Francisco Migoya Q&A

Francisco Migoya Modernist Cuisine
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Head Chef, Modernist Cuisine


Francisco Migoya is head chef at Modernist Cuisine and co-author of the highly anticipated Modernist Pizza. He grew up in Mexico City, immersed in the cultures of his parents: American, Italian, and Spanish. The flavors of his family’s cooking and of his neighborhood were integral to his life, encouraging an early love of cuisine.

Chef Francisco Migoya’s first calling, however, was art. Before turning his attention to food, Migoya, a self-taught artist, set his sights on art school to study drawing, primarily in pencil, charcoal, and ink. Encouraged by a friend, he acquired a staging position in a Mexico City hotel at age 16. Migoya quickly realized that the kitchen was where he belonged. This experience led Migoya to pursue a culinary degree in Mexico and then a full scholarship to study gastronomy in France.

After moving to New York in 1998 and working in savory kitchens, Migoya eventually answered a newspaper ad for a pastry cook position at The River Café in Brooklyn, where he immediately connected with the world of sweets. He then went on to work as the pastry chef at Veritas in New York City, the executive pastry chef at both The French Laundry and Bouchon Bakery, and as a professor at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.

In 2014, Modernist Cuisine founder Nathan Myhrvold pried him away from his life in the classroom. Migoya joined Modernist Cuisine to lead the culinary team and direct research. Together, he and the Modernist team spent over four years researching the science, history, and techniques of bread making.

From B&I dining to every variety of restaurant imaginable, pizza has become a staple on virtually every commercial kitchen menu. When Total Food Service heard that the Modernist Cuisine team was currently conducting research and writing their next book Modernist Pizza, we simply had to track Francisco Migoya down and share his findings of what has morphed into over 1000 pages about the intricacies of pizza.

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What and who got you interested in the restaurant industry?

When I was a teenager, I originally dreamt of going to art school, but my parents suggested that I focus my studies on something more practical. It was a natural transition for me to segway from the arts to food. My view is that there is a creative, artistic vision behind cooking, so it was a good compromise between my parents and myself. Additionally, the act of going to restaurants and the role that food played in our family inspired me to go into cooking. My father is from Spain, my mother is Italian-American, and I grew up in Mexico, which are three massive food cultures, and there were formative experiences that came along with those cultures. Food was always a big deal, and it was a career prospect that really enthused me to get into cooking for a living.

Did you have any formal business or culinary education?

Francisco Migoya Modernist CuisineWhen I was growing up in Mexico there was not a formal culinary training school, you had to find your own way by taking courses on your own. However, I found a university that offered a degree in hotel and restaurant management and within that there were some culinary classes. The reason why this university appealed to me so much was because they had academic relationships with culinary schools in Europe. While I was in college, I was able to obtain a scholarship to a culinary school in France and I was able to study for one year in France. This experience was extremely formative for me as it exposed me to the world of professional cooking as well as teaching me how to cook.

What was your career track prior to joining Modernist Cuisine?

Before I started working at Modernist, I was in New York City working in a few restaurants such as the River Café, which was my first restaurant job in New York. From there I went on to be the executive pastry chef at the French Laundry, and the Bouchon Bakery in Yountville, California. I was there for about a year and half, before moving on to being a professor at the Culinary Institute of America in New York. While teaching there for eight years, I opened my own chocolate shop with the goal of expanding the shop after my time teaching. The idea was to continue the chocolate shop, but that was before I got a call from a recruiter at Modernist Cuisine.

What was it that attracted you to the Modernist mission?

When the first Modernist Cuisine book came out, I thought if they ever wrote a book about what I know how to do; bread, baking and pastries. I felt that I would be a perfect fit for the job. The happy coincidence occurred during my final year of teaching, when I was working 20 hours a day, seven days a week between teaching and running my own business and I was feeling burnt out. During that time, I received a call from Modernist asking if I was interested in applying for their head chef position. It was one of those moments that was divine intervention for me, it was a job I had always wanted, and it came at the perfect time.

For those of us who don’t understand the Modernist mission, what is it?

I think the best way to describe our mission, is that our job is to understand how things work. To try and improve them through technique and science and to explain that to people in a way that everybody can understand. I say this because a lot of what we do is done through science and academic research, and often that language is difficult for people to understand. There are terms in science that are very dense and difficult to understand, especially for those who have not studied the subject. Often, I feel like we are translators of that scientific information, transforming it into and explaining its practical applications. For example, saying that innovations can be made to the process of doing something, and not directly to the results.  You can have something super classic like a beget or a Neapolitan pizza, that looks like something you have seen all your life, but by changing that preparation process it can make that final product taste better or reduce production time. Often a lot of culinary concepts and what we know about food is decades to centuries old, and the concept of modernism is what we aim to apply to gastronomy.

Modernist Cuisine
The Modernist Cuisine culinary team, led by company founder Nathan Myhrvold (center) and Head Chef Francisco Migoya (2nd-L), is comprised of talented chefs and scientists who are dedicated to understanding and advancing the state of modern cuisine through science, innovation, and creativity.

Describe how the first two books, Modernist Cuisine and Modernist Bread changed how we look at our industry?

When you are a chef in a restaurant, or a baker in a bakery or a professional in any sort of environment, you may have an idea or want to perform an experiment on something to see how you can improve it. You don’t always have the time; you barely have time to do the work you have to do. What I feel our books have done, is provide people with the results of all those experiments. Our books say how to cook a certain dish, for example fish sous vide, which is very difficult to make. In our book if we say this is how we have made fish sous vide, you can trust us because we did the testing, so that you don’t have to risk ruining a piece of fish and losing money. That is why we take deep dives into so many subject matters, to try and understand how to make beter food. That is what I think the major benefit that Modernist Cuisine provides.

What led to your decision to do a book on pizza?

When we wrote Modernist Bread, which is a five-volume book, it was originally going to be six volumes, so we had to start cutting certain subjects out. When we were thinking of what this book can live without, one of the subjects was pizza. We had a large chapter on pizza and decided to remove it from Modernist Bread and instead do a deep dive on pizza for one of our next projects. It made sense from a concept standpoint of going from bread to pizza. There are good pizza recipes in our bread book, but there was so much more we could focus on within the world of pizza.

Where did you even start this deep dive into pizza?

We had to start in Naples, we had to begin our deep dive where it all started. We traveled to Naples, as well as other parts of Italy trying various pizzerias. We based it all on Gambero Rosso, which is the Michelin equivalent for Italian restaurants, and they have a specific list for pizzerias. From Naples we branched out around the world looking where pizza is relevant and where we can find distinctive styles of pizza.

Francisco Migoya Modernist Pizza book
Francisco Migoya is the co-author of the highly anticipated Modernist Pizza book set for release later this month. Its’ 1000 plus pages offers new insight into the future of pizza making.

Before you went through these experiments, were there some preconceived notions surrounding pizza?

Yes, for example that a specific type of flour was best for a certain style of pizza, or that one type of oven was better than another type of oven. I will tell you that we came into these experiments with maybe some preconceived notions, but really an open mind. We are not beholden to any tradition, for us it is an open book where we are allowed to look at and replicate traditional styles.

As you did the research, how did those assumptions change relative to how we make pizza?

Something that happens a lot in the world of bread making and pizza making is that the bread maker or the pizza chef feels that everything has to be done in a certain way. The thing about dough is that it is flexible, there are things that you can and cannot control. In the end a lot of the assumptions made about pizza are based on people’s preferences.

pepperoni cheese sauce doughDoes water really matter when making pizzas?

The short answer is no; the water does not drastically affect the taste of the pizza but again it is up to a person’s preferences. We shipped in water from around the country and around the world to test this theory and found that the different waters made minimal difference in taste.

What about sauce, what can be considered a pizza sauce?

We looked at various types of sauces and their consistency is similar to that of some soups. This led us to question must you use tomato sauce on pizza, or can you use different sauces or even soups. We tried pizzas with Putinesque sauce, Bolognese sauce, with a thicker gumbo as a sauce, we even made laksa which is a Malaysian soup into a sauce. The flavors that you get from these soups pair well with pizza. We did this to add to the spectrum of what can go on pizza, there are so many more possibilities than what we have now.

What about cheese, does it make a difference?

There are so many kinds of cheeses that can be put on pizzas, traditional Neapolitan pies use fresh mozzarella. While in the U.S. we typically use a mozzarella made from skim milk that browns when cooked, unlike the fresh mozzarella used in Neapolitan pies where the cheese just melts. We also looked at how mozzarella is made and how easily flavors such as basil, paprika and garlic can be infused into the milk used to make the cheese.

What role does the oven play in making a memorable pizza?

Modernist PizzaThe importance of the oven is how does it radiate heat; how does it transfer heat through the pizza. Is it through the oven floor, through convection, the use of hot air, is it from a flame, how is the pizza cooking? The most important attributes that a good oven has is providing consistent heat with a good recovery time. What we found was that the best ovens were well insulated, that they did not have a stone oven floor and that they were either gas or electric because those fuels allow for the best regulation
of temperature.

You’ve taken on an industry in which a lot of food moves through takeout and delivery channels, does that require a different thought process or approach?

When you think about takeout and delivery the most important thing to think about is can your pizza handle sitting in a box for half an hour. Not every pizza can do that, Neapolitan is possibly the worst pizza for sitting in a box. The thicker crust pizzas are better for takeout and delivery because they hold heat better.

What advice do you have for a restaurant or chef looking to maximize the profit and quality of their pizza program?

My first piece of advice would be to have the best oven possible for the style of pizza that you are making. The second piece of advice is to know what type of pizza you make well, know who you are serving it to, and know how to bring them the best possible product every time.


All photos courtesy of Modernist Cuisine / The Cooking Lab, LLC. To learn more, visit their website.

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