All About Pizza

[slkinsey]

Ironically, the observed tearing when using low gluten flour may be due to over kneading, which can cause tearing. If one kneads an 00 flour dough for the same length of time as one would knead a American bread flour dough for full development of the gluten, the 00 dough certainly could end up overworked -- especially with the addition of a long rise. I find that low gluten doughs that are going to be given an 18 - 24 hour rise do not need, nor benefit from, all that much kneading. Maybe 5 minutes by machine.

When going to the absolute limit of paper-thinness as in phylo dough or translucently thin pasta, the dough does benefit from the strength of having more gluten. These products are also thin enough that they are inherrently tender and do not suffer from the toughness of texture and unpleasant "breadyness" of flavor that all too often accompanies bread flour. This does not mean, however, that it is easier or necessarily "better" for doughs that are not taken to these extremes. Pizza dough may be thin, but it ain't that thin.

YMMV, of course.

[rickster]

I kneaded the 00 dough about 6-7 minutes by machine and let it rise in the refrigerator for about 20 hours.

It is also possible that I was trying to make too large a pizza.

[slkinsey]

I kneaded the 00 dough about 6-7 minutes by machine and let it rise in the refrigerator for about 20 hours.

No reason to take up room in the 'frige if you are only fermenting for 20 hours. Just try cutting the amount of yeast in half and let 'er rip. Punch down the bowl every so often whenever you think about it.

I don't have any figures for commercial baker's yeast, but I do know that sourdough yeast is severely inhibited at refrigerator temperatures. I assume that similar things may be true for commercial yeast. I think there are good things to be gained by fermenting at cold temperatures, but the tradeoffs involved when you are talking about only 20 hours of fermentation favor room-temperature IMO. If you were going to go to 40 hours, then I'd think it would make a lot of sense to retard the dough for, say, 16-20 of those hours.

It is also possible that I was trying to make too large a pizza.

It's possible... although I have been able to make very large pizze with 00 flour. One thing that my pizziaolo friends do in Italy, and which I have adopted in my own practice, is to give the dough an extra rest. I'll take a lump of dough, stretch it out until it is around 45% - 55% as large as I want it to be, then let it rest for an additional 10-15 minutes or so before stretching it out to the final size. This allows the gluten to relax again, and makes the move to the final size a lot easier.

[Bill Klapp]

Allright, maybe I'm a closet traditionalist! The single-person, 10-12" thin pizza seems so much more civilized than the 16-20" monsters sold by most American pizza joints. Cooks quick, served fresh, hot and individually tailored to the consumer...

[slkinsey]

Allright, maybe I'm a closet traditionalist!  The single-person, 10-12" thin pizza seems so much more civilized than the 16-20" monsters sold by most American pizza joints.  Cooks quick, served fresh, hot and individually tailored to the consumer...

Oh... I feel the same way. I make big rectalgular ones from time to time when I have pizza parties at my apartment. Then I like to get 10-12 people and turn out 10 or so pizzas using ingredients with which I am familiar from Italy but which are relatively rare in the US on a pizza (tonno e cipollo or fresh porcini with a drizzle of olio di Cartoceto at the table, for example). That way everyone gets to taste a bunch of new things.

[Bill Klapp]

Tuna and onion! Be still, my heart!

[slkinsey]

Tuna and onion!  Be still, my heart!

I know! Isn't that the greatest? I also like it with a few capers added.

See... you say that to most Americans and they say, "um... I don't know... tuna on a pizza? I'm not so sure I'd like that... sounds weird... are you sure people in Italy eat this?" More often than not, the people who say "ick" at the suggestion of a "strange" tuna and onion pizza are the same people who might think very little of a chicken barbeque and sweet corn pizza (something that sounds truly strange to me, and no doubt to you as well). 99% of the people I have made tuna and onion pizza for have loved it despoite their initial reservations. The other 1% -- well, one guy really -- have trouble with anything more adventurous than KFC.

Some of my other favorites are ruccola, bresaola and strachino (no tomato), and also a regular pom/mozz with a few eggs cracked on the crust to "fry" in the oven. Have even made a "pizza Rossini" a few times in honor of my favorite composer (hard cooked eggs and, strange as this sounds, a few drizzles of homemade mayonnaise at the table).

[Bill Klapp]

I think that a lot of people of a certain age grew up being forced to eat tuna casserole and creamed tuna on toast, made, in each case, with really lame tuna. The stuff was cooked forever, and the smell alone drove you out of the house! Salmon cakes (from canned salmon, of course) had pretty much the same effect. What a far cry that is from a modest amount of that fine tuna available in Italy and some good onions cooked only for a few minutes! Maybe a few black olives with the tuna, onions and capers...

Ah! But do not forget the Zen of pizza topping. Less is more. If I want salade nicoise, then perhaps I should build it somewhere other than on my pizza!

[rgural]

sam: thanks for the tip about storing the saf in the freezer, once I run through my current supply of dry yeast I'll go with the saf.

bill: i would be cautious about buying any yeast thats been repackaged, as in the case of instant active there will be loss in activity once the vacuum seal is broken especially if it's not stored properly. Still it doesn't sound like that was the problem. Perhaps because you use a rolling pin where as I stretch the dough, you need a much more active dough at the end. Could the dough have been overproofed?

FWIW there doesn't seem much point in having a half hour poolish. In general it takes around 45 minutes for the yeast to adapt to its environment for ideal fermentation. Conventional wisdom is that the minimum time for a poolish is three hours although it seems more common to see 8-12 hours. Why not lower the yeast, lengthen the poolish and shorten the dough fermentation time or eliminate the poolish altogether and use a straight dough with a long fermentation?

Roger

[slkinsey]

...do not forget the Zen of pizza topping.  Less is more...

Bill, I like your thinking. We must make pizza together some time.

[Dave the Cook]

Yeah, yeah, you say Zen and all that. And I agree.

But this -- THIS! -- is my next pizza:

a regular pom/mozz with a few eggs cracked on the crust to "fry" in the oven

There's drool on my keyboard, dude.

[slkinsey]

But this -- THIS! -- is my next pizza:

a regular pom/mozz with a few eggs cracked on the crust to "fry" in the oven

There's drool on my keyboard, dude.

That's always a fave around the Kinsey household. The trick is to pull it out of the oven while the yolks are still runny. I like to do it with thinly-sliced home-roasted red peppers and a sprinkle of minced parsley when it comes out of the oven.

I don't know if it's terribly traditional, but I got the idea for it from the "Pizza Big Ben" at a friend's Marchegiano trattoria "Big Ben" in the little mountain town of Urbania near Urbino.

[Bill Klapp]

rgural, helpful point on the repackaged yeast. It may not have been kept sufficiently cool, either. Regarding the poolish, remember that this is pizza dough with low-gluten flour. Maybe I overstated the case by calling it a poolish to begin with. I redub it "30-minute proofing"! Having played around with instant and dry active over the weekend, I am going to declare my recipe best with fresh yeast. While my dry active result was good, it was not up to the fresh yeast dough standard. There is apparently more to yeast than mere leavening. Things are not always what they seem in pizza dough...

[slkinsey]

Having played around with instant and dry active over the weekend, I am going to declare my recipe best with fresh yeast.  While my dry active result was good, it was not up to the fresh yeast dough standard.  There is apparently more to yeast than mere leavening.

Oh, I'd agree. Different strains of yeast -- and fresh yeast is certainly a different strain from those used in instant and active dry yeasts -- will always produce different results. If one has a ready and convenient supply of fresh yeast, I think that would always be the best choice. Instant yeast is merely a convenience as one can have a reliable supply in the freezer available at a moment's notice.

[Bill Klapp]

Sam and Dave (hey, I like that-Sam and Dave!): Are you sure that you guys are not Piemontese? My people will add an egg to ANYTHING, just to pick up a little extra richness...

[Mr. Toast]

I made the tomato sauce for a party last week. Very easy, got strong reviews from the guests. This will probably become my standard pizza sauce. Thanks!

I also tried the dough. I don't really have anything intelligent to report here; I'm going to try it again and pay more attention next time.

A way back in this topic Bill Klapp promised an installment on oven-dried tomatoes. I'm still waiting!

[Bill Klapp]

Ecco!

Oven-Dried Tomatoes: You can use halved cherry tomatoes or Romas or other tomatoes sliced at least 1/4" thick (you may want to experiment with this-some tomatoes have so much water that, if you slice them too thin, you end up with a ring of peel and very little tomato!). For the seasoning ratio, the baseline is 3 quarts of cherry tomatoes for the following quantities of spices:

2 tablespoons dried basil

1 tablespoon sugar

1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt (I prefer 1, but it is a taste thing)

1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons ground pepper (I prefer 1 1/2)

Heat your oven to 300 degrees.

Combine the above ingredients well. Array the tomatoes on parchment paper on baking sheets, and sprinkle the mixture evenly over them.

Put the tomatoes in the oven. At the same time, reduce the heat to 225-250 degrees. Bake until the tomatoes are dry, but yet a little chewy. These will not be as dry or as chewy as sun-dried tomatoes, nor quite as intensely flavored. Cooking time can vary, but I would allow at least 3 hours. If your tomatoes are particularly juicy, you can help them along by gently draining tyour baking sheets during the cooking process (not preferred, of course, as you may be dumping flavor, but sometimes necessary). Let them cool to at least room temperature before using on your pizza. It is OK to refrigerate them, and they should last a few days, perhaps up to a week, if properly sealed.

I have not tried this with fresh basil, but I cannot imagine that it would work as well.

I am still trying to get suitable pictures of the pizza oven!

[Bill Klapp]

My pizza oven, but being manned by a friend (a French baker), rather than me, on this occasion. You can see the wood beneath the oven, where my ashes will reside some day! That's the town of Neive in the left background (some may recall it from the cover of Matt Kramer's Passion for Piedmont cookbook).

[MobyP]

My wife and I decided we needed an emergency vacation - one of those last minute see-what's-available trips required for the suturing of the spirit.

As we found ourselves heading towards Naples, I looked up those threads I could, read about Da Michele and Trianon, and thought I should give a New York Pizza Survey-type report. Also, we went to a place called Lombardi in the Centro Storico district, but no pictures, I'm afraid. My apologies generally for the quality of the pictures I did take - poor lighting and embarassed train-spotter syndrome got the better of me.

We kept our ordering basic, so we could compare. Also, Kate caved pretty quickly, and there was only so much pizza I could eat on my own (flight home last night holding my belly, feeling like an illicit pizza mule).

Interestingly, my preconceptions were really smashed in just about every area. At first I thought it was the particular place I was at, but it was a consistent style of all three. My apologies for comparing it to New York style, but that's where the best of my pizza junkie days took place. To start with:

The Sauce

This was much soupier than the New York pizzas I'm used to - and far, far less reduced. Rather than a smear, as in NY, this was pretty much ladled on, leaving puddles. The taste was far simpler, cleaner. And it worked off of all the other elements, rather than something you'd have on its own.

The Dough

The dough, especially in the middle, was extremely thin, but also very soft, rather than the firm and crispy I was expecting. It was far closer to what I think of as a piadine crust, than a pizza. The ovens are ferociously hot (900f or so), and they're only cooked for what seems like 3 or 4 minutes. This leaves you with a mixture of savage blistering, usually charred, and very soft almost bread-like dough. The taste is developed, but not too long or overbearing.

The Cheese

This was the revelation. All the pizzarias used 'fior di latte' cheese, which I guess is the initial curds which float to the surface, and then processed similarly to mozarella. But the taste was loooong, and luscious, and milky. I think if anyone ever tells you to use cheap cheese on your pizza, you should beat them with a stick. This stuff was remarkable.

The basil

A small point, but having just lived in California for a couple of years, and previously NY for about 6, I couldn't stand the basil you get over there - expecially in CA, it had this domineering liquorice taste to it. And no one else knew what I was talking about because they hadn't tasted the European kind. Anyway, it was nice to get a pure basil hit off of these pizzas.

So - to begin:

Da Michele serves two kinds of pizza, with three variations in size.

The oven...

As you'll see, the shapes are much more irregular.

The Marinara pizza wass fantastically simple, with some garlic thrown in the middle. The Kinsey-Char index was pretty high..

Let's give it a 7, The blisters were cindered from the heat, leaving the rest of the dough soft and malleable. The taste was very clean, but not all that indulgent. I could imagine it as something I'd get very used to indeed.

The Margherita, on the other hand, with the addition of the cheese, was marvellous.

The Kinsey-Char index was fractionally lower, say 5.8

But the addition of the cheese made up for it. Again, it just has this incredibly long, milky taste, which blends with the simpler tomato flavours to make a terrific combination.

Next to..

which is, as mentioned, just across the street.

These pizzas were more regular shaped

With a Kinsey-Char of around 6.8

At this point, having eaten the best part of three pizzas on my own after a really big lunch elsewhere, I remembered the oven-spring money shot...

which as you can see is not all that significant. But then, they're only cooking these things for a few minutes at most.

Overall my preference was for the Trianon pizza as a more consistent over-all experience. The cheese was luscious, the taste long, the char sufficient, everything was good. I might add that they made this for me (heroically) while trying to watch the Italian game on tv. But I can see that if my palate developed, and I became more Napolitan hard core, I might return to Da Michele.

Hope this earns me my pizza pervert of minutiae Scouts badge.

[albiston]

Moby,

thanks for the great post, if no one has nothing in contrary as adoptive Neapolitan I can declare the badge's yours . Having spent 15 years in Naples, and tested many pizzerias as you might expect, I tend to prefer "Da Michele" to "Trianon" but even between real Napoletani opinions are divided. There's one detail I was wondering about: how where you treated at Trianon? I always got the impression the people there had no idea of what "friendly customer care" means, probably another reason why I prefer Da Michele.

The Cheese

This was the revelation. All the pizzarias used 'fior di latte' cheese, which I guess is the initial curds which float to the surface, and then processed similarly to mozarella. But the taste was loooong, and luscious, and milky. I think if anyone ever tells you to use cheap cheese on your pizza, you should beat them with a stick. This stuff was remarkable.

Fior di latte is simply cow milk's mozzarella. No real Neapolitan would call something made without Buffalo milk mozzarella. I know that Michele uses fiordilatte coming from Agerola, a small town south of Naples (Salerno province) renowned for its cheeses.

On this topic it might be interesting to share a little insight on Michele's pizza I got from my brother who knows the owners. Since the cheese thay use is quite expensive, Michele doesn't use EVO oil on their pizzas, and for this reason they're not "real Napoletana pizza" conform.

[MobyP]

It's true that Trianon were less than absolutely polite with me, but ITALY WAS PLAYING FOOTBALL!!

I was just glad they didn't kick me into the street and pour a bucket of water over my head. I think it was out of sympathy for the English loss the other night.

Thanks for the info about the cheese - I had no idea.

Also, the pastries in Naples were fantastico. The sfoglietelle (sp?), stuffed with ricotta and candied orange - unbelievable. I think I want some placed in my coffin before they close the lid.

Edited June 15, 2004 by MobyP (log)

[marcus]

Great post and pictures, brings back memories. I found Trianon marginally better than da Michele, but I made the mistake at da Michele of ordering the extra cheese option which made the pizza quite soggy. I experienced no service problems at Trianon. One pizza that we tried there was the DOC, about twice as expensive, 6 euros, and made with buffalo mozzarella and fresh cherry tomatos according to the official recipe. Italians don't really order this, but I thought that it was actually the best pizza that we had in Naples and we tried about 7 major pizzarias. Best pizzas in the world without doubt.

[MobyP]

Good point - I forgot to mention price. Both places were charging around 3.50 Euros - which was incredibly reasonable. No wonder they couldn't afford evo - I'm surprised they could afford flour, at that price.

[JosephB]

Great report Moby. The photos are in fact quite good -- the oven looks like an inferno!

I smiled when I saw the photo of the menu -- clearly no American-style marketing department at these places. And what about those prices? I don't remember paying so little for a pizza at other places in Naples a few years back.

Besides the NYC Pizza Survey, you should check out the Franny's thread for a discussion of what we recently found to be the perfect Italian-style pizza experience in NYC. We are very excited about Franny's. Sorry, no photos yet.

[slkinsey]

GREAT thread, Moby! I hardly know what to add except jealousy, of course.

I think a lot of the soft, pliable texture and fairly pale color (contrasting with the crisp, brown, blistered cornicione and great oven spring) has to do with their use of soft, hyper-refined 00 flour. Most pizzerie in America use a much stronger flour and consequently have to cut the dough with fat in order to make it tender enough to eat. Even Franny's uses high gluten flour. This use of strong flour (which makes sense for an American pizzeria, what with America being the world's leading supplier of strong flour and all) works more towards an overall crispness, "snap" and chewyness rather than tender pliability.

Oh, and I am naturallt honored to have a pizza crust evaluation scale named after me.