Wylie Dufresne, chef-owner of NYC’s Stretch Pizza, finds inspiration for his pizzas anywhere he can find it: Goodfellas, the Flatiron District’s Old Town Bar, NYC’s classic halal carts. “I’m looking at pizza from a slightly different lens than some of the more traditional pizza makers in the city,” says Dufresne, a 32-year veteran of New York kitchens who’s probably best known for his influential molecular gastronomy restaurant wd~50. (It closed in 2014 after an 11-year run.)
The process of creating a pizza at Stretch begins with its biga. Akin to a sourdough starter, a biga is a fermented yeast mix that’s added to doughs to create more depth of flavor. Stretch’s team adds water, olive oil, flour, years, salt, sugar, and diastatic malt powder to their biga to create the dough that serves as the base of all of their pizzas. “To do something well, you have to understand what’s at play,” Dufresne explains. “That involves really trying to be analytical about the dough.”
Stretch’s meticulously made dough is proofed, divvied up, weighed, balled up, and proofed again for three to five days. From there, the dough is turned into Stretch’s unique pizzas like one inspired by a mushroom grilled cheese from NYC institution Old Town Bar. “We use New York City as our inspiration a lot,” Dufresne says. “I use my past, my culinary history, but I also like to use New York City as an opportunity [to find inspiration].”
Watch the latest episodes of Icons: Pizza to learn more about all the influences behind Stretch Pizza’s whimsical pies.
