Chris Hennes

Going only by appearance (obviously!) it looks a lot like the slice I had when I was in NY a couple of weeks ago, which is the one and only slice I have ever had in NYC. I actually had decided against posting about it because a) mine was from some random chain-looking place just off Union Square so I figured it wasn't really representative and b) it didn't have the big puffy rim that I thought was characteristic of the style. So I'm interested to see that I was wrong on that count, at least. Had I known that I was supposed to be seeking out Joe's I'd have gone there, I probably literally walked past it, you said they have a Union Square location, right?

How did you arrive at the 7 hour number? At first glance I'd just suggest very, very underproofed.

And a day later, changing the toppings up a bit (brussels sprouts and blue cheese added, switched to pizza cheese underneath, same sauce): Still good, but not quite as tender a crumb as yesterday. I might try freezing it right after baking next time.

OK, so we get a lot of spam here at the forums. And mostly you don't see any of it, because after 20 years on the internet we're pretty good at catching it. Today, however, I'm going to subject you to what might be my favorite so far, I can't read it without literally laughing out loud. I've removed the links for obvious reasons, but this was a submission today from a user calling themselves "Adolfo12" entitled "How to make chicken in frying pan" (and yes, this is 100% of the post, so the lack of a step one, or of an ingredients list, is indeed puzzling):

Al Taglio Pizza Margherita (KM p. 250) This is my first go at the Al Taglio style, and I thought it was pretty successful overall. Their dough is quite high-hydration, at 80%, and includes 35% mature levain, though it's also got commercial yeast. This makes for a very flavorful crust which I liked quite a lot. It's another double-baked crust: the base recipe calls for baking with the sauce on, then cooling, then topping and reheating. I wanted to bake the crust the day ahead, so I used the alternate steps included for baking it without the sauce. In this case I found their main baking time spot on at eight minutes. Tonight I sauced and topped and reheated for five minutes, which was enough to heat everything up and crisp up the outer layer of the crust. I only baked half of the pizza tonight, so I'll be interested to see how well the crust holds another day at room temp (I'm not planning on freezing it).

Similar to @JoNorvelleWalker, I had a chunk of the poolish-based Neapolitan dough in the fridge from last Wednesday: I baked it last night for dinner. It was fine, but I stand by my preference for younger dough. Straightforward toppings, just their normal Neapolitan sauce, those little mozzarella "pearls", and green peppers. I pre-cooked the peppers a bit, I didn't want them quite as crisp as they'd come out of the Ooni on their own.

In this case it was Impossible seasoned with dried chile, cumin, and coriander, and browned with onions and garlic. I use it as a filling for hard-shell tacos and a topping for nachos. And now for pizza .

Wait 'til they find out the "taco meat" contains no actual meat -- maybe we should try it in Mexico, too. Or even Texas!

Neapolitan Pizza Dough with Poolish In this variant of their Neapolitan dough they make a poolish, then add it to a dough that has much more yeast than their normal dough, which is then cold-fermented for a day. It was fine, but nothing spectacular, and was less convenient than their normal low-yeast 24-hr room temp Neapolitan dough. For the toppings I basically cleaned out the fridge. I wanted to improve upon the Tex-mex pizza I posted about last week, so I took their Neapolitan sauce and added quite a lot of dry chile to it, used both fresh mozzarella and chunks of cheddar cheese, and topped with taco meat, fire-roasted poblanos, corn, and black beans. I liked it, though it was over-topped for Neapolitan-style pizza.

I guess I should have expected this: the New York Square pizza is better reheated. I put last night's leftovers in a 500°F convection oven for five minutes for lunch today, and it was very good. The crust crisps up very nicely, which was my big complaint yesterday.

I haven't noticed a color cast to my starters (rye or wheat), but I abuse them like crazy and they always bounce back. If your starter was healthy to begin with you can literally go months without feeding it, in my experience. I do generally feed it twice before using it when I've done that, however. Which volume is that? They call the "bottom" the part with short sides, and the lid is the larger piece.

The wet toppings did cause a slight gel layer (this was a raw crust, not prebaked), but I don't know that they affected the texture of the bulk of the dough very much: mostly that's the work of the pectin, I think.

Modernist New York Square Pizza Dough (KM p. 66) This dough is the Modernist variant of the thick-crust New York Square: it adds dough relaxer and pectin to the normal recipe. The texture is fluffy and soft, for better or worse: I'm not sure it's my favorite for a thick-crust pizza, which might benefit from either a bit of crispness, or just a bit more chew.

With mushrooms I think the cream finish is really nice, but don't get me wrong, they start out being sautéed in butter!

I agree with @pastrygirl, I’d be surprised if you could get it to light if you add the cream or half-and-half first. I always flame first, then finish.

As an alternative, it you want more of a gel and less of a foam, Modernist Cuisine suggests the following scaling for mushroom puree (no cream required, so you're maxing out on mushroom flavor): 0.20% high-acyl gellan 0.10% low-acyl gellan 0.15% xanthan gum 0.05% sodium hexametaphosphate Those ingredients are available from Modernist Pantry, among other places.

You could use 0.8% the weight of your liquid in low-acyl gellan as long as you are going to have cream in there (it needs the calcium to set) -- you make a fluid gel and can then use a blender to aerate it to the texture you want.

In defiance of my earlier assertion that I prefer pizza dough with only a day of age, today I was making a sort of typical Thanksgiving meal, but not planned for service until this evening, so I needed a lunch option. I had a piece of the artisan dough in the fridge that was leftover from Tuesday, so I baked it off today and it was excellent, with none of the texture problems I associate with older pizza doughs. I probably ended up with something relatively close to a New York-style pizza: I made it with the New York sauce, pizza cheese and pepperoni, and stretched it to 14" so it was pretty thin in the middle, but still with what I think is a more pronounced rim than New York. There was actually a better crispness to the crust than on Tuesday, but it stayed nice and fluffy inside the rim. It was a nice prelude to the upcoming turkey-stuffing-potatoes feast coming this evening.

Ceresota (actually not their high gluten variety, I added 2% gluten to their all purpose).

Genovese Pizza (Inspired by Pietro Parisi) (KM p. 290) on Artisan Pizza Dough (KM p. 54) This is the first time I've made the "Artisan" pizza dough -- for them this style is a sort of catch-all for various cheffy non-Neapolitan, non-New York medium crust pizzas. The dough is 72% hydration, 3.2% fat, poolish-based, high-gluten flour dough with a one day cold proof: it's delicious, and quite easy to work with. I'll keep this one in the rotation. The pizza toppings are basically French Onion soup (or a really fancy cheesesteak!). The "sauce" is browned onions deglazed with brandy, for the (optional) cheese I used Gruyere, and on top of that they call for shredded braised short ribs. I actually made this recipe specifically to use up some oxtail I had in the freezer, so I cooked it sous vide at 140°F for 100 hours (actually only 97, hopefully the 3% reduction didn't have a deleterious effect on the finished product ). It baked for five and a half minutes at 480°F with full convection. Overall it was successful: these toppings are probably not going in the regular rotation (I'm out of oxtail now), but if you're eyeing the recipe in the book and aren't too weirded out by its non-pizza-ness, I suggest giving it a go.

Tex-Mex Pizza (KM p. 284) I live in Oklahoma: I'm pretty sure there are laws here requiring you to leave the state if you don't like Tex-Mex food. And I do! On paper this pizza looked like a good option: classic thin crust, regular sauce and cheese, and topped with Mexican chorizo, black beans, corn, black olives, sour cream, pickled jalapenos (I used pickled serranos because I had them), and cilantro. Unfortunately the finished product was a bit underwhelming: I think they missed an opportunity by using the regular thin-crust pizza sauce. The oregano there was a bit too assertive, and non-Tex-Mex, and most of the toppings got sort of lost. Well, not the pickled serranos, they definitely made their presence known (and felt!), but otherwise it was sort of overly generic and non-descript. Which I guess describes an awful lot of Tex-Mex food, but it doesn't have to be that way! I think they should have doubled down on the Tex and made the sauce out of chili, or something stupid like that. At least it would have been memorable. Oh yeah, and I don't really love the regular thin crust, I much prefer the Brazilian variant. The regular (in this case Modernist) isn't crispy, and that's my favorite thing in a thin crust pizza.

Barbecue Chicken Pizza (Inspired by Ed LaDou) (KM p. 277) on Modernist Brazilian Thin-Crust Pizza Dough (KM p. 32) Until I started cooking from this book, I never really had chicken on pizza: I mean, I'm sure I must have had it someplace, but it's not something I ever ordered myself. Truthfully, I didn't really have high hopes for this pizza, whose sauce is barbecue sauce. I was imagining one of those saccharine concoctions like Sweet Baby Rays. Actually, this is the "house barbecue sauce" from the original Modernist Cuisine, unaltered in the intervening years. It's not particularly sweet, and has a good sharp acidity to it. I'd never made it before, but it's definitely staying in my BBQ sauce repertoire, it's great. And it actually works fine as a pizza sauce. Other toppings are chicken thighs (I cooked mine sous vide at 62°C for 15 hours with a dry rub of smoked paprika, salt, and pepper), red onions (I decided to put them on before baking, rather than after), smoked gouda, and cilantro. All told, a successful pizza. Not the sort if thing I'd make frequently, but overall I was happy with the flavors and textures. The crust was perfect, exactly what I want in a thin-crust pizza: solid enough to hold a good amount of toppings, cracker-crisp, and easy to work with. Certainly the best thin crust I've ever made.

I don't really buy that -- I wanted a long, skinny rectangle purely for the aesthetics of the thing, I highly doubt that my 10x14 Detroit pan would have any problems producing a respectable (shorter) Al Taglio pizza.

Yes, it turns out that just reading about making pizza isn't good enough: you actually have to practice! In all seriousness, there is some manual dexterity required both for stretching, en-peeling, and navigating a 900°F oven that's definitely going to take practice. But for other things, I think they could have done better: the cooking times for the thick crust simply seem too long, and I don't see how I could be misunderstanding things to the extent that a 20 minute stated bake time turns into 8 minutes in my oven. (In my house we obey the laws of thermodynamics.) Other things are a matter of taste: I'd prefer a thicker sauce for Neapolitan pizza, but not everyone agrees with me there. Yet other things, Modernist Pizza gets really weird about... almost anthropological. They flat out state that they don't like some of the recipes they include (e.g. the Argentinean cheese quantities, and some questionable ingredient decisions). They make fun of midwestern "taco" pizza, then proceed to include a recipe for it! All that said, be careful passing judgement on any book based on how well I personally make its recipes! I'm a strictly amateur home cook, and it's always going to take me a few tries to get things dialed in. I think I'm getting better at all of these pizzas, across the board, and since that's why I bought the books they've been valuable to me. I'm even going to make that taco pizza!! (Maybe.)

Sort of: I bought some long, skinny pans to use for al taglio, but they are much smaller than the real thing.