Project: Our Table - Matt at Hot Wood Pizza

Continuing from my first personal restaurant photography project shoot for Our Table with Dean Parker at Darby’s - this shoot is further afield than the usual reaches of the project, but keeps to the essence of it; capturing places that I’ve loved eating at, and for the passion that goes into the process.

Just as I was finishing up the brief for my ‘Our Table’ project at the end of May, I booked a last-min staycation to the East Coast town of Westgate-on-Sea for a bit of seaside R&R with my partner. We found a really lovely Airbnb called Hot Wood House that was both right next to the sea, and also had an unbelievable attention to detail put into the interior design.

When booking, I noticed that the owner of the Airbnb had a great pizzeria below so we quickly booked a table for dinner. After a banging dinner of sourdough pizzas and some seemingly simple yet really well thought out sides - we asked Matt the owner if he could show us how to use the flat’s fireplace. Whilst he showed us, I discovered loads about his background in Creative Direction; his experience within hospitality at his last place in Broadstairs, and the idea behind, his new venture, Hot Wood Pizza.

When I got back to London, I dropped Matt a DM and we organised a time for me to swing by a few weeks later to shoot the restaurant photography project with him; focussing our shooting time on capturing the journey of the Smashed Meatball Pizza - which is honestly amazing!

Matt and I kicked off our day by making a sourdough dough for the bases - the true heart of any pizza. Water is measured out at a steady 19°C and is added into the large mixer bowl with around half the mother, a touch of salt, rapeseed oil, and Matt’s current favourite flour - Shiptop Mill Organic. Once the sum of ingredients is at 20KG or so, it’s put into the mixer for around seven minutes, or until the dough is fully incorporated and has a certain amount of stickiness to it. It’s then left to ferment for roughly 24 hours, depending on the humidity and general climate.

Using ‘one that he made earlier’, the dough is cut into 240-250g portions and rolled out into smooth dough balls, to be placed onto bakers trays of no more than eight per tray to allow for them to slowly rise and ferment over the next 24-48 hours.

For the meatballs, Matt starts with a mixture of pork, beef, and extra pork fat that he buys from a local butcher. The extra pork fat is really useful, as the balls are first cooked, then re-fired on the pizza, so a high-fat ratio keeps them moist. He then adds in fine breadcrumbs to keep it together, along with a mix of a couple of Italian cheeses, eggs, and herbs which are whisked then added into the meat - before a touch of umami is added in the form of hoisin sauce. This is important as the sauce helps to escape the easily done, oversalting with salt due to the hard cheeses already having a higher sodium count. Once mixed and formed into weighed out balls, they’re fired in the Gozney pizza oven - taking on all of that great flavour and caramelization from the heat that cooking at 400°C gives you.

The marinara sauce follows a traditional recipe that uses olive oil, minced garlic, and heaps of crushed then blended tomatoes - to then be slowly cooked out for a semi-sweet base sauce. Once finished, the sauce is split into a separate pot and the fired meatballs are added in and cooked out to soak in all of the flavours from the marinara before being put aside for making the pizza.

To make the pizza, the 72-hour dough balls are expertly stretched on a semolina-dusted surface and the edges are pushed out and a thicker edging of dough is formed - before being tossed and letting gravity do its work to naturally stretch the dough to 12” for the classic pizza size - all being done in around 30 seconds.

Marinara is added to the base with the broad side of a flat bottomed ladle, followed by mozzarella, basil and the smashed meatballs. The pizza is swiftly slid into the oven at circa 400°C on a peel and turned and moved around a few times over a minute to create that classic Neopolitan pizza base and leoparding on the edges - being careful to not take it too far and to keep everything still juicy ontop.

I really enjoyed my time with Matt at Hot Wood Pizza, and as someone who is very passionate about making pizza at home in a domestic oven with a cast iron pan - I still feel like I was able to take on loads of great knowledge that was passed down from his passion. If you’re ever in the Margate area - they’re only a six-minute train ride and a stone’s throw from the station. Bonus points to being very close to the beach so you can walk it off on the way back to Margate afterwards!