[Rachel Perlow]

No.

Hold on, I'll go take a picture.

[Rachel Perlow]

Rachel Perlow, on Apr 28 2005, 11:35 AM, said:

No.

Hold on, I'll go take a picture.

Ignore the carbonizing.

[Tepee]

Gee, thanks! Another on a mission.....

[deltadoc]

I've tried quarry tiles (pavers) and don't like them because sauce/cheese, etc., falls through the cracks and burns onto the bottom of my oven.

Been using a rectangular (almost square) 1/2" thick pizza stone that looks exactly like the one that was recently shown on America's Test Kitchen as the absolute top choice pizza stone. I've had mine for 22 years, and it has never broken.

About every 3 or so months, I just leave it in the oven and put the oven on self-clean cycle. Stone comes out beautiful.

1. Never put a cold stone in a hot oven.
2. Never take a hot stone out of the oven.
3. Never get water on the stone. It soaks it up, and it's still in there for a long time. You don't want water in your stone when you're cooking with it.

I've followed these rules for 22 years, and my $8.95 pizza stone (1983 prices) still works wonderfully. I shied away from round stones, because the rectangular stone has more surface area for buns, rolls, square pizzas, etc.

Many times, I leave it in and place casseroles, roasting pans right on it. As long as it has heated up sufficiently, it evens out the heat and nothing ever burns anymore.

doc

[Rachel Perlow]

Now that I've had the tiles for a while and see that I actually make use of them, and that they pretty much stay in the oven, I'd be willing to buy a large stone to leave in there. However, the only ones I've seen haven't been large enough, let alone the equivalent of $9 (1983 prices), let's say that equals under $30. If I do see one, I'll be sure to get it. For now, the tiles work.

[jmolinari]

I also have a grid of 7x7 tiles, in a 2x2 pattern , i wish i could find 1 big paver, but i make do with these little ones. They are cheap, and work beautifully.
I thikn if we go to a real stone store, instead of home depot we could find 12x12 or 16x16 pavers...

jason

[raisab]

Thank you Rachel.

[Briarhill]

I have used a FibraMent stone for years, and I wouldn't be without it. It's great not only for pizza, but for making artisanal bread, as well. The one I use is 3/4-inch thick and comes in various sizes (mine is 13" x 18"). O' course, it's not cheap (current price for my size is $44.50), but I think it's well worth it.

The stones may be purchased here.

[Chris Amirault]

Folks, before you post your recipes on this thread, be sure to check the eGullet Society guidelines for copyright as it pertains to recipes. Basically, you can't paste in text from other web sites, nor can you type in verbatim instructions or descriptions from cookbooks.

Recipes that started with someone else's ideas but that you have revised are perfectly fine -- just make the source and the changes very clear.

Keep in mind that this post is short-hand; it's best to click on the guidelines and give them a read.

Meanwhile, keep slingin' them pies!!

[Random Alias]

deltadoc, on Apr 27 2005, 07:44 AM, said:

Jason Perlow, on Apr 26 2005, 06:54 PM, said:

Baked

Jason,
Look at the baked Genoa salami pizza. There's a "cow's head" almost dead center in the picture!! Very artistic indeed! See his dark eyes, floppy ears, long snout??

:)

doc

I think you put the wrong type of mushrooms on your pizza.

[Grub]

Here's my pizza attempt. First time, so be gentle

Well, it's that time of the year, so I figured I'd try grilling a couple of pizzas. I tried to document this as best I could -- but towards the end, the battery died on my camera, and the spare was dead, in spite of showing a "fully charged" light while in the charger. Oh well.

Some of the pictures, and descriptions are out of sequence, for the sake of continuity. Okay, that sounds a little contradictory, but well -- it's true.

I used a Wolfgang Puck dough recipe: 1 packet yeast, 1 tsp honey, 1 cup warm water, 3 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 tbsp oil. First, dissolve the yeast and honey in a quarter cup of hot water...




...mix flour, oil and salt...




...add yeast mixture and rest of water...




...mix together




...and dump on floured surface, knead until smooth...




...add some oil, cover with damp towel and set aside somewhere warm and draft-free...




...and let rise for 30-60 min...





... split in two, form into balls and set aside to rise again, 30 min. After this, wrap in plastic and keep in refrigerator until ready to use -- up to 2 days...




Next, the toppings: Basel, roughly chopped...




...tomatoes (using a sharp ceramic knife with broken tip )




...and my favorite -- this improves ANY pizza -- caramelized onions...




...2.5 onions renders down to this, over warm/low heat, in about 3 hours...




...and gotta bash up some garlic to go with the oil I'm brushing the pizzas with...




Here are the toppings: Sliced mozzarella, grated parmesan, prosciutto, black olives, caramelized onions, basil and tomatoes. For the second pizza, I'd use anchovies instead of the prosciutto.





The pizza breads rolled out (the one in the back required a bit more attention -- I was going to make them oblong rather than circular, but that one got a little out of control). And yeah, Does Equis makes for a splendid rolling pin. I used to have a long, thin bottle of vodka for that purpose, but it mysteriously evaporated some time ago. Strangely enough, so did the Dos Equis. It's like a veritable Bermuda Triangle around here.




The prosciutto pizza all dressed up and ready to go. I started with the tomatoes, then mozzarella, onions, olives, basil, and prosciutto -- and a few pieces of mozzarella on top. I was going to add parmesan towards the end, but forgot.




The anchovy pizza. Same order as above, but with anchovies instead of prosciutto, and also, I added the parmesan at the start. Note the nice grill-marks.




I use a simple coal grill, and a stove. No pre-soaked, or liquids -- as fun as that can be, mind you. I've covered half of the grill with tinfoil, for indirect cooking




Coals are nice and hot, and ready to go...




...so they're dumped out. Grill is oiled, and allowed to heat up properly:




First up, I make the first pizza bread (note that this obviously took place, before I assembled the toppings):




Argh! I left it ontoo long before turning it, and burned the bottom!




First pizza on the right, cooking very slowly, over indirect heat. The second pizza would only stay over the coals for a minute or two, before being moved back inside, to receive its toppings. The rest of the time, the lid was on the grill, which (I hope) would reflect extra heat onto the pizza on the right.




Notice how the heat makes the pizza bread fluff up -- I think this is a sign that it is getting too hot. The first bread ballooned up really badly (and was burned much worse than this one).




Second pizza turned -- slightly less burned. I didn't spread the coals out enough, and it concentrated the heat, which caused uneven heating and burns...




Ironically enough, I used too FEW coals, to cook the pizza on the right through indirect heating. It was going so slow, that I loaded up more coals, and turned the grill around, so that the tinfoil was directly over the coals -- bad mistake. The additional heat burned my first pizza very badly, and the bottom of the crust was completely charred.

I'm not sure if I was frustrated or relieved, but the camera's battery ran out at this point. so that was the end of my photographic pizza journey...

The anchovy pizza came out pretty good though.

First try at grilling pizza like this -- it's an interesting approach, but I'm not sure it adds anything beyond what I'd get out of a regular oven, though... Maybe, if I could manage to control the heat a bit better, and use a simpler recipe (I kinda overloaded the toppings this time), I'd see a difference.

But boy oh boy -- taking pictures AND cooking sure adds a bit of work -- washing hands while kneading dough, so I could take pictures etc... Plus I made some Creme Caramelles at the same time, that didn't come out very good either. Oh well -- crummy food, but interesting pictures, I guess.

This post has been edited by Grub: 29 April 2005 - 12:54 AM

[chef koo]

albiston, on Apr 28 2005, 05:32 AM, said:

chef koo, on Apr 28 2005, 09:35 AM, said:

hmmm. i don't know who to believe now. although i'm not italian myself but i'm pretty confident about the anchovie thing. i've seen and have been told by so many people. i don't mean that the anchovie should be a main ingredient but it should be used as a seasoning. this is the way i've been taught. i even looked it up in my larousse. but then aain larousse is a french reference and i know how the french and italians get along when it comes to food.

Chef koo,

as much as I consider Larousse Gastronomique a great reference for French cuisine, I cannot help feel the urge to rip the book apart whenever I look up anything Italian in it. Most of the entries are superficial and sometimes downright wrong. There's better references for Italian cuisine out there, starting with Marcella Hazan's books.

My comment on the anchovies in the sauce is only limited to the classical Neapolitan recipe, not to pizza in general, since this is a dish that has changed as it moved.

If you want to read a thorough article on pizza Napoletana, with a few recipes, have a look at this one from Wine News magazine. There's a lot of info and both classical recipes (look at the Pizza Margherita Extra DOC one, ) and newer ones.

my true desire is to know the correct approach to classic neopolitan pizza. so if i'm wrong i want to know. although i'm reluctant to part with the anchovies... damn that made the sauce.

that was a great article

This post has been edited by chef koo: 29 April 2005 - 01:10 AM

[Chris Amirault]

Grub, that is just fantastic! Your photos and directions are impeccable. As for your "rolling pins," I guess you'll have to keep a good stock of empties around, huh?

[Msk]

Grub,

I have used that same recipe and gotten good results, though I use Pain L'ancienne now usually.

You can prevent those air bubbles by "Docking" your dough before you put it on the grill. Basically poke holes in it with the tines of a fork.


Msk

[Grub]

Oh, "docking" -- great, thanks for the advice, I'll definitely remember that one for next time.

Do you have a recipe for this Pain L'ancienne?

[MarketStEl]

Rachel Perlow, on Apr 27 2005, 05:30 PM, said:

Instead of a stone, you can get tiles cheaper, and the peel is totally worth it. They're not expensive, got mine in a restaurant supply store, I think we paid around $20 for a medium-large one. Smaller ones can be had for less. You look at it and go, "where am I going to store that???" But it was easy to drill a hole in the end of the handle to hang it on the wall of the garage, if you have a pantry with some available wall space, you could hang it there, or even in back of a clothes closet (if you clean it off first).

Garage?

Wall space?

The closet's full of clothes.

So far, I've been pleased with the results from a simple screen.

[Susan in FL]

deltadoc, on Apr 28 2005, 12:05 PM, said:

I've tried quarry tiles (pavers) and don't like them because sauce/cheese, etc., falls through the cracks and burns onto the bottom of my oven.

Been using a rectangular (almost square) 1/2" thick pizza stone that looks exactly like the one that was recently shown on America's Test Kitchen as the absolute top choice pizza stone.  I've had mine for 22 years, and it has never broken.

About every 3 or so months, I just leave it in the oven and put the oven on self-clean cycle.  Stone comes out beautiful.

1.  Never put a cold stone in a hot oven.
2.  Never take a hot stone out of the oven.
3.  Never get water on the stone.  It soaks it up, and it's still in there for a long time.  You don't want water in your stone when you're cooking with it.

I've followed these rules for 22 years, and my $8.95 pizza stone (1983 prices) still works wonderfully.  I shied away from round stones, because the rectangular stone has more surface area for buns, rolls, square pizzas, etc.

Many times, I leave it in and place casseroles, roasting pans right on it.  As long as it has heated up sufficiently, it evens out the heat and nothing ever burns anymore.

doc

Thanks for the great info, doc. That's what I have and I appreciate the tips.
Good job, Grub. Impressive.
I am following this interesting cook-off, but want to pass on participating this time.
Cheers!

[albiston]

After two days of stuffing my (e)Gullet full of pizza, here's my contribution. On my last visit to Italy I brought back some flour expressly for pizza. I knew there was a reason to save it for a special occasion: an eGullet cook-off! The flour is a relatively soft one, only 10.5% protein content, as tradition wants.

My intention was to try and reproduce a classical Neapolitan style pizza at home, using a few tricks I learned through experience and tips from friends who are pizzaioli. I think the results are not too far away from the original; what's really lacks is a wood-burning oven! Until I manage to convince my wife that, 1) a wood-burning pizza oven is an essential item for our baking needs, and 2) that we need therefore to move to a house with a garden in order to be able to build one there, I guess I'll have to stick to my old but reliable electric oven.

There are a few basic things that mark Neapolitan pizza in comparison to most of the ones I've seen in this thread up to now, so I'll just point them out to explain why I did a few things the way I did.

- While I sometimes amuse myself creating baroque pizzas with rich toppings, in Naples traditional toppings are simple, even minimalist. Because of this I've made a classic margherita and a one with grilled aubergines.

- Mozzarella should melt but not brown. Easier to say than to do in a domestic oven: to overcome this I always bake my pizzas without cheese for the first few minutes and then add the cheese.

- Neapolitan pizza should always have cornicione a rim of puffed up dough which should ideally be almost hollow. To get this you really need to work with a very moist dough; I'm close but not exactly there.

To make my dough I used the classic recipe as a guideline, but modified taking inspiration from a method I found on an Italian food forum for pizza al taglio, the rectangular pan pizza typical of Rome. The original recipe (qsomewhat different) was developed by a cook-pizzaiolo called Gabriele Bonci, who's considered a bit of a pizza guru.

I first made a rather fluid starter which was left to rise 2 hours at room temperature and the 20 in the fridge.

550 g lukewarm water
400 g pizza flour
1/4 tsp dried yeast

The followoing day I added

600 g pizza flour
125 g water
1 1/2 tsp fine sea salt

and kneaded the finished dough for about 20 minutes in my mixer set at the lowest setting. Pizza flour needs a rather long time to both hydrate properly and to fully develop the gluten. Once the dough passed the windowpane test it was left to rise 2 hours at room temperature plus 10 in the fridge, after which it had nicely doubled in size. I then punched it down, split it in 4 pieces, the so called panetti each to be used for an individual pizza, and let them rise in the fridge for another 12 hours.

To shape the pizzas and get the cornicione you need to leave the dough thicker on the rim. Since I can't shape the pizzas with the wrist work the pizzaioli use I use a trick which I think I first read in Peter Rehinardt's "Crust and Crumb", i.e. I pat the dough in a rough circle and then pick it up from the rim and flick it downwards, moving around the rim with every new flick. After a little practice it works very well.

As "sauced" I simply used good canned plum tomatoes, finely chopped, sprinkled with salt and a little tasty EV olive oil. I would have loved to use real S.Marzano but found none this time. The mozzarella was cut a day ahead and left to drain in a sieve overnight in the fridge.

The aubergine margherita before going into the oven, cheese-less.

Finished, with a couple of basil leaves added for decoration and a little aroma. The basil should actually go on the pizza before baking but I find it always bakes too log in a home oven, loosing it's nice fresh smell, so I compromise. I left the cornicione too thick, but nobody complained .

The margherita.

I was quite happy about the pizzas: while fully baked they didn't get too crisp even in the thinnest spots, and the cornicione puffed up nicely and was almost as it should be. The dough came out with a nice flavor of its own. It doesn't beat sourdough pizza though.

I had one dough ball left today, but didn't exactly feel like pizza again. So I decided to recycle the dough to make panuozzi a sort of pizza dough panini created in Gragnano (a town on the slopes of mount Vesuvius) exactly for this reason. The dough is shaped into a long oval which is then baked till it just puffs up.

At this point it is split open and stuffed with whatever one fancies. I had a little mozzarella and aubergines left from the previous evening, and added some prosciutto to that, closed the panuozzo and baked it till the cheese melted. I waited a tad too long (telephone salespeople be damned) so the top became too crunchy. Quite palatable all the same .

[Jason Perlow]

Fantastic, Alberto. It puts our American-style pizzas to shame.

[Susan in FL]

Alberto, that is the most beautiful homemade pizza I've ever seen.

[Patrick S]

Great work Alberto, Grub, Tracy, Jackal, Tepee, and Jason Perlow! I've been checking this thread every day, absorbing the sagely pizza wisdom, knowing that I'd have to make pizza this weekend.

Clearly I'm the amateur here, but I'm in pizza ecstacy right now, having just finished a couple of slices of my pie. I know I've probably committed a few faux pas along the way (cooked the sauce, probably used too much topping), but here it is nonetheless. Topped this fresh mozza and some parmesan, caramelized onions, and pepperoni. Baked at 500F on a small stone for 10 minutes. At 4 minutes left, I turned off the oven and turned the broiler on low.

Lucky me, I have everything I need to make another one tomorrow!

Cheers!

[Tepee]

Patrick, I must say you're doing puhretty, pretty well inspite of your injured foot! I'm impressed! So many ideas in this thread.....

[albiston]

Jason Perlow, on May 1 2005, 12:18 AM, said:

Fantastic, Alberto. It puts our American-style pizzas to shame.

Jason (and Susan, Patrick), thank you for being so kind . Neapolitan and American pizza have so many differences that they shouldn't be compared, I think. I like both though I won't hide I prefer the Neapolitan one, but I'm Italian after all .

I really hope I didn't put anyone's pizza to shame: I find everyon has done a great job. All the pizzas I've seen in this thread up to now are extremely mouthwatering.

[Behemoth]

albiston, on May 1 2005, 06:02 AM, said:

I really hope I didn't put anyone's pizza to shame: I find everyon has done a great job. All the pizzas I've seen in this thread up to now are extremely mouthwatering.

Yeah yeah yeah, Usually I go for the Margherita kind, but there is no way I'm posting a photo after you, man

Maybe I will provide an example of a few wonderful German versions, such as, for example, tunafish with hard boiled eggs and sweet mustard sauce, chicken with sweet indian curry sauce pizza, or the ever popular ham, pineapple and corn niblets The only problem is, somone would actually have to eat the thing.

[Rachel Perlow]

Wait, so Alberto, "real" pizza flour is low protein flour? I assumed bread flour (higher protein content) would be more appropriate. Anyone care to discuss the differences or, better yet, do an experiment using two different flours but otherwise similar techniques?

[slkinsey]

Last night I had a bunch of friends over for one of my pizza-making marathons. These are fundamentally Italian style pizze, but in a larger size so everyone can have a piece of each one. I don't have any pictures of the dough or anything like that, but here are the finished products:

Here are all the ingredients. I use a fairly wet dough that fermented for around 12 hours (I usually go 24 hours, but realized last night that I was out of flour). Fat Guy and I traveled up to Arthur Avenue for some of their amazing best-of-class fresh mozzarella -- as good as any fior di latte mozzarella I've had in Italy.

We started with a margarita.

Shitake mushrooms and cubes of pancetta.

Fresh artichoke and filetti di pomodoro.

Red peppers with eggs "fried" right on the crust.

Here is a picture of an egg slice.

Spicy broccoli rabe.

Shrimp and chives.

Sausage and ramps.

A "pizza nonna" -- a tomato/mozzarella pizza topped with a dressed salad (upland cress, in this instance) with prosciutto draped over the top.

Littleneck clams baked right on he crust.

Gorgonzola picante and asparagus. You can see that the stones in the oven were beginning to lose heat by this point.

Here's my oven setup. As you can see, it's a crappy residential stove -- actually pretty good for a Manhattan apartment. There are two levels of stones, with the stone on the bottom being a slab of slate from docsconz's back yard. I only baked on the two lower stones, sometimes transferring a pizza from the bottom stone to the middle stone if we weren't quite ready for the next pizza. Especially in the beginning, the slate stone was throwing up some serious oven spring and baking the pizze in around 5 minutes. I estimate that the slate weighs around ten times more than the conventional baking stones.

Here is a view of the bottom of the crust towards the end of the run. Still getting good thermal performance from the slate, although the baking time increased to around ten minutes by the last pizza.

[slkinsey]

Rachel Perlow, on May 1 2005, 11:20 AM, said:

Wait, so Alberto, "real" pizza flour is low protein flour? I assumed bread flour (higher protein content) would be more appropriate. Anyone care to discuss the differences or, better yet, do an experiment using two different flours but otherwise similar techniques?

I've discussed this a number of times on eG. Yes, real Italian pizza flour is lower in protein than American bread flour. It's also perhaps a bit lower than American AP flour as well. In addition, "00" flour is more highly refined. That said, not all "00" flour is the same (the "00" refers to the level of refinement, not the protein level). "00" flour for pizza is higher in protein than "00" flour for pasta. Still not as high as American AP flour, though. A lower protein, more refined American flour might work well, such as the biscuit flours from the Southeast.

I personally find that a lower protein flour gives a crust that is more to my liking. But I make what are fundamentally Italian-style pizze. American style pizze have a lot more stuff on top of them, and it is likely the case that a stronger dough is required in order to support those toppings.

[Chufi]

slkinsey, I just love the one with the fried egg. I just had dinner but I could eat that right now.. I might copy that idea later in the week when I finally have time for baking some pizza!

[vengroff]

Chufi, on May 1 2005, 10:05 AM, said:

slkinsey, I just love    the one with the fried egg. I just had dinner but I could eat that right now.. I might copy that idea later in the week when I finally have time for baking some pizza!

Egg-topped pizza is also one of my favorites. Sadly it's almost never seen in this country.

[Jason Perlow]

Quote

I personally find that a lower protein flour gives a crust that is more to my liking. But I make what are fundamentally Italian-style pizze.

So Sam, did you use AP or bread flour, or did you use imported 00 Pizza flour like Alberto did?