What makes Paulie Gee’s in Brooklyn stand out from other pizza parlors? For owner Paul Giannone, his slice shop isn’t about making the best pizza in the city but serving good, humble New York City-style slices inspired by his youth in the ’60s and ’70s. You’ll find classic pizzas as well as creative pies like pepperoni drizzled with hot honey, and upside-down Sicilian slices with a sesame seed crust.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:03 What I love about pizza,
00:04 it comes from the pizza cognition theory.
00:07 Pizza cognition theory states,
00:09 the pizza that you have first
00:11 is the pizza that tastes best to you
00:12 for the rest of your life.
00:14 And that was that New York slice
00:15 that I had back in 1958 or whatever it was.
00:18 I said, I'm going to build a place
00:21 that looks like the slice shops of my youth.
00:23 I'm gonna pay homage to that.
00:25 We make a classic New York slice,
00:28 the same kind of pizza that you would have found
00:31 back in the 60s and 70s.
00:32 I'm Paulie G.
00:35 We're here at Paulie G's Slice Shop in Greenpoint
00:37 on Franklin Street.
00:39 Welcome.
00:40 Well, things start early here.
00:49 By 6 a.m. there's at least one person in here
00:51 making the dough and getting ready
00:53 to hand out the Sicilians.
00:55 We got Paolo here.
00:56 He's our resident dough expert
00:59 and we're about to make multiple batches of dough
01:01 for the next couple of days.
01:03 So the first batch we're making today
01:05 is the Sicilian dough.
01:07 We're just temping out the water.
01:09 Temp is super important,
01:10 especially in the colder winter months.
01:11 If it's too cold, it'll take a lot longer to rise.
01:14 We're shooting for like 72.
01:17 We have about 80 kilograms of water.
01:19 That might seem like a lot of water,
01:20 but we are making a lot of dough.
01:23 This will probably make about 80, 85 Sicilians.
01:27 We use more water for the Sicilian
01:28 just 'cause we like how light and kind of like fluffy.
01:31 The result is higher hydration
01:34 compared to just our regular New York style around.
01:36 And we're gonna take the bucket out
01:41 and bring it over to our table
01:43 and start to divide it up.
01:45 So right now, this is the final product.
01:49 As you can see, it's almost soup-like in its consistency.
01:51 This is what we're looking for.
01:55 Now we're ready to start dividing up the dough
01:56 and we're gonna start balling it
01:58 and putting it into a proofing pan.
01:59 So right now, we're just basically pressing out any air
02:07 inside the dough.
02:08 Just wanna flatten it out, stretch it as much as possible.
02:11 Try to get out all the air pockets.
02:13 So when you bake it, you don't have any holes.
02:15 So when we pan it out,
02:16 you don't wanna have any holes in the dough
02:17 when they're actually making it
02:18 'cause when they take it out the oven,
02:20 the pizza will completely break apart.
02:21 So this is like extremely important for proofing.
02:24 (upbeat music)
02:26 So we don't have a prep kitchen.
02:29 Our kitchen is small, so our dining area and our bar area
02:32 is basically our makeshift kitchen
02:34 where we prep everything.
02:35 I'm the main Sicilian pie guy.
02:38 It's one of my main responsibilities before anything else
02:40 is just to get the Sicilians in the trays first.
02:44 This is palm oil, olive oil that we use.
02:47 And we use a paintbrush to spread the oil evenly.
02:51 The Sicilian dough is extremely sticky.
02:53 So if we don't use enough oil,
02:56 after they finish baking,
02:57 when they try to get the Sicilian pie out of the tray,
03:00 the bottom of the crust will actually break.
03:03 So we try to get at least a decent amount of oil on there.
03:07 One of the unique things we do
03:08 is we seed the bottom of our Sicilian dough.
03:10 So what he's gonna do is spread out
03:12 a healthy dose of sesame seeds on every single tray.
03:14 So all of our Sicilians have sesame seeds on the bottom.
03:19 It adds both flavor and texture.
03:22 It gives it a really nice crunch.
03:24 It might not seem like an obvious pairing,
03:27 but it really complements the pizza well.
03:29 I think people are always pleasantly surprised
03:31 when they take that first bite.
03:32 So this is the Sicilian dough that we made yesterday.
03:36 You just wanna get in there
03:37 and just kinda scoot the dough out.
03:39 Lift it like this and just right onto the tray as such.
03:44 So we're gonna just push out any air pockets
03:46 that may be inside the dough.
03:48 And then we're gonna kinda stretch it
03:50 to the corners and to the edges.
03:54 I'm lifting it over the sesame seeds.
03:56 This way, when it lands on the sesame seeds,
03:58 sesame seeds can gently get higher to the dough.
04:01 So there we go.
04:02 And then what I like to do is,
04:05 I like to make little, what I like to call moon craters.
04:08 So improving these craters
04:12 actually cause like a little airy dough.
04:15 Also I'm gonna gently lift it over.
04:17 And it will stretch itself.
04:19 Sort of lay it down.
04:20 The stretches.
04:22 This is actually the first time I've ever worked with food.
04:27 And the first time I've ever made pizza.
04:29 But yeah, three years ago is when I met Paulie
04:31 and he gave me the opportunity to work here
04:34 and get my hands dirty.
04:35 Ever since then, I loved it.
04:37 I loved it.
04:38 I love the science behind pizza, the science behind dough.
04:41 Now we're making our Sicilian sauce,
04:44 which would go on our Sicilian and vegan pies.
04:47 It's pretty simple.
04:49 We're just adding whole garlic cloves.
04:52 We're gonna saute them for about 10, 15 minutes
04:55 till they're nice and golden.
04:57 And then we are gonna add our onions and tomatoes
05:01 and let that cook for about an hour and a half.
05:03 It's really simple.
05:04 Not trying to reinvent the wheel here.
05:06 And it creates a really great flavor
05:09 that we use on our Sicilians.
05:10 I want to do it upside down Sicilian.
05:13 We put the cheese on first
05:14 and that gives it sort of a barrier against the dough.
05:17 And we put the sauce on top of that.
05:19 I like to get a nice marbling effect on the sauce on top.
05:22 I had enjoyed Sicilian slices
05:25 at a place in Whitestone, Queens called Freddy's.
05:28 And I wanted to emulate that.
05:29 I wanted to steal it from him.
05:30 But you know, I can't just steal it without giving him credit.
05:33 I'm not that kind of guy, right?
05:34 So we actually went to him, we talked with him,
05:36 we told him what we want to do.
05:38 He even gave us some tips on how to add sesame seeds in.
05:41 My favorite at the time was a Prince Street Pizza.
05:44 And we named it the Freddy Prince.
05:46 That's where that name came from.
05:48 So here we have our regular dough.
05:55 This is for our 20 inch rounds.
05:57 And we weigh this out to about 740 grams.
06:01 And these get balled and then put into trays
06:05 where they proof for up to 48 hours.
06:08 So the main difference here is really
06:10 just the amount of water in the dough.
06:11 So this is about 60% total hydration,
06:14 whereas the Sicilian is about 75.
06:17 So it's a lot easier to handle.
06:18 So right now we're balling up the dough.
06:22 This is actually the same process almost
06:24 as the Sicilian, just to get the air pockets out,
06:26 make sure there's no air bubbles.
06:27 We want to make it really, really tight.
06:29 And then what we do at the end of balling,
06:30 you just want to crimp the bottom.
06:32 So when it's proving inside the walk-in,
06:34 it doesn't open up.
06:35 And when the pizza makers get ahold of it,
06:38 it doesn't fall apart.
06:39 And the same thing, no holes.
06:40 When it comes out the oven, it's just like a perfect pizza.
06:43 So, and we push out a lot of pizza a day.
06:46 So the pace is kind of fast in the morning.
06:49 So we like balling.
06:50 We, at least one batch of dough
06:53 would make about 57 pies.
06:55 Yeah, it's a lot.
06:56 And we do three to four batches a day.
06:59 So yeah.
07:00 - Once I got the idea to open this place,
07:10 I decided that it was just gonna, you know,
07:12 be like a classic slice shop.
07:14 I'm not gonna serve any kind of crazy pizza.
07:17 I said, I'm going to build a place
07:19 that looks like the slice shops of my youth.
07:21 I'm gonna pay homage to that.
07:23 It all started with what the place was gonna look like.
07:26 First thing was I wanted to have
07:28 these basement paneling walls.
07:31 I wanted to have a Cornelius Jet Spray
07:35 JT20 double bowl beverage dispenser.
07:40 I'm gonna get a little verklempt here.
07:43 This is a very special machine right here.
07:45 It's the Cornelius JT20 Jet Spray
07:48 double bowl beverage dispenser.
07:51 This is exactly what the old one looked like.
07:53 Anytime I have to have a fruit punch,
07:55 would might be a slice.
07:56 Typically this would be orange.
07:58 If you had three of them, it'd be great.
08:00 We're having a hard time getting the orange.
08:02 So we have grape in here now.
08:03 Grape is a good third choice.
08:07 I like to have orange in here.
08:08 We gotta work on that.
08:10 The most important thing in this whole shop
08:12 are these benches that I'm sitting on
08:15 because these are the exact same seats
08:19 that my children sat in.
08:21 We sat in with our children when they were growing up
08:24 and I was able to have that here in this shop.
08:27 And there's nothing more special to me
08:29 in this shop than these boots.
08:30 So yeah, now we're in the thick of lunch.
08:36 (people chattering)
08:39 So back here we have two separate ovens.
08:42 This is our electric oven, a Pizza Master,
08:45 and this is our old Baker's Pride gas oven.
08:48 We use the gas oven for our reheat
08:50 and we use the electric for our Sicilians
08:52 and our regular pies.
08:55 Cook at a higher temp than most.
08:57 We're at like 635 for our round pies
09:00 and about 550 for our Sicilians.
09:04 What we're probably best known for is our Hellboy slice
09:07 and our Hellboy squared slice.
09:09 What that is is our pepperoni, either square or triangle,
09:12 topped with Mike's hot honey after the oven.
09:15 We have our cult favorite
09:16 over from the Woodfire Place, the Hellboy.
09:18 We do it with cup and char pepperoni,
09:20 which is great for Mike's hot honey.
09:22 When I first opened at the Woodfire Place,
09:25 I needed people who could make pizza
09:27 and Mike knew about this.
09:29 He was a home pizza maker,
09:30 but he was also making his honey at home.
09:32 When he came in that day, he had a bottle with him.
09:35 I wanted to put his product on our pizza
09:38 and it quickly became a cult favorite.
09:40 But Mike's hot honey is really,
09:42 you know, we're known for that now, thank God.
09:45 We, you know, we carried it over
09:47 and we do the Hellboy here.
09:49 Do I make the best pizza in the city?
09:57 Well, that's not for me to say.
09:58 I make classic pizza.
10:01 When a guest comes into my shop,
10:03 I want them to be excited
10:04 that they're getting something iconic.
10:06 I want them to feel that they're experiencing
10:08 good, classic pizza.
10:11 And I just wanted to make that, you know, my unique brand.
10:15 (upbeat music)
10:18 (upbeat music)
10:20 (upbeat music)