Check out this website about the proper way to make pizza. Interestingly, it seems to be a lot more about technique than the type of dough that he uses. Also, it seems like there is a significant place for the sourdough starter. Clearly, I have a lot more experimenting to do.
The good news for all you in GA is that this guy's pizzeria is in the ATL, so it's definitely something to try out if you get the chance. The other cool thing is that there is a google map of what he considers the greatest pizzerias in the world. Finally, JW, notice that your pizzeria in New Haven is really high on the list.
I think it further illustrates the level of obsession that can sink in regarding pizza, and that unless you live in NYC or Italy, you have the opportunity to make some of the best pizza in town if you're careful about it!
Showing posts with label pizza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pizza. Show all posts
Friday, April 10, 2009
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Quick pizza dough and grill setup
There a bunch of pizza recipes for the ceramic cooker, and after a lot of trial and error (A LOT), I think I've hit on a good combination. JW was up to visit last week, and felt inspired to send me some goodies: King Arthur 00 flour, perfect pizza flour, sourdough starter, and a new metal pizza peel. That was after we made a bit of a mess with too hot of a fire and a couple of blackened pizza crusts. So, this is what I did with it.
"Quick" pizza dough. (adapted from Mario Batali's Italian Grill)
1 tsp of yeast mixed in a cup of warm water, 10 min until it bubbles, then add to the FP
1 Georgia cup (32 oz) of "perfect pizza" flour (King Arthur) or general purpose
"Quick" pizza dough. (adapted from Mario Batali's Italian Grill)
1 tsp of yeast mixed in a cup of warm water, 10 min until it bubbles, then add to the FP
1 Georgia cup (32 oz) of "perfect pizza" flour (King Arthur) or general purpose
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
I heart NY
I hate the Yankees (baseball, that is), but I love their city. Great restaurants are everywhere. However, I have yet find an online guide that gets me to the good restaurants without having to weed through the crap. It seems like most of them (Zagats, ChowHound, etc.) have crappy chain restaurants mixed in with the great ones. And the reviews - fugetaboutit! You get mixed reviews from a bunch of idiots like you and me.
I think the NY Times Dining Guide online is about as close as you get. The problem is filtering out the junk, in order to find a good restaurant in the vicinity of your hotel, that is native to NY, and has been reviewed by the Times. It sounds simple enough, but if you ever try it, you'll see what I mean. I managed to find a good restaurant near my hotel, but primarly by paying attention to the awning signs as I took taxi rides around town, then looking them up in the NY Times Dining Guide online. I can't stand their political bias, but the Times has excellent food critics, and have reviewed an amazing number of restaurants in NYC. Especially considering the fact that restaurants in NYC have a short life span (something like 3 years on average).
Anyway, I ate at Le Bernardin, which was a pre-meditated pick, and at a place called Pampano. Pampano is listed as a Mexican restaurant, and the NY Times gave it two stars. For the Times, two stars means Very Good. And it was. I've never been to Mexico, and have only experienced Mexican food at the local Vallarta's (which isn't very authentic), and at a few places in New Mexico (which is completely different). I'll write more about both of these in the coming days.
The primary reason for this post is to follow-up on JW's pizza dough recipe. I know - what does this have to do with JW's pizza dough? Well, I'm getting there. At the end of my NYC trip last week, I met up with a college buddy that lives in Cranford, New Jersey. After college (back in the early 90's - or "back in the day"), he lived in a place called Rahway, New Jersey and had taken me to Rahway Pizza. More recently, he had been making the short drive from Cranford to Rahway just for the pizza, and bragging about how good it remains to this day. So we went there last Thursday nite. I didn't remember much about the place from my previous visits, but this time, it made an impact - primarily because I knew how difficult a thin crust was to achieve, based on JW's many experiments. The crust at Rahway Pizza was the thinnest I had EVER seen. You could practically see through it (after it was cooked). The three of us (forty-something guys) each ate a whole large pizza, had a pitcher of beer (each), and still didn't feel full, just satisfied. I haven't done that since my college days. We had garlic and sausage, garlic and onion, and just cheese. Garlic was emanating from my pores for two days, but it was excellent.
JW - your pizza is a winner. If you want to try for an even thinner crust, go visit Rahway Pizza. You won't be disappointed, and maybe they'll give you the recipe.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Pizza, a follow up
The family is out of town, and I have a day off. You know what that means: test kitchen. I was looking at JW's pizza recipe, and even though I've heard this time and time again, I'm a slow learner. It starts and ends with the dough. You'll either have a pleasant experience, or it will be misery and toppings will burn in the bottom of your oven. This is not a post to say that the previous one is at all incorrect, quite the opposite. But it does require some trial and error.
Think about what all of the ingredients in the dough actually contribute.
Flour, oil, and water: the basis of the dough. This can be 5/1 bread flour to corn meal or semolina (Jamie Oliver), or all purpose with wheat flour and semolina (JW). Or any combination. Again, trial and error.
Yeast: fluffy dough, elasticity. The more elastic, the MORE DIFFICULT it is to make it thin. About 3 cups flour per packet of yeast, or 1 packet per 4 individual pizzas. Think "Feed the Bitch!" from Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. If you haven't read it, don't wait.
Sugar: fuel for the yeast. This can be done with white wine (Mario Batali), honey (JW), sugar, etc. Or, you can leave this out. It depends on how long you plan to let the yeast rise and how dense/thin you want the crust.
Salt: flavor. Everything is better with salt.
Rising time: fluffier, but more elastic dough. Fine for focaccia (pretty much the same recipe), some advocate the double rise which works well.
Kneading: activates gluten which I think makes the dough less dense, and more fluffy. That's why the recipe before says leave it in the mixer for the prescribed time, even if it looks like it's done. Too much kneading: light and fluffy, more resilient. Too little kneading: thinner, but can stretch out wider and thinner. The only problem is that it will have a dense cracker consistency that can be a little tough. Consider that Batali's (and probably anyone else's) homemade pasta recipe calls for kneading the dough at least 5 minutes or so. Even though there's no yeast, it still makes the pasta lighter and silkier.
So you have to find the right balance of your ingredients. And that all comes with what your particular taste, expertise, patience, ingredients, etc. It also makes a difference what type of toppings your considering. If you want pizza Margherita with fresh tomato, that's going to be wet and it's going to be hard to get it off the peel. Your dough and your cooking technique have to match to provide a nice, dense crust that will stand up to the soggy ingredients.
Consider how baguette or tuscan country bread is made. Can be a super hot oven, but it has to be dead even heat above and below to cook from all sides. In the case of the baguette, it's partly the steam from the water that they throw on there, and it's also the oven. In the case of country style bread, it's the brick oven.
Troubleshooting
I have trouble with a combination of wet and dry ingredients, and I can't get the pizza off the peel onto the oven or grill stone without slinging all of my toppings into the bottom of the oven and having the whole house smell like burned cheese or chicken. You could put parchment paper down on the peel and then put the dough on that, putting both your pizza and the parchment paper in the oven on the stone. I suppose there's no reason you couldn't also use foil. Dough isn't done but the toppings are almost burned? This one, confuses me. I know that you can turn the temp down and balance that, but how then, do the Italians and various restaurants cook it in a scorching hot brick oven? It's because they do it in a brick oven that provides perfectly even heat on all sides. One side being done before the other is a case of uneven heat.
The key is to experiment, and I think JW is right: with several trials and errors, umcompromising quality of ingredients, and a tenacity to learn how to do it, you can probably make pizza at least as well as anywhere you can go buy it. Trial and error is the substitute for learning it from your Nonna....and you can learn to do it many different ways.
Final note: really want to cheat? Pepin describes using flour tortilla to make pizza. Haven't tried that one yet, but it just might work! Although, I don't think you'd call it pizza.
Think about what all of the ingredients in the dough actually contribute.
Flour, oil, and water: the basis of the dough. This can be 5/1 bread flour to corn meal or semolina (Jamie Oliver), or all purpose with wheat flour and semolina (JW). Or any combination. Again, trial and error.
Yeast: fluffy dough, elasticity. The more elastic, the MORE DIFFICULT it is to make it thin. About 3 cups flour per packet of yeast, or 1 packet per 4 individual pizzas. Think "Feed the Bitch!" from Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. If you haven't read it, don't wait.
Sugar: fuel for the yeast. This can be done with white wine (Mario Batali), honey (JW), sugar, etc. Or, you can leave this out. It depends on how long you plan to let the yeast rise and how dense/thin you want the crust.
Salt: flavor. Everything is better with salt.
Rising time: fluffier, but more elastic dough. Fine for focaccia (pretty much the same recipe), some advocate the double rise which works well.
Kneading: activates gluten which I think makes the dough less dense, and more fluffy. That's why the recipe before says leave it in the mixer for the prescribed time, even if it looks like it's done. Too much kneading: light and fluffy, more resilient. Too little kneading: thinner, but can stretch out wider and thinner. The only problem is that it will have a dense cracker consistency that can be a little tough. Consider that Batali's (and probably anyone else's) homemade pasta recipe calls for kneading the dough at least 5 minutes or so. Even though there's no yeast, it still makes the pasta lighter and silkier.
So you have to find the right balance of your ingredients. And that all comes with what your particular taste, expertise, patience, ingredients, etc. It also makes a difference what type of toppings your considering. If you want pizza Margherita with fresh tomato, that's going to be wet and it's going to be hard to get it off the peel. Your dough and your cooking technique have to match to provide a nice, dense crust that will stand up to the soggy ingredients.
Consider how baguette or tuscan country bread is made. Can be a super hot oven, but it has to be dead even heat above and below to cook from all sides. In the case of the baguette, it's partly the steam from the water that they throw on there, and it's also the oven. In the case of country style bread, it's the brick oven.
Troubleshooting
I have trouble with a combination of wet and dry ingredients, and I can't get the pizza off the peel onto the oven or grill stone without slinging all of my toppings into the bottom of the oven and having the whole house smell like burned cheese or chicken. You could put parchment paper down on the peel and then put the dough on that, putting both your pizza and the parchment paper in the oven on the stone. I suppose there's no reason you couldn't also use foil. Dough isn't done but the toppings are almost burned? This one, confuses me. I know that you can turn the temp down and balance that, but how then, do the Italians and various restaurants cook it in a scorching hot brick oven? It's because they do it in a brick oven that provides perfectly even heat on all sides. One side being done before the other is a case of uneven heat.
The key is to experiment, and I think JW is right: with several trials and errors, umcompromising quality of ingredients, and a tenacity to learn how to do it, you can probably make pizza at least as well as anywhere you can go buy it. Trial and error is the substitute for learning it from your Nonna....and you can learn to do it many different ways.
Final note: really want to cheat? Pepin describes using flour tortilla to make pizza. Haven't tried that one yet, but it just might work! Although, I don't think you'd call it pizza.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Pizza, the real stuff
I love thin crust pizza and am continually looking for a dough recipe that can be easily replicated to produce a cracker thin crust. It's really all about the crust. You have to be very careful with the toppings else you'll have a soggy, floppy pie. This recipe produces a very elastic dough that doesn't have too much recoil, in other words you can stretch paper thin until almost see-through. This is NY style pizza, not the heavy, bloated Chicago, Pizza Hut crap. I have devoted quite a bit of time to this lately and I think I finally have a winner.
You'll need:
Stand mixer with paddle attachment
Pizza stone
Pizza peel
Oven or BGE
For dough:
Semolina or cornmeal for dusting
2 c. AP flour
1/2 c. Whole wheat flour
1 T. Yeast
1 1/4 c. Water
1/4 c. Olive Oil
~ 1 T. Honey
2 t. Salt
Combine warm water ~ 110 F with yeast and honey and set aside to bloom for 10 minutes. Meanwhile measure the flour(s) and salt and combine in the bowl of your stand mixer. After 10 minutes, add Olive Oil to yeast mixture and pour into the dry ingredients. Mix on low until dough pulls away from side of bowl (atleast 5 minutes). After 5 minutes if this hasn't occurred, add about a teaspoon of flour every 15 to 20 seconds until this does happen. Remove from bowl, portion into 4 balls of dough and rest on a baking sheet dusted with semolina and covered with plastic wrap for about an hour.
Preheat oven with stone for as high as it goes, atleast an hour beforehand.
Remember this makes a very thin dough. When you have everything ready, work expediently. Form dough as desired and place on a WELL-DUSTED peel. Spoon 1-2 T of sauce on the pie, sprinkle with toppings and a minimal amount of mozzarella. Bake for about 10 minutes or until the exposed areas of the crust begin to blacken slightly. Serve immediately, and as the chef, eat a slice or two while you prepare you're next pie!
You'll need:
Stand mixer with paddle attachment
Pizza stone
Pizza peel
Oven or BGE
For dough:
Semolina or cornmeal for dusting
2 c. AP flour
1/2 c. Whole wheat flour
1 T. Yeast
1 1/4 c. Water
1/4 c. Olive Oil
~ 1 T. Honey
2 t. Salt
Combine warm water ~ 110 F with yeast and honey and set aside to bloom for 10 minutes. Meanwhile measure the flour(s) and salt and combine in the bowl of your stand mixer. After 10 minutes, add Olive Oil to yeast mixture and pour into the dry ingredients. Mix on low until dough pulls away from side of bowl (atleast 5 minutes). After 5 minutes if this hasn't occurred, add about a teaspoon of flour every 15 to 20 seconds until this does happen. Remove from bowl, portion into 4 balls of dough and rest on a baking sheet dusted with semolina and covered with plastic wrap for about an hour.
Preheat oven with stone for as high as it goes, atleast an hour beforehand.
Remember this makes a very thin dough. When you have everything ready, work expediently. Form dough as desired and place on a WELL-DUSTED peel. Spoon 1-2 T of sauce on the pie, sprinkle with toppings and a minimal amount of mozzarella. Bake for about 10 minutes or until the exposed areas of the crust begin to blacken slightly. Serve immediately, and as the chef, eat a slice or two while you prepare you're next pie!
My favorite quick sauce recipe:
14 ounce can of fire-roasted, diced tomatoes
1 T olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper
Simply puree in blender until well combined. Does need any cooking and gives pizza a very fresh taste.
My favorite pizza toppings
The classic: fresh buffalo mozz and basil with red sauce
Proscuitto and sauteed shitake or button mushrooms
Hot sausage and black olives
Jen's favorite
Anchovies, capers, mushrooms
Let me know how this turns out for you...it takes very little time and is a helluva lot better than anything I can get in Augusta.
JW
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