By Charlie Pogacar
Eidref Laxa, the man behind the What’s Good Dough? podcast, was embarrassed. Maybe that’s because Laxa, the man who has spent the better part of five years interviewing the brightest minds in the pizza industry, was suddenly the one having to answer questions.
In Spring 2024, he was interviewing Lee Kindell, owner and operator of Moto Pizza in Seattle, when the conversation switched tracks. Kindell sensed something was going on with Laxa, and he began probing for answers. This made Laxa uncomfortable: Here he was with Kindell, a man he deeply respected. And he was tired? Distracted?
Sheepish as he may have been, Laxa opened up to Kindell. He hated his job, he said, the one that paid the bills. It was a job he’d held for nine years. On the side, he’d been hustling to create content for his beloved pizza podcast, What’s Good Dough?, but the whole goal of the show had been to arm himself with knowledge that would help him open his own pizzeria some day. It had been five years since he launched the podcast, and he didn’t feel much closer to achieving his dream.
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“This conversation with Lee was so important,” Laxa recalled on the most recent episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast. “Because one of the first things he [said was]: ‘Be kind to [yourself.]’ I’m so hard on myself, and I think a lot of us are… if we were all kind to ourselves, I truly feel we would be living in the world that Lee lives in.”
Kindell’s own meteoric rise from somebody who had never worked in a pizzeria prior to the pandemic, to a kingpin of the industry with five locations in the Seattle area, was nothing short of inspiring to Laxa. So to hear Kindell challenge him and his own version of events was the push Laxa needed to finally take the dive.
Except it wasn’t quite that easy. On the most recent episode of What’s Good Dough?, Laxa revealed he had finally quit his job of nine years. But he also detailed how hard it was to get there. Just when he thought it was finally time, his car got totaled in a wreck. Then his wife, with whom he shares a young daughter, tore her ACL. These new time and financial constraints prolonged the quitting process, but in mid-November, finally, Laxa officially went all in on pizza, with Kindell’s words still ringing in his ears.
“The other thing he said was, ‘You keep thinking about all of the things that could go [wrong] if you quit your job,’” Laxa recalled. “‘Like not having enough money to survive. Losing your kid’s nanny and being out on the streets. Those are extremes, and yeah, there’s a chance that could happen. But, Eidref, do you ever focus on what could happen if you went all in on pizza?’ What a big ‘oh [wow]’ moment.”
Laxa’s recent announcement is the latest chapter in his pizza journey. It all began back in 2018, when some family members were discussing how cool it would be to open a pizzeria. Laxa couldn’t get the idea out of his head. He picked up a part-time job as a line cook at a local pizzeria, and he quickly fell in love with the gig. It was an escape from the other job, the one he was losing love for.
“There’s that camaraderie in the kitchen,” Laxa said. “No matter where you are from, if you show that respect, if you show that you’re willing to be in the trenches, it’s like, OK, you’re cool, right?”
But when Laxa and his wife relocated, the commute to the pizzeria became too challenging. He began making pizza at home, intent on honing his craft so that he could one day open up the pizzeria he had been dreaming of. But he was encountering challenges—not just as a pizza maker, but as somebody who had never owned a restaurant business.
One day, he heard somebody say, “Everybody should have a podcast.” A thought came over him: What if he launched a pizza podcast in which he interviewed people who ran successful pizza businesses and picked their brains? He didn’t know a thing about podcasting or video, but he was eager to learn.
Establishing himself wasn’t easy. It was 2019, and podcasts hadn’t yet enjoyed a mainstream breakthrough. On top of that, Laxa was just a random guy on Instagram without much of a following. In other words, landing interviews was a major challenge.
“The first five episodes [I kind of got] super lucky,” Laxa said. “Because I found nice people in the Bay Area who were willing to give me their time. And then, the podcast almost ended after the first five episodes because it felt like I was exhausting all of my options. Nobody was taking me seriously.”
The breakthrough was an interview with Lars Smith of State of Mind Slice House. Smith agreed to come on the show, and Laxa realized he could send the interview around to other pizzeria owners and effectively demonstrate the potential of a What’s Good Dough? interview.
One of the issues with recording the podcast, however, was that it didn’t necessarily encourage Laxa’s ambitions. The process was meant to give him a clearer idea of what running a pizzeria looked like, and, as it turned out, that often meant he heard less of the “good” and more of the “bad and ugly.”
“I saw the struggle firsthand,” Laxa said. “I was recording these podcasts with operators and hearing some of the stories both in the podcast and out in the real world…I saw a lot, and I was almost turned off to the idea of opening my own pizzeria.”
Now, several years later, Laxa is finally taking that dive anyway. The next step of his pizza career will be doubling down on his catering business—which he has been running on the side for a while now—and a pop-up out of his own house. There will be pop-up events and even a pre fixe menu for private dining experiences. The podcast isn’t going anywhere, although he will be scaling back from four episodes every month to about two.
Laxa said he feels freed up. The past month has been spent at home, closer to his family, grinding to make his yet-to-be-named pizza brand a success. The driving force behind all of this, in a lot of ways, is his daughter, born in 2022, and featured in many a video on his Instagram page.
“I really do feel like I’m taking life by the horns right now, for me and for my family,” Laxa said. “I just want to be the best freaking role model because [my daughter] just brings me so much joy.”
For more on Eidref’s story, check out the latest episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast. Links to the show:
