scott123

FYI, you won't get there using this book. If you travel West, and visit places like Tartine or Ken's Artisan pizza, I'm relatively certain that MP can help you recreate those pies, but, Nathan and friends understand New York style pizza about as well as a fish understands the snow on top of Mount Everest.

https://littleraesbakery.com/2021/11/09/the-history-of-white-flour/#:~:text=Ancient Egyptians are the earliest,version of “white” flour. The ancient Greeks had pissa/pita flatbreads, but topped pizza didn't originate in Naples until the early 1700s. From the advent of sifting, poorer peasants couldn't afford white flour and it was prized as a status symbol. As time went by and it became more affordable, white flour took over Europe. I can't tell you what flour Neapolitans were using for pizza in early 1700. I have a hunch it was sifted, but that's just a hunch. But, once the technological advances emerged in the late 1800s, we know, for certain, that Neapolitan pizza was/is white flour. Where am I going with this? Roberto (Don Antonio's) is using whole wheat. It's a fraction (last I heard, it's 25%), and it's a transitional whole wheat, but it's still whole wheat. Authentic Neapolitan pizza, as defined by at least the last 130 years, contains no whole wheat flour. If Roberto wants to classify this as 'archaic Neapolitan' or some other label, I'd be fine with that, but, I wouldn't call this 'Neapolitan.' Neapolitan-ish, maybe, but not Neapolitan. And I'm not just saying this to be pedantic. Authentic Neapolitan pizza is the puffiest/most ethereal bread on the planet. Once you add whole wheat to the equation, that puff is gone. Whole wheat completely trashes that extreme volume, it completely trashes what makes Neapolitan pizza so treasured. What's even sadder is that Roberto's pizzerias, until he went this whole wheat route, were an incredibly easy means for folks visiting New York to experience the real deal. It shouldn't be difficult to experience authentic Neapolitan pizza in New York City, but, thanks to Roberto and his greedy Caputo overlords, it now is. You've got Mangieri, but, his sourdough obsession makes for an inconsistent product. The last measure of salt in an already deep wound? Roberto is president of VPN America, an organization that's supposed to be dedicated to preserving authentic Neapolitan as it traverses the globe. What he's doing is basically the complete opposite of preservation.

Is this the recipe you've used? https://www.allroadsleadtothe.kitchen/2016/10/butter-chicken.html

You made the claim that CTM isn't Indian. I'm showing you multiple Delhiite food historians who strongly disagree. As far as butter chicken and CTM being different dishes, neither dish is a static entity. There are as many variations to either dish as there are Indian chefs. The two dishes only have 4 defining components- chicken, tomatoes, some form of cream (dairy or coconut) and the typical Indian aromatics (onion, garlic, ginger). When you strip the dishes down to their common components, they are identical. If they are truly different dishes, tell me one ingredient that butter chicken always has that CTM never has- or vice versa. You can't.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ylx1NCyJgBUJ:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/5972643/Chicken-tikka-masala-row-grows-as-Indian-chefs-reprimand-Scottish-MPs-over-culinary-origins.html&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0

The concept that CTM is of British origin is disputed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tikka_masala#Origins CTM effectively is butter chicken, an authentic Indian dish that predates any CTM origin story by at least 20 years. The idea that, up until the 1960s, no Indian chef had ever made a tomato based chicken curry is kind of ridiculous- and a bit provincial, to be honest. 20 years ago, CTM's origin was strictly the Glasgwegian Campbell's soup nonsense, and, now, as you can see from Wikipedia, it's a mixture of viewpoints. Hopefully, in another 20 years, the Glaswegian garbage will be completely forgotten. I can sort of understand how the British would want to take ownership of one of their favorite foods, but, it's belittling to the cultural contribution of the subcontinent.

I support vegetarianism/veganism. The less people eating meat, the lower the demand, the lower the price With all this mind, this plant chicken looks absolutely amazing! Plant based diets are so healthy! Meat is murder!

It sounds like you're trying to fix the dish you've already made, but, in the future, you might want to try another recipe for CTM. I don't have the definitive CTM recipe (yet), but, any good restaurant style CTM will have ginger, cumin and sugar/honey in the sauce. The fact that this recipe omits all of these is not a good sign, imo.

When you have a heating element under the floor, the floor essentially becomes the heating element. By placing the foil on the floor, the heat will conduct directly to the foil in such a way that the foil will just become an extension of the floor, and not become the heat deflector that you're looking for. On the shelf where the steel is sitting, you can put a curve in the foil, fold over the ends into hooks and hang it, like a hammock from shelf wire to shelf wire. That will take it off the floor but still provide a little air between the foil and the steel.

If you don't want to invest in a stone, arrange two pieces of foil into a 15" x 17" rectangle and place it on the shelf under the steel, centering it. This will direct heat around the steel and send it up to the top of the oven/to the hotel pan. This may not give you stone-like results, but, it should balance out the heat better than what you have now. You can also trap more steam inside the hotel pan by covering the open portions with foil as well.

Not to sound like a broken record but, as long as you're using whole wheat flour, your crumb will never reach non whole wheat flour heights. This being said, for a transitional whole wheat flour, that's a phenomenal looking crumb. FWIW, I don't think you're overkneading. The easiest way to discern overkneading is dough that's gone from smooth, to not smooth, but you can also sort of see it in the finished crust, and I'm not seeing any telltale tearing. Btw, are you baking on steel? Steel's conductivity makes it ideal for pizza, but, bread favors the lower conductivity of stone- unless, of course, you're looking for an exceptionally dark base.

It depends on the place, but, in most pizzerias, wait staff/front of the house is isolated from the nuts and bolts of food prep- and in some pizzerias, doughmaking is confined to only one or two people- or even sometimes it's farmed out to another entity, such as a local bakery. How confident did they sound? I did a little more digging and found this: https://www.facebook.com/SliceofColumbus/videos/970963109695786 A little more reconnaissance might help- like getting a dough ball, but it sounds like you're ready to start making pizza. What type of pan are you using and what are it's dimensions? Do you have a digital kitchen scale for weighing the ingredients?

https://cairnspring.com/products/glacier-peak-bread-flour?variant=35913921233061 By acting like tiny little knives in the dough, bran is effectively a crumb killer. If a fluffy open crumb is the goal, then it's not about reducing the bran, but about removing it entirely. Considering that you're using what I'd classify as a transitional whole wheat flour, you're achieving pretty amazing results, but, if an open crumb is your goal, you'll want to follow the Detroit playbook and use white flour. As far as which white flour to use... Buddy's is the OG Detroit Pizzeria, and it's been confirmed that they use bromated flour. There is no such thing as bromated all purpose, which would leave bromated bread flour or bromated high gluten. At the thickness of Detroit, high gluten would be too chewy, leaving bread flour as the likely choice for authentic Detroit style pizza. This being said, I've used both all purpose and bread flour, and I kind of like the softer crumb I get from all purpose- and I've seen some respected pizza guys use a mixture of both AP and bread. Flour choice is a balance between openness/volume and chew. The more protein in the flour, the greater the potential volume, but, also, the greater potential chewiness. With all purpose, the crumb can be very soft, but not quite as open as bread flour, and with bread flour, that's reversed- very open, but not quite as soft. Since you're looking for an open crumb, I might start with bread flour and see what you think. Protein dictates water absorption, so bread flour will require a bit more water than all purpose. For Detroit, all purpose is happiest around 67% hydration, and bread flour is probably best around 69%. Any more water than that and you're limiting the potential volume- by weakening the gluten framework and hindering oven spring. Technically, neither flour is made to handle this much water, but, you've got to reach the high 60s in order to get the dough into the pan without too many rests. Bread flour will also take longer to proof than either your existing flour or all purpose, since it's capable of being proofed to a higher volume. No recipe can ever tell you exactly how long to proof dough for, since there are too many environmental variables that are unique to you. Make sure every ingredient is exactly the same temp every time, and proof at the same temp, and use trial and error to find the time frame where the dough is just about to collapse, but hasn't collapsed yet. This is how you'll achieve the most open crumb possible. Lastly, the thickness you have now is about right for Detroit. As you move into a more open crumb, the final volume will be a bit too high, so you'll most likely need to scale down the dough a bit.

Are you certain? Was this something a waitperson told you or did you catch a glimpse of a bag of flour? Did you inquire about buying dough? There's two seeds at the bottom of the photo of the sauce. Also, in the pizza photos there's the occasional fleshy bit of non-paste tomato. In NY, a few places will combine paste with canned tomatoes. This could be what Adriatico's is doing. If it is a combo, it might also be cooked. Cooking is a lot of labor, so you don't find it that often, but, some places cook their sauce. Are you sure that the dipping sauce is the same sauce that's on the pizza? It's hard to tell, but, it almost appears like the sauce on the pizza might be a tiny bit wetter. I've seen places in my area that will give you a different sauce for dipping than they do for the pies- the dipping sauce is usually more of a pasta sauce. Really nice photos.

You didn't give it enough heat. And your layers of oil might have been too thick. Thinner layers of oil don't just produce an even coating, but they harden faster than a thicker layer of oil. The general rule of thumb is always to wipe the oil on, then carefully wipe it off, then hit it with heat. Light and heat, as has been said many times, are the enemy of oil, but... heat is the friend of seasoning. If the seasoning is sticky, keep giving it more heat- and, if you have it, more time exposed to heat. A slightly lower heat for a longer time tends to polymerize oil a bit better than a quick blast of intense heat. This is why I always season in an oven. If your handles come off, like the OPs do, and your wok fits in the oven, that's how I'd do it. You can't go too thin with the oil layers. It's way better to have 10 microscopically thin layers than 3 goopy bumpy ones. And, as mentioned in the original post, I'd hit it with some very fine grit sandpaper (anywhere between 320-600). This isn't something that's normally done with cast iron, but, cast iron has a much rougher/much more grippier surface than steel.

Will do!!

Mitch, I know this wasn't your intent, but, you've triggered a bit of an existential crisis for me. I've devoted the vast majority of the past 20 years of my life to finding the best slice in NY, and this was under my nose the whole time? WTF? ! How could I possibly miss this? Something of this caliber?! And, apparently, that putz Mark Iacano is a well known fan? Yet more salt in the wound! Haunting personal failures aside, this is definitely a classic slice. If I was going to split hairs, I might say that the rim on the pepperoni slice is a bit more archetypal than the wider/more rustic rim on the slice above it. That said, this is absolutely within the classic NY style spectrum (large-ish diameter, thin crust, well defined small rim, golden brown delicious/not too much char). Man, this hurts. The (seeming) slice of my dreams, in Brooklyn, all this time. Obviously, I'm going to need to taste it to know for certain, but I'm confident that this blows modern Joe's out of the water. No whole wheat flour there- no polydextrose or lecithin, and I will bet you every single cent I've ever earned that there's no where near 70% water in this dough

Have you tried this? https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Original-Melt-n-Dip-Easy-Melt-Cheese-32-oz/10452425 I can't speak for that, specifically, but, my life pretty much revolves around Walmart's Deli Deluxe knockoff.

Are the condos at Jockey Hollow really a million bucks? Yowza, that's a lot for a condo. Do you know how, in Seinfeld, Jerry's father would like gifts more if they were better deals- and his favorite were items that were stolen? Well, that's kind of my approach to food. I'm on an eternal quest to find the most possible bang for my buck. And these days, it's an uphill battle. If you could slum it a bit, I'd love to do a meal sometime Speaking of slumming it, Masago, in Morristown, has cash only half price sushi. I'm not sure if I'd consider it a great deal, but, for Morristown, it's pretty competitive. It looks like Minado (Morris Plains) is done, so cheap sushi is even harder to find now.

I've easily been to over 300 Indian restaurants, but, as much as I love Chinese American restaurants, I don't think I've covered enough ground to give my local place any real kind of endorsement. It's just sort of my local place by default. Anyway, it's Hunan Wok in Florham Park. I like the egg roll, and I like the dumplings- but the dumplings are somewhat thick skinned. My relationship with dumplings is complicated. The dumpling making scene in Crazy Rich Asians brought a tear to my eye. I should be able to tell you where the best dumpling is in this area. With almost every other dish, I have very stark metrics. For instance, I know exactly what I want in a pizza, down to an extremely granular level. With dumplings, though, as many as I've consumed... I know that I like a fairly thick skin, but, other than that, I know that I've had better ones in the past- when I lived in Manhattan, a local place had chicken dumplings to die for, but, I can't really put my finger on what traits I'm looking for. And spending the 7 or so bucks to try them at different places.... eh. I think I tried the egg rolls at about fifteen local joints. For a great egg roll, I can risk about $1.35 fifteen times. But, coming up short on $7 dumplings... that would hurt When I'm trying to better my lot in life, dumplings are what I think about. Not a house on the beach, not a trophy wife. Dumplings.

I like to think of myself as being open to other cultures... but... chicken tendon? Beef tendon, absolutely, but, chicken?

The 20-30 minutes definitely doesn't include making the dough. Dough takes a while. It has to mix, and then proof. The vast majority of pizzerias don't proof the dough for very long, but it's almost always at least an hour. Making the dough in the morning, and then having it available throughout the day is pretty common. If a place is churning out an extraordinarily high number of pies, then they might make multiple batches of dough during the day. Pan pizza typically has an extra proof in the pan. Even that's not included in the 20-30 minutes. The 20-30 minutes is most likely just for topping and baking. I'm about 98% certain that Adriatico's is using the same dough for all their pizzas. When you ask for the dough ball, if they just give you dough, you might ask if it's the bearcat (large sicilian) dough or if it's for NY. They might then confirm that it's all the same- which, to an extent, helps a little bit. Pictures help. Photos of the dough ball, if you can get a closeup/macro of their crumb (cross section of a slice), that will tell us a bit about the dough. If you can film yourself stretching the dough into the pan, that would be nice. Definitely weigh the dough. Also, you'll need to get the dimensions of the pizza so you can get the right size pan. When you go, look for bags of flour. From photos, it doesn't look like the kitchen is exposed, but they might store the flour someplace visible. Go to the bathroom. Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of things on the way to the bathroom. See how accessible the dumpster is. Pizzerias have been known to get angry at folks looking through their trash, so this is something you want to be careful about, and, if it's not accessible and/or you feel like there's a chance you might get caught, then don't do it. Occasionally, though, folks have clocked dumpsters and found various refuse to the side or the covers have been open and the contents were fairly quickly and easily identified. Obviously, bring your camera As I said before, Prince Street is probably going to be pretty close, and, fortunately, Prince has had a lot of exposure over the years. I'd take a look at these videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVoEzahr_QU (Do not follow the presenter's recipe, just watch the stuff they film in the pizzeria). This shows you the pan (they call it iron, but it's a steel pan), it shows him stretching the dough, and it shows how they proof the dough in the pan- and how the dough looks after it's been proofed. This gives you another glimpse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEJLHopLTCc Other than Kenji's ill fated attempt, there really is no existing recipe. This covers some fairly broad strokes: https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=59014.0 Obviously, once you have something Prince-ish, it will need tweaking to make it more Adriatico's-ish, but Prince is a good starting point. But, first, recon. They might not sell dough, the kitchen/flour might be entirely closed off and the dumpster could very well be off limits. If you strike out completely, it's not the end of the world, but, recon is absolutely worth a shot.

As much as I worship at the Aldi altar, the aisle of shame, for me, is like a dollar store with extraordinarily bad taste- and, much like a dollar store, for the most part, you're not really getting any good deals. You're just paying a dollar for stuff that, for the most part, isn't worth a dollar. While I'm sure that dollar stores have rabid FB groups, it doesn't necessarily make them special. When I was a child, Woolworths would have decent candy, but, they'd have aisle after aisle of basically garbage that almost no one would buy. I can celebrate a fairly good turkey-free kielbasa that's about $3/lb, but I'm not celebrating the dollar store. Don't get me wrong, I'll shop at the dollar store, but, I'm not going to celebrate it.

Adriatico's is not a focaccia type of dough. It's going to have much less water than a focaccia- and there's a really good chance that it will use stronger flour as well. Also, while there's nothing wrong with Grandma or Detroit style pizza, Adriatico's isn't Grandma or Detroit either. It is a little Prince Street Pizza-ish, which is what Kenji was trying to replicate in the Serious Eats recipe posted above. Had Kenji actually succeeded in making his clone, that might have been a good jumping off point for you, but, unfortunately, Kenji being Kenji, he misses the mark entirely. I've been doing a little more digging. In Adriatico's FAQ, it says that pizzas take "20-30 minutes to prepare and cook on average." That doesn't give us an exact bake time, but it helps. I'm beginning to get a sense of where to start with an Adriatico's clone, but, I'd rather not guess at things (like flour) that you might be able to figure out with a trip there. One other important piece of reconnaissance you can do would be to buy a dough ball. Most pizzerias will sell dough, on it's own. Hopefully, they do as well. Everything hinges on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. If you really love Adriatico's and want to invest time and energy recreating it at home, I can help you get there. But if you just want to be able to make a good square slice, without getting into too much complexity, then I think Detroit might be the way to go. It won't have Adriatico's crunchy exterior, but it will still be pretty good. Another option might be an existing Prince Street clone- created by someone that actually knows how to make pizza. But that might get a bit more involved than Detroit. It all depends on how serious you are about recreating Adriatico's and how much time you're able to put into it.

I'm assuming this is representative of Adriatico's? I watched these as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73wQm9laHTE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=typag4dy5_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLtdMfKmyEg Are you still in the area? I'm asking because reconnaissance can go a very long way towards replicating a pizzeria's pizza at home. For instance, many pizzerias store their flour in a visible place. Same for tomatoes. The ovens will tell you a great deal of the story. Watching (or filming) them form a pie can be invaluable. FWIW, this isn't NY Sicilian, but I have seen places in NY that do pies like this. I might even call it slightly L&B-ish: https://www.google.com/search?q=L%26B+pizza&sxsrf=AOaemvKxrlTnOXTFRLDdNCJY6FTeIrnjSQ:1639290010755&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj40JiWz930AhXlTN8KHUFBAlQQ_AUoAnoECAIQBA&biw=1286&bih=665&dpr=1