- Pizza Today chats with Juan Robles, executive chef at Los Angeles-based Triple Beam Pizza.
- The five locations employ a commissary, which supplies pizza crust, sauces, cheese blends and more.
- The brand specializes in Roman Pizza alla Pala and offers three types of crust.
Executive Chef Juan Robles oversees a commissary and five locations
Concept:
Triple Beam Pizza started with an idea from the Great Nancy Silverton, who was inspired by one of her many trips to Italy. She brought it up to Matt Molina, who worked under her since the Campanile days, as well as the rest of the ownership group. Soon after, in 2018, Triple Beam came to be, with its first location in Highland Park, California.
Currently, there are five locations, as well as our catering department and commissary production facility. I came onboard as the corporate executive chef a little over a year after starting up, with a focus on menu and system development, and expansion in mind. We’re a commissary-driven brand, which essentially means that all our Bianco crusts, sauces, dressings, cheese blends, etc., are produced at our commissary, then delivered to all our locations seven nights a week.
Pizza Style:
We only make Roman Pizza alla Pala at all our locations, with the exception of our Santa Monica location, where we also offer Detroit-style pizza. Our dough is via a direct method, two-day fermentation process. We make three types of crusts: our regular Bianco, which contains milk and 93% hydration, our vegan dough, which is 85% hydration, and our gluten-free crusts, which we were able to make the same size as our whole pizzas and can cut down to a half or a quarter (our version of a “slice”), just like the rest of our other crusts. We also make our own vegan mozzarella and vegan meat alternatives.
What’s the key to keeping Roman alla Pala Pizza consistent?
Our commissary is the secret ingredient in making all this happen. Due to us being able to make all of our Pane Bianco par bakes at the commissary and deliver them to all our locations on a nightly basis, it allows us to focus on our toppings and pizza builds at the pizzeria level. …
In order to keep the product consistent, we utilize a formula that factors in ambient room temperature, flour temperature and friction factor when mixing to determine what the water temperature needs to be, so it comes out of the mixing bowl at the exact temperature every time – regardless of the time of year and weather. Making Alla Pala is a unique skill that factors in high hydration, stretching that utilizes a unique dimpling process, and the dough-loading process that requires you to re-stretch the dimpled dough back out in the oven.
I spend a lot of my time there (at the commissary) to ensure that everyone understands why we do things in the manner that we do. It’s not just about telling people what to do. They need to understand why it’s all done in the manner that we do, so they do things correctly and consistently. The commissary is the heart and soul of what we do. You take care of it and the people, and it’ll make everything much easier to manage at the restaurant level.
What are some challenges to working with high-hydration dough, and how do you solve them?
The biggest part would be the dough stretching. It takes a bit of practice in getting comfortable with handling dough that hydrated, aside from the dimpling process itself. Once you get to the dimpling, it takes lots of repetition to understand what it needs to look and feel like to get the bubbles and caverns that we’re looking for. If not dimpled enough, you end up with big air bubbles that break off like crackers due to the thinness of the crusts. If dimpled too much, it’ll be too thin and will burn and break once toppings are added – as well as the dough being overstretched and oversized to fit in our boxes. That can lead to issues like over-topping to fill the additional space or having pizza appear to be under-topped if the extra ingredients aren’t added.
The other is understanding the process of making a high-hydration dough. You’ll need a spiral mixer, the right type of flour that can absorb all that moisture, as well as an efficient and timely procedure to add all that water in increments. You can’t simply add all that water into the mixing bowl and hit mix. Practice makes perfect!
DENISE GREER is Editor-in-Chief at Pizza Today magazine.
