Growing up in an Italian family in an Italian neighborhood in Revere, Mass., I have been exposed to a lot of good Italian food and pizza. I love pizza, but not just any pizza. It's the style that is often referred to as New York-style pizza, though I might argue it's Boston's style, too.
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| The four-ingredient dough |
It involves a dough that is made one day and allowed to slowly rise and ferment in order to have it ready for use the next day. The dough I now use is the one from the book,
Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. It is made from four ingredients: Flour, yeast, salt and water. My wife, Wendi, borrowed the book from the Wayne County Public Library, and we fell in love with it. At first, we just made bread with it. However, the first time Wendi made pizza with it, I absolutely loved it.
The texture, the crisp, chewy crust and the flavor brought me back home to Revere (we now live in Wooster, Ohio). The pizza was incredible; one of the best I had in a long time. Wendi, on the other hand, did not like it as much. She grew up with a different style of pizza. Guess that's her loss.
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| The 'uncooked' sauce |
When making a pizza for me, I prefer an uncooked sauce. To me, it provides a more engaging, robust flavor than tomatoes that have been mellowed by a long simmer. I used crushed tomatoes from a can. I have tried diced and petite diced, but I prefer the crushed tomatoes. Seems like the only way I find crushed tomatoes anymore is in puree, not my first choice, but not bad. To make my "sauce," I spread the crushed tomatoes over the hand-stretched dough (which I put on a wooden pizza peel that has on it a liberal dose of corn meal). I sprinkle on the tomatoes: Salt, pepper, garlic, oregano, basil, parsley (all dried herbs) and sugar. Don't ask me for measurements, just sprinkle the ingredients on, but not too much. The sauce will cook in the oven.
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| Sliced mozzarella and provolone |
I am a big fan of cheese pizza. I don't need any toppings (though pepperoni and bacon is a great combination, but don't put the bacon on raw ... leaves too much grease, don't ask me how I know, but I do. Trust me). I stay away from fresh mozzarella and mozzarella balls because they have more moisture than I want for my pizza. I do not use shredded cheese, either. I do not buy already shredded cheese (way too dry), and I do not shred it myself. I like using sliced cheese, a combination of mozzarella and provolone. I buy mine at East Union Bulk Food Store outside of Wooster, and I pay around $2.99 per pound for each.
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| Why cook pizza on a pan? |
That's about it, except for the heat. The New York- and Boston-style pizzas are generally cooked in brick ovens at an extremely high heat (think perhaps 800-900 degrees, however, I heard of a pizzeria in New York that uses coal and gets up to 2,000 degrees). The high heat allows for the pizza to cook quickly, and it gives the dough a nice char, which adds flavor. I cannot achieve such temperatures at home. My oven maxes out at 550 degrees. But, I do preheat the oven for about an hour before I am ready to make the pizza; it gets the oven nice and toasty, and it brings the pizza stones in the oven up to temperature. When cooking pizza for me (as opposed to for Wendi and me or family and friends), it goes on the stone. Sometimes I start it on a pizza screen and then move it to a stone, but I do not like cooking it on a pan.
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| I should have let the dough rest. |
So, I recently used some of Wendi's dough to make a pizza. Everything went well, except for one thing. I did not have the patience to allow the dough time to come to room temperature and raise a little bit. Wendi makes the dough ahead of time and keeps it in the fridge. We pull off what we need for a loaf or a pizza and put the rest back in the refrigerator. So, as you can see from the adjoining picture, I got nice char, the cheese melted nicely, but there was just too much lift in the dough. Because the crust rose a lot in the oven, the crushed tomatoes pooled to the middle, creating a relatively dry outer ring on the pizza and a tasty, saucy middle. The middle had incredible flavor, but the outer edge was just too dry.
The good news is Wendi has made another batch of dough, so I will go at it again.
