Chris Hennes

I like the Caputo flours for the Neapolitan pizzas (actually those are the only ones I use Caputo for, I've been using Ceresota All-Purpose for my other pizzas) -- I'm not sure I could actually tell the difference between the Chef's and the Pizzeria in a blind tasting. They both form a great gluten network and result in a strong dough that stretches beautifully. I think they both bake similarly, but that's likely a limitation of my own skill with the oven as much as anything else. I still have a pretty large variability pizza-to-pizza in terms of the exact finished product, so I can't really comment usefully on the subtle differences between those two flours. Maybe in a few thousand more pizzas I'll get back to you on it .

Raw Cherry Tomato Sauce (KM p. 121) The dough is their basic Neapolitan (though at long last made with the Caputo Pizzeria flour, I finished off the last of my Chef's flour on the last pizza -- I was very happy with the texture of the crust, and the workability of the dough). The sauce is one I hadn't tried yet: hand-crushed cherry tomatoes with olive oil, sugar, and salt. This would have benefited from the Modernist treatment, it could have used a little xanthan gum to thicken it just slightly, it was pretty difficult to keep it on the pizza when transferring to the oven. It was delicious, though, so I'll certainly make it again.

I used the second half of the dough batch I used last night to make another try at the basic Detroit-style pizza. This time I only baked it for eight minutes, which worked beautifully. The crust (the second-chance levain with a day of age on it now) was well-textured and flavorful, and properly cooked. That said, I really can't get behind that Wisconsin Brick Cheese. I don't care for the smell as it cooks, and the bitter flavor is just not my favorite on pizza. It's better in small quantities as part of a cheese plate than it is dumped atop a pizza. Really, the saving grace of tonight's pizza is that the New York sauce is great, so applied judiciously it masks the flavor of the cheese. Which is not something I really want to do! So I think this is it for me and the "authentic" Detroit pizza with its brick cheese. Maybe I'll try a blend of pizza cheese and cheddar next time, or something long those lines.

Right -- Modernist Bread's main "hack" is to suggest that most hacks don't really work well anyway, and the key is to reduce the volume of the oven so that the moisture from the dough itself functions as the source of steam. So I have a hotel pan that I use as a lid when I'm baking multiple loaves, and use a cast iron combo-cooker when doing just a single boule.

No, I've found levains to be too idiosyncratic to blindly follow time and temp instructions. Like you, I also usually give mine more time at room temperature before hitting the fridge. In this case, if I recall correctly I actually didn't give it any time at room temp, but refrigerated it at 55°F, like I would for bread.

That one is the LloydPans Kitchenware 10 by 14 Inch Detroit Style Pizza Pan (eG-friendly Amazon.com link).

Second-Chance Levain Detroit-Style Dough (KM p. 81) This is a recipe where the second-chance levain method really shines. The original Detroit dough is just a simple direct dough: adding the inactive levain gives the dough a great depth of flavor without compromising the texture of the crust. I've also come to the conclusion that their baking times for the Detroit dough are off. Their recipe calls for baking at 480°F for 20 minutes when using a convection oven, but I'm baking for literally half that. I pulled tonight's pizza after ten minutes, and I'd say it was perfectly cooked. The toppings tonight are a riff on their "Spring has Sprung Pizza" (KM p. 308) -- their recipe uses ricotta as the "sauce", pizza cheese next, and has asparagus and morels on top, plus an egg put on halfway through baking. I didn't have enough ricotta, so mine is a half ricotta/half creme fraiche sauce. Also, it's not spring here in the northern hemisphere, so no morels, I used oyster mushrooms. And no egg, because I didn't think it would work well on a Detroit-style crust. Still, it was delicious: I don't know where Imperfect Foods got these asparagus, but they were enormous, and fantastic.

I am using this one: Chicago Metallic Deep Dish Pizza pan, 14-Inch diameter (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)

Argentinean-Style "Al Molde" Pizza (KM p. 243) Like the Brazilian recipes I've posted about up-topic, the Argentineans apparently really, really like their cheese. The recipe calls for 550g of cheese on a single 14-inch pan pizza. To quote Modernist Pizza: "This amount of cheese will seem like too much... because it is. But this is roughly how much cheese the Argentineans put on pizza." Yeah, so... no. I didn't actually measure, I just sprinkled cheese on until it seemed like a reasonable amount. I did make sure it went all the way to the edges, though: The dough itself was probably the fastest of any in the book, clocking in at under three hours start to finish. The pizza uses their New York pizza sauce, which is delicious, so with a sane amount of cheese this is a very nice pan pizza (if you like pan pizza, which I do). I do find their baking time suspect, but that may owe to my greatly-reduce cheese content. The recipe calls for baking for 20 minutes, and mine only took ten.

There are plenty of workarounds for not having a steam oven: I almost never bake bread in one, and a quick glance through this topic will show that my results are reasonably respectable. Steam is most beneficial for French lean bread: if you're worried about it, there are other recipes in there to try .

I wouldn't have described it as particularly "dense", just chewy, in much the same way a sourdough bread is typically chewier than commercially-leavened.

Levain-Based Neapolitan Dough (KM p. 80) They provide recipes for levain-based versions of their nine basic doughs, so tonight I made Neapolitan-style pizza with levain instead of commercial yeast. It's an easy dough to work with and shape, with good flavor, but the texture is a bit chewier than I prefer in pizza.

Gluten-Free Neapolitan Crust (KM p. 103) I did not have high hopes for this one, it's hard to imagine a successful Neapolitan-style pizza without gluten. Thus, my hopes and dreams were not crushed when this pizza was... marginally edible. I mean, it was clearly pizza. Of some kind. And the sauce was good (this was the Modernist Neapolitan, so just crushed tomatoes, salt, and a tiny bit of xanthan gum). The crust? Not my favorite. I think it might have promise in their thin-crust variant, but I can't recommend making the Neapolitan, even if you have to be gluten free. Pick something else. Basically no rim, and very, very minimal rise: The slight char that tastes good on a regular Neapolitan pie is sort of gross here (and of course it doesn't do the "leoparding" thing):

Carbonara Pizza (KM p. 274) Second-Chance Levain Neapolitan Dough (KM p. 81) The dough here is an idea that they ported over from Modernist Bread: basically, instead of a poolish, use an inactive levain. You still raise the dough using commercial yeast, the levain is just for flavor. If you're already feeding a levain, you can use the discard portion: it won't have enough leavening power to really affect the dough's rise much compared to the commercial yeast, even though it's not really completely inactive. The dough is good: easy to work with, flavorful, and well-textured. Not any more so than a normal cold-proofed Neapolitan dough (the flavor is slightly different, but not a huge departure), this is more "why throw away this extra sourdough levain when you can use it for baking?" The pizza itself is based on pasta carbonara (made with bacon, though of course you could use guanciale, pancetta, or whatever else you wanted instead). You make a quite thick bechamel flavored with bacon, parmesan, and black pepper, put that on the pizza with some additional bacon, and bake it. To finish you can either put soft eggs or an egg yolk sauce (I opted for the yolk, though I overcooked it), and chives. It was good, though I preferred the second pizza that I made, omitting the yolk and adding fresh mozzarella.

Emergency Neapolitan Pizza Dough (KM p. 44) I've been out of town for a few days, so I didn't have any dough ready to go for dinner tonight. I also haven't eaten pizza in four days (gasp!!) so this was clearly an emergency. They have "emergency" versions of most of their main dough recipes. For Neapolitan it's just a direct 68% hydration dough, risen for a couple of hours and then baked: nothing fancy at all. And... it was about what you'd expect. Acceptable in an emergency such as this one, but no substitute for the "real deal". It was denser and more uniform than typical, and was harder to work with. I also thought it was too salty: normally I like the salt content of their doughs, both in Modernist Pizza and in Modernist Bread, but this one took things too far, at 3.42% (compared to 2% for their normal Neapolitan).

I now use the wooden peel exclusively to rotate the pizza (in the Ooni, anyway), and a larger stainless steel model for launch and extraction. On the thinner doughs I have a hard time getting the wooden peel under the raw pie in the first place, which is what prompted the purchase of the steel model. I've gotten much better at that in the intervening weeks, it's been a while since the last real failure in that regard.

Diastatic malt powder can help with long ferments, but I agree with @weinoo here. I like one day of cold proofing, two at the outside, for exactly the reason you show here.

No, cooked in the home oven, but I pre-cooked the sprouts (I like them with a good amount of color, and pan-frying is the best way to get that deep Maillard flavor, IMO).

Sorry to be unclear: I pre-sautéed the Brussels sprouts. Not to fully cooked, but about halfway there. Then I rough chopped them and baked the pizza as normal with them as a topping.

Well, @weinoo, I'm afraid you're going to have to avert your eyes on this one as well, or risk annoyance once again! There is green on this pizza (and really, you can't include green peppers in your anti-green-ingredient list, can you?!). Like arugula, it requires pre-cooking. And like arugula, it is delicious, even if decidedly non-canonical on this now-two-day-aged New York crust. I am definitely improving on my crust making front: about half of the interior of this pizza was the thickness, or thinness, I was going for. I think the outer rim is still too puffy, though, so it's probably time to start downsizing the dough ball --- this pizza was every bit of 14" in diameter, and held its shape through enpeeling and delivery to the oven. Mmmm. Brussels sprouts New York pizza!

For the record I thought the kale was good, but I like kale. There is a similar recipe in the book that calls for escarole instead... maybe you'd like that better?

Did you get any good fireballs? Mine was very flamey .

Third try at a New York-style crust... Now with Less Cowardice!! I felt pretty good about my shaping of this crust: this is their "real" New York Pizza Dough, with one day of cold proofing. It's very easily workable, has really strong gluten, and I was able to stretch and toss it out to a solid 14". I'm always nervous catching a toss that I'll just put my fist straight through the dough, but it was never an issue tonight (and the dough never hit the ceiling or the floor, which is also good ). So everything was going swimmingly, until I had to slide the peel under the pizza to do the transfer. And suddenly my mostly-round 14" pizza was an oblong shape about 8" wide. Well, crap. So if it just give the peel a little wiggle it will... nope, now there's toppings all over the counter, and none on the pizza. Sigh. So on the plus side I'm getting better at recovering from enpeeling failures, I guess. I sort of recircularized the dough, put the toppings back on (maybe slightly less artistically than the first time), put some semolina on the counter, and shimmied the peel under again. My 14" was now a less-that-lovely 12", but whatever, it moved on the peel, it was going in the oven! So, that's a long-winded story of why tonight's pizza is only marginally better than last nights. Practice, practice, practice! Looks great! If I carefully choose my camera angle, it still looks pretty good: The cutter sort of crushed the crust tonight, so it doesn't show that well, but the rim was pretty good-looking (I thought) and also delicious, while the center was thinner than last night, but still too thick. (Toppings were sausage, kale, and black olives... delicious!)

You can roll it, but you'll get a different texture. I haven't tried rolling this particular crust, but both of their thin-crusts are rolled, and the double-crust pizza rolls the Detroit dough.

I had completely missed that they had released a cookbook -- I think it's my favorite place to eat in London (at least, I've certainly had more meals there than any other restaurant). I also didn't know they had an Edinburgh location... nice!