Nathan Myhrvold, from CTO at Microsoft to success as a chef and pizza connoisseur

Nathan Myhrvold is a genius.

Literally.

He has lived many lives at once.

As a mathematician, geophysicist, and space physicist, he did his postdocs with Stephen Hawking.

As a paleontologist, he is an expert on dinosaurs and advised on the filming of

He founded a computer company that he sold to Microsoft, of which he became its first CTO.

As an inventor, he has more than 900 patents.

As a photographer, he has had several exhibitions.

As an astronomer, he has published his discoveries on asteroids in scientific journals.

As an entrepreneur, he has birthed numerous companies.

In one of those lives he is a cook.

Its headquarters are in Bellevue, on the outskirts of Seattle (in the State of Washington).

The building, on the edge of the highway, is as nondescript on the outside as it is fascinating on the inside.

On the ground floor, scientists, researchers and technicians work on components for Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company;

for TerraPower, the state-of-the-art nuclear power firm chaired by Bill Gates;

in artificial intelligence applied to medicine, in metamaterials and in endless inventions.

On the upper floor there is a kitchen.

Freeze-dried bread dough in his laboratory. Manuel Vázquez

Nathan Myhrvold, the cook, says that as a child, his grandmother taught him how to make bread, cakes and cookies.

At the age of nine, he told his mother that he wanted to be in charge of Thanksgiving dinner, the most important of the year for any American family.

His passion for cooking has always accompanied him, but he put that life on hold for a bit until he decided to study at the prestigious La Varenne cooking school in France.

Because experience was required, he worked for nearly two years as an apprentice at Rover's, then the best restaurant in Seattle.

Going to France, he left his position at Microsoft.

By then he was already a billionaire.

Myhrvold has triumphed in the world of cooking with his books, where he combines scientific precision with his love of gastronomy.

With a spectacular format,

(Taschen), his pioneering work, winner of numerous awards, is considered the bible of avant-garde cuisine.

His subtitle ('The art and science of cooking') is quite a declaration of intent.

(both published by Phaidon Press) followed

, with encyclopedic ambition.

He now he works in a pastry delivery.

The freeze-drying machine. Manuel Vázquez

“I discovered that my way of contributing to the world of cooking was not with a restaurant, a very tough business, which requires enormous attention and where it is very easy for things to go wrong, but by writing these books and, frankly, this is more only.

There are thousands of good restaurants in the world, but there aren't thousands of people who edit 600-page cookbooks.

It's my little niche," Myhrvold explains at the offices of The Cooking Lab, the publisher of the books.

Myhrvold has a good-natured appearance, is affable, educated, didactic and has a great sense of humor, an ironic point.

A mechanical arm cuts a sponge cake and records its resistance to cutting.Manuel Vázquez

The heart of The Cooking Lab is a large square kitchen with all the professional equipment one can imagine, but also with homemade instruments, to make recipes within the reach of a wider audience.

Thus, a vacuum oven, an ultracentrifuge, a large tank of liquid hydrogen, a proofer, ultrasonic machines and a freeze-dryer coexist with the KitchenAid and the Thermomix.

But, in addition, the spirit of the scientific laboratory is transferred to the kitchen on the upper floor.

A scanner takes three-dimensional images of the cakes that have just come out of the oven.

A mechanical arm with a sensor measures the resistance to cutting based on small variations that are introduced in the recipe.

Everything is measured and recorded.

At the other end of the room,

The team is working on

the next book, and hence the smell of cake and

being prepared in the background at that moment.

But what has a more imposing presence in the room is a vaulted oven, protagonist of the latest book published,

an authentic encyclopedia of Italian food with the most success in the world.

There are three large-format volumes of about 400 pages each plus a cooking manual with hundreds of recipes.

A freeze-dried tomato.

The scientific and gastronomic study of ingredients is one of the contents of Nathan Myhrvold's books.

Manuel Vazquez

How dare someone born in Seattle make a point of teaching about pizza?

Myhrvold paraphrases a Yiddish proverb: "We don't know who discovered water, but it wasn't a fish."

He explains that something similar to football teams happens with pizza: “People love their local team, but not for a rational reason.

Pizza traveled and mutated, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose, almost always by a mixture of both, but in the end people love their version of pizza and when you ask about others they say: 'That's not it's pizza'.

If you want to cover pizza as a global phenomenon, it's very difficult if you're too much of a believer in a pizza religion.

For someone from Naples, which of course was where it originated, it's very hard to explain why people like other pizzas.

There will be those who even tell you that pizza cannot be made if it is not with water from Naples.

In fact, if you ask people in Naples about other types of pizza, of course they say: 'That's not pizza.

Poor people'.

They feel sorry for those who don't understand what real pizza is.

But at the same time, they are blind to the fact that the pizza they are eating today is not as old as they think.

Although they invented it, the first pizza had no tomato, for example.

Even the pizza eaten in the 19th century was very different from today's."

Although they invented it, the first pizza had no tomato, for example.

Even the pizza eaten in the 19th century was very different from today's."

Although they invented it, the first pizza had no tomato, for example.

Even the pizza eaten in the 19th century was very different from today's."

Freeze-dried margherita pizza powder.

Manuel Vazquez

“If you want a comparative religion book, you don't choose someone from the College of Cardinals to write it or their Buddhist equivalent.

You need an outside point of view.

And if you just pick one and say it's the only real pizza, you've left billions of people behind.

Even in Italy, as soon as you leave the Naples region, other Italians like their pizza a little crunchy, just like in the United States.

The people of Naples will probably know more about Neapolitan pizza than I ever will.

But I assure you that I know more about Detroit pizza, ”he adds.

Modernist Pizza

is a book of recipes, techniques and ingredients, but not only that.

To make it, Myhrvold has had the enviable task of traveling the world in search of the best pizzas in Naples and Campania, Rome, northern Italy, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Tokyo and most of the United States, including New York, New Haven, Chicago, and Portland.

So it is also a gastronomic guide.

And, in addition, a history book with its own research and documentation.

Myhrvold loves to debunk myths and tells nonstop stories and anecdotes in her books and in person.

In the kitchen, above all, three sciences come together, he explains: “Biology, because most of what we eat is of biological origin.

Chemistry, because there are a lot of chemical reactions in food.

And also, most of the cooking involves applying heat, so it enters fully into the realm of physics.

The Cooking Lab's pizza oven. Manuel Vázquez

He has done all kinds of experiments with pizzas and what has dazzled many

is by showing them that they are basically cooked with light.

The air in the oven, no matter how hot it is, does not cook the pizza, it is the infrared radiation that does.

That, and the minimal time it takes to cook, leads him to demystify wood-fired ovens, and he opts for gas ovens for pizzas.

“We have invented a lot of very clever techniques that help you make a better pizza or a more reliable pizza, or allow you to use new ingredients or a new type of oven, or a whole series of things that you couldn't do unless you learned what we have learned”, he explains.

Cakes ready to scan and obtain 3D images.

Manuel Vazquez

In any case, he admits that you don't need to know physics to make a pizza, "just like most people who play the violin don't know how the science of acoustics works."

And he adds: “If you understand the acoustics of a violin, it may not help you much to play it.

Human beings are very good at learning to do things empirically.”

It is not uncommon for someone who says that “bread is biotechnology” to be asked if theirs is a kitchen without a soul.

Myhrvold stirs.

“I have never quite understood that your food has no soul.

I'm not sure broccoli has a soul.

I think people assume that a scientist is not creative and that an artist is.

But the best scientists are intensely creative.

Creativity is not just for artists and soul is not just for traditional cooks."

And he protests when the criticism is that, with precision machines, food will always be perfectly cooked.

“You know, he will lose his soul.

Do you like undercooked food?

Is that the idea?

When it comes to quality control, I don't apologize.

Culinary creativity is often possible thanks to technology”.

Nathan Myhrvold. Manuel Vázquez

Myhrvold explains that, historically, pastry chefs and dessert cooks have always been more careful about their measurements than savory cooks.

“If you make a mistake in the amount of yeast, baking soda, or some other ingredient, it can be terrible.

But does that mean that those desserts, even the very traditional ones, lack soul?

Because they were careful?

Perhaps that is why he has as his right hand the Mexican chef Francisco Migoya, who was head of desserts at The French Laundry, a three Michelin star hotel in California, until his daughter was born and in three months he had barely seen her.

He was a professor at the Culinary Institute of America, in New York, before receiving "the best call in the world" in 2013 to join The Cooking Lab. Migoya, 48, is co-author of the books and runs the day-to-day of the kitchen/laboratory.

Myhrvold trusts him, directs and supervises, but lets him do it.

The team, with chef Francisco Migoya (on the right) in charge.

Manuel Vazquez

He corroborates what his boss says: "The education and training that a pastry chef has is almost scientific because precision, methods and execution of precise techniques are required to obtain a consistent result."

And he also shares that scientific knowledge and approach are "tools to be able to have greater creativity."

"When I'm thinking of an idea I don't think about the scientific part first, but first I think about what flavors I would like to see in this dish, what would taste good, what flavors and textures can I put together to get this product and then I worry about how to do it" , explains Migoya, who does not yearn for production work in a restaurant: "This research, learning and dissemination work is more rewarding."

Migoya says that Myhrvold is “from another planet”.

Sam Fahey-Burke, 37, a research and development chef who has been at The Cooking Lab since 2009, describes him as a “very demanding, but never unreasonable” genius.

Johnny Zhu, the other R&D chef, who has also been with the project from the beginning, says that “Nathan is the guy with ideas, he sees things from all angles, he varies recipes”.

“Sometimes they are great ideas and sometimes they are crazy, but here you can try again and again, you have the time and resources, even for terrible ideas.

In a restaurant there is no time, logistics are important there”.

Both Fahey-Burke and Zhu remember ultrasonic frying as one of the most surprising and successful experiments they have conducted with Myhrvold.

A flake of snow. Manuel Vázquez

Myhrvold is a great defender of the modern or avant-garde kitchen.

He remembers how that movement flourished in Spain, overcoming criticism and resistance.

He fights those who cling to traditional cuisine.

“The kitchen is also invention and innovation.

Ice cream didn't exist until we had fridges and freezers.

The world has created modern versions of most types of art.

We don't expect modern art to look like old, and even if you don't like modern art, if you're an educated person, you know it exists and you respect it."

With the kitchen, things are visceral to the point that there are innovations that are presented as traditional to avoid rejection.

His favorite example is the

or ciabatta bread, invented in Italy in the 1980s, but often presented as a traditional rustic bread.

“A lot of the things that we think have always been there weren't, so we'll keep innovating, but we may still pretend some things are very old.”

And he releases another anecdote: until the 19th century, lobster was food for prisoners, slaves and the poor.

“I will never forget the first time I went to El Bulli”, he recalls.

He repeated it frequently and assures that Ferran Adrià has been "a great friend and a great support".

Adrià returned the visit to dine at The Cooking Lab, like other great European and American chefs.

“There were those who said: yes, they have done a great book [by

but do they really know how to cook?

So we started doing those dinners in our lab and that gave us a lot of credibility.”

Pizza cooked in The Cooking Lab.Manuel Vázquez

Modernist Cuisine

is the book that launched him to fame in the world of gastronomy.

He made cutting-edge cooking techniques available to professional and amateur cooks around the world.

“The movement existed and we got to document it, but we also ended up making a lot of our own inventions, our own connections and creating theoretical support for it.”

“We are living in the golden age of food,” he says.

Will the techniques of

one day become available to everyone, become grandmother's recipes?

“There are a lot of home cooks who use them.

And, well, my children are very busy right now with their lives, but one day they will have children.

And when they cook, they will be grandfather's recipes”.

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