By Charlie Pogacar
Seventy-three days of social media posts: Everybody knows the rules.
Sam Cagle, who goes by Dough Guy on Instagram, started making pizza at his home in Pleasant Grove, Utah, about a year ago. In January, as his homemade pizza began to get better and better, he decided to set a new goal: He was going to post a video of himself making a pie every day on Instagram until Dave Portnoy reviewed his pizza.
“I figured it would take about a year,” Cagle told PMQ. “And then after 73 days, Portnoy DM’d me and just said ‘you’re in Utah[?]’… nothing else. I freaked out and said ‘yes but I’ll come to you. Does Barstool HQ have an oven?'”
Cagle didn’t even wait for a response from Portnoy. He booked flights for himself and his wife, Cosy, and packed up everything he would need. He jammed his custom-made pizza steel, dough ingredients and tools—about 50 pounds worth of gear—into a suitcase and got ready for his moment.
The Stay-At-Home Baker
Before he became the Dough Guy, Cagle was a stay-at-home dad who’d recently taken a leave of absence from an IT job he didn’t love. As somebody who has always enjoyed baking and pizza, Cagle was surprised to stumble upon Instagram content with people making pizza at home in their own ovens.
“I didn’t know that it was possible to make pizza in a regular oven,” Cagle said. “I always thought you needed a nice pizza oven.”
Cagle had tried homemade pizza before but hadn’t been impressed with the results. This time, with a little YouTube education and a baker’s curiosity—he’d already been into sourdough and cookies—something clicked. “I started just posting on Instagram just for fun,” he said. “You can go back and see my old posts—they’re pretty bad, honestly.”
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A Mission
But Cagle knows a thing or two about determination. A former Division 1 volleyball player at BYU, he possesses the drive that so many elite athletes do. He kept making pizza, getting his reps in. Before long, his pizza was starting to become pretty darn solid.
And the more Cagle immersed himself in the pizza community, the more he felt like there was a gap in the market. Sure, he had found a handful of people who were making pizza in their home ovens, but so much of the other content he was seeing felt like a foreign language.
“I don’t want to say there is a lot of gatekeeping in the pizza community, because I don’t think that’s necessarily true,” Cagle said. “And I really don’t want to make it sound like I know more than other pizza makers do, because I definitely don’t. I just felt like there was maybe a way to make pizza more approachable and affordable—something that doesn’t have to be this whole ordeal.”
Cagle chose the name Dough Guy and began to create content targeted at other people who just wanted to make some good pizza in their home oven. He created a custom-designed 16×16 pizza steel—one that could cook the crispy, New York-style pies he is fond of—and cultivated a personality on social media as a normal guy who likes making pizza. That wasn’t much of a stretch for Cagle: It happens to be exactly who he is.
“I don’t want to be this person who is taking himself too seriously,” Cagle said. “I’m not trying to step on anybody’s toes. I’m not better than the people who make pizza at pizzerias or anything like that. It’s just kind of my mission now to make pizza more accessible.”
The pizza steel is something Cagle will soon be selling online—he’s currently taking preorders. He hopes some day to have a “Dough Guy Pizza Kit” that has everything one needs to cook near-restaurant-quality pizza at home: the steel, a peel, a cutter and a scale. He might eventually even offer frozen dough balls to make everything as easy as possible.
The Chicago Trip
In Chicago—on the day Cagle cooked pizza for Portnoy—things didn’t exactly go to plan.
According to Cagle, the oven at Barstool HQ was enormous and unpredictable. He recalled, “The chef there was like, ‘Yeah, I never use this oven. This oven sucks.’”
The good news? Cagle had a couple of hours to make the oven his friend. The bad news? He badly burned the first pizza he tried to make after “cranking it to the highest [temperature].”
But after a few adjustments and a lucky find—a nearby infrared thermometer—Cagle dialed in the oven’s quirks and got his timing right. When Portnoy arrived at 12:30 for the actual tasting, Cagle served up a classic cheese pizza.
“I was a little preoccupied as he was talking to me and the cameras were rolling,” he said. “You don’t want to open the oven too much because the heat gets out…and there was no window [in the oven] to see what was going on in there.”
Cagle anxiously waited as Portnoy peppered him, his wife and friends with questions. After what felt like an hour, the pizza was ready—and it had turned out “really good on the bottom,” he said—although the top wasn’t quite as crisped as he would have liked. Fortunately, Portnoy didn’t seem to mind.
“He ate two pieces, and then he brought the rest of his friends,” Cagle said. “Frankie [Borelli] came over after and was like, ‘This is awesome.’”
The score? An 8.1—remarkably high for a homemade pie. “Going into the experience, I would have been happy with anything above a 7. Even high 6s, I would have been stoked.”
Multiple times, Cagle reiterated that his 8.1 score—as impressive as it is—probably shouldn’t be contrasted with the scores Portnoy gives actual pizzerias. After all, most pizzerias are trying to churn out pies for their customers and may have no idea Portnoy is visiting their shop that day. Cagle, on the other hand, knew exactly who he was cooking for and had days to prepare for it.
“Obviously, it’s a lot different to make a single pizza than to crank out pizzas every day,” he said.
Still, Cagle hopes his story helps underscore his overall mission. He wants to chip away at the intimidation factor that keeps people from trying pizza at home. He believes most people can make great pizza with the right gear and just a bit of practice.
“It really just comes down to making good dough and baking it right,” he said. “Even if you mess it up, it’s going to taste good for the most part.”
The Pizza Parlay
Unsurprisingly, Portnoy’s review of Cagle’s pizza has garnered over 350,000 views in three weeks. Cagle hopes to parlay the wave of publicity into more attention for his Dough Guy brand—more followers, more videos, more gear, more collabs. And yes, he wants to make a lot more pizza.
“I definitely want to do more long form on YouTube,” he said. “Instructional stuff, fun stuff, working with other chefs or local shops.”
Though he has primarily focused on New York-style pizzas, Cagle expressed interest in tackling Detroit-style next. Even if he does that, though, he’s committed to keeping things simple. “I don’t want this to be too serious,” he said. “I’m just trying to make pizza more accessible for people.”
As for the pizza that earned him Portnoy’s attention? Cagle’s ideal slice is pretty simple: “A nice, crispy, thin New York-style pizza with pepperoni—maybe hot honey and ricotta, too.”
If Cagle’s experience is any indication, that’s the type of slice you can make in your home oven.
