don't think I'm alone in feeling very tired. But it's helping to think about the bright spots, like watching my daughter learn to walk and talk. Figuring out how to make a podcast and recording it from the inside of so many closets from my old apartment in Brooklyn all the way to the little cave that I'm sitting in right now in California. And another bright spot was that even in our isolation, I got to find new ways to learn from and get to know all of you. From the Genius Recipe tips that you still send into the helpful advice, I get on YouTube for smarter ways to do things like measuring spices or slicing a bell pepper. And, yes, our YouTube comment section is a surprising oasis of mutual respect, mostly In a moment where we're so far apart. I'm finding that they're the parts that I look forward to most.
And of course, I have been lucky to cook and eat a lot of genius things, too. There was Carla Hall jumping into coach us through the buttermilk biscuits that she has spent her whole career perfecting. Nik Sharma's scientifically proven creamiest and most flavorful way to roast sweet potatoes and Michelle Humes shishito-ified-shishito-ified? Shishito-ified bell peppers that I still make for work from home lunches as often as I can. And last, but certainly not least, there was King Arthur's Crispy, Cheesy Pan Pizza, your most loved genius recipe of the year by a lot.
And the amazing thing is, they saw it coming. King Arthur's team started working on this recipe in May of 2019 and planned it as their recipe of the year for 2020. A little like how Pantone just announced that next year will be the year of Ultimate Gray and a bright, sunshiny yellow called illuminating. King Arthur knew a lot of home cooks were afraid of, but game to try a homemade pizza. But how did they know it was exactly what we would all be looking for this year? To find out more, I interviewed the force behind this recipe. King Arthur's recipe testing and development manager Charlotte Rutledge. We talked about what working in the King Arthur Test Kitchen is really like, how Charlotte and her team picked the next big thing, and oh, yes. Charlotte reveals what 2021’s Recipe of the Year is going to be. And in the end, we get to hear from all of you about the most genius things that you cooked this year. But first, here's Charlotte.
Hi, Charlotte.
Charlotte Rutledge:Hi. How are you?
Kristen: I'm good. How are you?
Charlotte:I am doing well in snowy Vermont.
Kristen: Well, first off, can you just tell me a little bit more about what you do at King Arthur?
Charlotte: So I work in the King Arthur test kitchen.
Kristen: And how big is your team right now?
Charlotte:We are a team of three bakers. Aan den. We have somebody who supports us.
Kristen: Wow. That's incredible. I really assumed that your team was enormous. It's amazing how much you could do with a three-ish person team. So what is this tradition of Recipe of the Year? Is it like Pantone's Color of the Year?
Charlotte: Yeah. I mean, I guess it's become that. It started back in 2014. We kicked it off with our chocolate cake pancake, which is basically like your basic dump cake. And then after that, we made chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, and then in 2016, that was our first stab at a yeasted recipe. We had a no-knead crusty white bread off of the big no need trends that happened in the early two-thousands in 2017 week it was we kind of dubbed it Year of the Bundt Cake and just had kind of four recipes as to fulfill the recipe of the year concept. And then in 2018, it was banana bread, which actually probably would have done well this year is well, considering how many people were baking banana bread.
And in 2019, before the pizza came along, it was our classic birthday cake. In 2019, we started planning for 2020 and we really wanted it to keep up with the momentum of the classic birthday cake, and that's when we chose pizza.
Kristen: So how did you then decide that 2020 was going to be the year of pizza?
Charlotte: We liked the concept of pan pizza because it really seemed like it was really the hottest kind of subcategory within the overarching pizza category. I mean, there's the Neapolitan style pizza, which is that, like very thin in the center crust. And then there's got kind of that pillowy edge with those leopard spots on the outside. Obviously, that's really popular. But it's not that easy to attain in a home setting just because home ovens only go so hot. And you really need high heat to get those pizzas to do what you want them to do. And then there's kind of that element of nostalgia to like. You think about the Pizza Hut pan pizza that we all had as kids, right?
Kristen: Yes. I'm so glad you brought up the Pizza Hut pizza because that's really what I thought of so many times. From the very first time I tested this recipe until now because when I was a kid, there was a reading program. Did you have this to where? Like if you read a certain amount, you've got a certain number of stickers and you got to go get a free pan pizza?
Charlotte: Oh, I don't remember that.
Kristen: I remember it vividly going to pizza and getting to have my personal pan pizza because I had read. And I wonder if that factored in it all to some of the nostalgia around this or if people like having their pizzas that way as a kid, they weren't bribed to read because of that.
Charlotte: it's kind of that individual serving. I guess that maybe is more appealing. There is still that element of like, I have this pan of pizza in front of me and it's all mine.
Kristen: This is the Genius Recipe Tapes. We'll be right back
Kristen: As you were developing, did you start off knowing we're going for a pan pizza? Or did that kind of like unfold along the way how it was going to become what eventually became?
Charlotte: So we settled on pan pizza, and then then the question of the pan came up and we were like, Well, what are the pants that people are most likely to have at home and we came down to both the half sheet and the quarter sheet, or a cookie sheet that has sides on it. And at that point, I think the dough we had pretty much settled on the right formulation for the dough, the right technique that we wanted to use. And it was just a matter of really nailing in on the bake. And I finally got it to a point where I was like, I can be pretty happy with this. And we basically set up a pizza party for lunch one Friday afternoon. I think I made probably two or three pizzas for that meeting. A couple in the larger baking sheet, half sheet pan size, and then a couple is 9” by 13” size. And everybody had a pizza. The net result of that feedback was sort of meh. It was fine. Pizza is pizza. Everybody's gonna eat it and enjoy it in some way. But it wasn't something that people were just wowed by or would necessarily have gone home and said like, I'm gonna make that. I want to recreate that for dinner in the next week.
And so that was pretty disheartening after all the work that we had gone through and I will add that I was pregnant at the time. And so I had eaten definitely my fair share of pizza and was starting to get a little bit nauseous by the sight of it. So I was so discouraged after that meeting. We went back to the drawing board, we regrouped, talked it over. I did a little bit more research, I think. And sometimes when I was looking up just like pan pizza and a Google search, the cast iron pan would come up. That was the game-changer. All of a sudden we were getting these deep brown, crispy crust and but still maintaining that, like, pillowy interior, that we were really liking after the initial testing with those other pans. And I brought it to the team and there was very little, very little looking back.
Kristen: I guess, and I think I can imagine the answer to this. But what has the community response been since you published it?
Charlotte: There was a great response initially, and then it just kind of took off with the pandemic. I had our stats opened up and yeah, I mean, we had great feedback through March. And then in March we just had this huge spike right around when things started shutting down and people were baking at home so much more.
Kristen: Just on our end. It was far and away our most popular Genius Recipe of the year. And I don't know the numbers, but I'm sure it must have been one of the top recipes on all of Food52 for the year. And just anecdotally, too, seeing all the comments. Hundreds and hundreds of really heartwarming comments of people who had never made pizza before had never made bread before and just how astonished they were, how good it turned out in spite of that. And for me too I would say, of all the Genius Recipes that I publish, this is the one that has gotten the most random texts from family and friends of mine telling me, like sending me pictures of the pieces they're making months later. That doesn't usually happen.
Charlotte: And that is so heartwarming to see.
Kristen: It seems like it's about time for you to start announcing your recipe of 2021. Is that right?
Charlotte:Yes. Actually, we are super excited about it. And it's going to be or will be. I don't know. So this is gonna air, probably after we launch. The title is Perfectly Pillowy Cinnamon Rolls. I might be more excited about these and pizza, but that could just be the fact that, like, who doesn't love a good cinnamon roll? And I'm not pregnant this year, so I don't have to think about that piece of it. So excited about this coming recipe.
Kristen: I mean, if you were going to pick nostalgic foods from my childhood, at least you could only have followed crispy pan pizza with pillowy cinnamon rolls.
Charlotte:Well, that is good to hear, and I hope that is a universal sentiment. I mean, probably people have a good sense of cinnamon rolls from, like, popping a Pillsbury can or maybe even making them from scratch. I know. I never did. We definitely bought the Pillsbury can.
Kristen: Will the perfectly pillowy cinnamon rolls have anything in common with the can kind or what was the sort of experience you were trying to recreate? Or was it something completely new?
Charlotte:So I think the biggest thing was cinnamon rolls for us as we sat down to talk about them was a comfort factor and thinking about like, what are the pitfalls of cinnamon rolls? And what came up again and again was that well, they don't last long. And we had a recipe on our site that employed the Tangzhong technique. What it does is it allows you to incorporate more moisture into the dough or liquid. And that, in turn, makes it so that the dough of the resulting bread or cinnamon rolls are softer. It prolongs the shelf life because the other piece of it was, if people are just baking for themselves at home, they don't want a whole dozen cinnamon rolls to eat in a weekend. If we can get that so that they're able to eat cinnamon rolls throughout the week and not sacrifice the quality of them. Let's do it!
Kristen:Charlotte, thank you so much for taking the time to tell us the story behind this recipe and for bringing it into the world. It's really made a big difference in 2020. And I think for a lot of home bakers as well.
Charlotte:Oh, thank you, Kristen, that that warms my heart. And I know it will warm the collective heart of King Arthur bakers.
Kristen: And now here are a few of the most genius things that all of you have cooked this year.
Listener Jeremiah: My name is Jeremiah, and I am the Dark Arts Baker from Virginia. About a year ago, I started a blog documenting my process of becoming a home baker and I also wanted to share my story about dealing with depression in a way to help other people. The website is the dark arts of. Definitely, the most genius thing I created this year was my coffee lover's brown butter blondies. So these blondies are one of the first things that I ever created that had brown butter, which was terrifying because I don't have any pans that are white. So trying to see how brown the butter is before burning it was a real challenge. They also have freshly brewed espresso. There are two shots. There are two tablespoons of ground espresso as well. I've made them twice so far, and they have been just phenomenal.
Listener Sarah: My name is Sarah Stack, and I'm from Montreal, Canada. Like most of you listening, I love cooking and baking. But during the pandemic, it's been that therapeutic thing that's brought me pleasure, kept me challenged, and made me feel connected. The most genius thing I've learned to cook during this time has been handmade noodles. The first noodles I made were from Azerbaijan. These lovely, diamond-shaped noodles covered with grilled lamb and dill and garlicky yogurt. My son literally took one bite and said, I could eat this every day for the rest of my life. That's how delicious they are. And that was just the start. Since then, I've made countless types of noodles. I've made those incredible bang bang noodles that you slap on the countertop while stretching out the dough. Delicious. I've made cannelloni, tagliatelle, spaetzle, the most exquisite lasagna. Not only are these handmade noodles delicious, so much better than anything you could by making them is soothing. For example, when I make challah, braiding the dough gives me what I call the dough goosebumps. This wonderful feeling of bliss related to the dough, which I think you either completely understand or you think I sound unhinged. When you make noodles, you start by tipping the flour out onto the counter and forming this well in the center. It's like the starting point to endless possibilities. And then rolling it into a thin, perfect sheet and drawing your knife through the dough and across the counter. All these things give me the dough goosebumps. And I'll always remember that I took the time to learn this during the pandemic when things were strange and there was so much uncertainty, I have found it truly therapeutic. And of course, it has a delicious result.
Kristen:Our show was put together by Coral Lee, Emily Hanhan, and me, Kristen Miglore. Thanks for listening and really for everything. This year you have made 2020 much brighter for me and help me feel so much more connected. Oh, and I hope that you are all taking a break of some kind over the holidays because we are too. We'll see you in two weeks. And in the meantime, maybe you could relive your own personal pan pizza glory days a few more times and get a head start on those perfectly pillowy cinnamon rolls. See you in 2021