Scott's Pizza Journal

This ad was spotted in Paris by my homeslice Jasmine. PEOPLE OF...

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:06:57 -0400

This ad was spotted in Paris by my homeslice Jasmine.

PEOPLE OF FRANCE: This pizza does not exist in Brooklyn.

It’s official, Jeff Varasano of Varasano’s Pizzeria...

Sun, 13 May 2012 21:25:42 -0400

It’s official, Jeff Varasano of Varasano’s Pizzeria in Atlanta, GA is the coolest dude on the planet. He grows, harvests and dries his own oregano. I need to get to Atlanta to try his pizza STAT!

NYC Vegan Pizza Tour June 2

Tue, 08 May 2012 11:42:18 -0400

Calling all vegans, vegetarians and food explorers:

I’ll be hosting a very special pizza tour on Saturday, June 2 that will visit four pizzerias in Manhattan and Brooklyn for slices of 100% animal-free pizza. Our stops include Neapolitan, Roman and New York style pizzerias. We’ll talk all about pizza history (including how some of the earliest pizzas were actually vegan) as we cruise around in the Big Yellow Pizza Bus. It is going to be insane!!!

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WHEN: Saturday, June 2
WHERE: Starts and ends in Greenwich Village
HOW: $60 tickets available online through Zerve or by phone at 800-979-3370
WHAT: All pizza and animal-free goody bags are included; 4 pizzeria stops by bus
WHY: Because everybody deserves good pizza

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This vegan pizza tour isn’t just about finding places that offer cheese alternatives, it’s about well-made dough topped with deliciousness that doesn’t need cheese to have a good time. I am not personally vegan, so I’m going to take you out for pizza that tastes great without compromising. Some of these pizzas aren’t overtly vegan, they just happen to not have cheese, meat, honey, eggs, etc on the ingredient list. The idea of the tour is for both vegans and non-vegans to share the same pizza because it’s the ultimate communal food!

I started doing it for my vegan brother when he would come for a visit and we found a solid lineup of pizzerias that both of us loved! I run this tour just about every six months, so join us for a special afternoon packed with animal-free flavor.

Cheese First vs. Sauce First

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:01:17 -0400

Sauce first, then cheese first. Completely different results. Both delicious.

I made these two pies over the weekend with the exact same ingredients yet the first was topped with sauce followed by cheese and the second started with cheese and sauce came last. They look and taste completely different! Starting with sauce makes sense because pizza began as a peasant food and the high cost of cheese made it more of a garnish than a main event. As costs decreased, cheese proportions increased and became what we see today as a typical “New York Style” pizza. But cheese is a great base because it protects the crust from getting gummy.

I love doing cheese first because it melts right onto the crust and you get little to no cheese drag: when your bite pulls a blanket of hot molten mozzarella off the slippery surface of a saucy pie directly onto your clean face and shirt. It also means that the surface sauce is more susceptible to evaporation, so it tends to thicken and sweeten. This order is sometimes referred to as tomato pie, as at Delorenzo’s in Trenton, NJ, but it’s also the preferred method at New York joints like John’s on Bleecker Street, Sam’s Restaurant in Brooklyn, Arturo’s in Greenwich Village and Totonno’s on Coney Island.

RECIPE TIME
600g flour (I used Pillsbury bread flour for this batch)
396g water
13g salt
6g dry yeast

Starting with the water (room temp), add yeast then flour. Mix in salt and fully incorporate all ingredients. Give it a few minutes to rest while you check the mail and then knead it until smooth and springy. Cut into 4 even pieces and round into balls. Store for 1-3 days in sealed container inside refrigerator. I used mine after 2 days and it was lovely but I bet it would last 5 if push came to shove.

PRE-FERMENTATION TRICK
If you want to get a bit more depth, you can mix together 50g or flour and 50g water plus a pinch of yeast (~1g) 10-12 hours before making your dough. I did that before heading out to do a pizza tour, then when I came back 10 hours later the mixture had more than doubled in size. (Room was 71 degrees F so a warmer room will rise faster, cooler room rises slower.) I added this mixture to the remaining ingredients in the recipe (550g more flour, 346g more water, 5g yeast) and continued with the process. This allows for some fermentation to occur in advance with just about a minute of prep time. There’s no salt in the preferment because it slows down yeast fermentation. I did this preferment for the crust you see in these photos. It would be more effective if you could have tasted it. Not as much flavor as using a starter, but still really tasty.

Undercover Pizza Lover: Working the Line in a Family Pizzeria in Las Vegas

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 10:01:00 -0400

[Photographs: John Arena]

Walking behind the counter at a pizzeria always seems a bit dangerous. This is where the action happens and customers certainly have no business getting in the way. But for one glorious three-day span I wasn’t a customer; a white chef’s coat scored me access to the inner sanctum of a busy family pizzeria in Henderson, NV. I was there to experience the realities of working the make line (and hopefully not give anybody food poisoning).

Metro Pizza is consistently given top honors in the local press as well as a recent Food Network Magazine credit as having the best pie in Nevada (photo #28). Metro Pizza stands as a shrine to all American pizzerias, with a huge map on the wall indicating the country’s most significant pizzerias. They’ll even give you a $25 credit if you bring in a photo of yourself standing in front of one of the mapped locations! This is the perfect place to start my journey behind-the-scenes of the pizza industry.

Day 1: Playing With Dough
My first day began with a test: I was given a piece of dough and asked to open it into a skin. Much to my relief, the dough was about the size I’m used to working with at home. I did what I could to delicately coax the dough into a usable shape but apparently it wasn’t enough. The result was too small and uneven to be sold to a customer, so I was shown the house method for stretching.

At Metro, they begin by forming a ring of indentation about 1 cm from the dough’s outer edge, followed by gentle pressing from the center toward the newly formed barrier. Next came a few back-and-forths between the hands to warm and extend the diameter, followed by a slight stretch over the back of the hands to finish the job.The result was an even thickness and an untouched border.

Of course there’s more than one way to open dough, but I wanted to forget any prior approaches and start from scratch to get the full Metro experience, so I stuck with the prescribed method for all the doughs I stretched during my short tenure. Oddly enough, this wasn’t so much the case with the other employees. As my shifts progressed, it became apparent that everyone had their own twist on the method. I suppose they’ve become comfortable enough with the dough to modify their approach depending on texture and temperature. Still, it’s amazing how consistent these pies came out even with so much technique variation.

I started on a Saturday night, not exactly the best night to take things slowly. John Arena, one of Metro’s founders and my personal pizza guide through this experience, set up a table behind the make line and both of us spent the night opening doughs for the pizzaiolo. While not your average Saturday night on vacation in Las Vegas, I honestly had no desire to be anywhere else. The orders came in like crazy and it seemed like we were constantly pushing out dough skins for the entire 3+ hour rush.

My biggest challenge was handling different size doughs. I make small pies at home so I had never even handled a piece larger than 6 ounces and these suckers, which we were opening to around 18, were almost double that size. My home oven isn’t even that big.

I got the hang after a while, but it’s pretty intense to see order tickets piling up knowing this dough needed to be stretched quickly and correctly. Although I could feel myself improving, I wasn’t exactly consistent. It made me respect these guys and gals in the back even more for being able to execute over and over every single night. Even the motions of repetition were a physical challenge. The tiny joints in my fingers ached after about an hour and I kept feeling inadvertent twitches, which don’t exactly help the process. By the end of the night I had stretched about 200 dough skins and not a single pie was sent back. Success? More like relief.

Rounding dough is actually a lot of fun!

Day 2: Dough Prep
Day two began with more dough work, but this time I was assigned to the scaling/rounding bench. Again, my home pizza making sessions prepared me little for this scale of work. I’m used to making, at most, a dozen balls of dough in a single session, so rounding a few hundred was a completely new dimension.

Again, we started with a lesson. Over the course of my time at Metro, I rounded dough with several different people, and once again everyone had their own method. Each new dough-rounding partner would show me “the right way” to do it, each of which featured a different time-saving routine. What struck me most about this task was its soothing repetitive nature. I almost wanted to stick to the dough corner all day long, but nights bring in crowds and I was upgraded to the line on Sunday night.

People in Las Vegas love meat on their pizza.

Day 3: Toppings
My final job was the one I looked forward to the least: I spent two nights topping pies. Before taking this job, I always thought of topping application as the least critical step of all. In my mind, topping a pizza is just adding decorations and not even close to the high skill required to handle dough. I was completely wrong. If stretching and rounding are relaxing repetitive motions, topping is the opposite. I’m used to taking all the time I need to apply toppings at home, but there is no time to be precious with mushroom and pepperoni placement when the orders are piling up. It was really hard to remember what toppings go on each signature pizza, so I sadly crashed and burned a few times by putting pepperoni one the entire Gotham pizza when the customer only wanted it on half. Tears fell and pizzas were remade, but hungry customers were completely oblivious to the drama behind the curtain.

After topping a pie, it was my job to get it into the oven and file the order ticket. The oven tender would let me know in which of the four ovens my pie belonged based on physical space and how recently the space was made available. This Metro location uses a brick-lined oven from Marsal and Sons, which baked quite evenly and required only a turn or two to achieve an even color. I somehow managed to get a tiny burn on my hand and I wore it like a badge of honor.

If you look really close you can see the oven burn on my hand!

My time at Metro Pizza was mind-expanding to say the least. I now have a much deeper appreciation for the seemingly smaller tasks, like adding toppings or balling dough. Huge thanks to John and Sam at Metro Pizza as well as the entire crew that put up with me as I completed my first assignment as the Undercover Pizza Lover.

This piece originally appeared on Slice / Serious Eats.

Vesuvio Foods Northeast Pizza Competition

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:53:54 -0400

I had the opportunity to emcee a pizza competition for Vesuvio Foods in Atlantic City last week and it was amazing! There were 16 competitors from 16 different pizzerias throughout New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and even one from Ohio. I got to talk on stage about pizza for over 6 hours. Fun!

I’m stalling as the scored are tabulated for this round of competition.

Commentating about the entry from Goodfella’s in Manhattan / Victory Blvd in Staten Island / Bayonne.

I even got a special delivery from Mike Hauke, Pizza Tour alum and owner of Tony Baloney’s in Atlantic City. He brought me a fresh Reuben Pizza!

5 Craziest Pizzas from International Pizza Expo

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 10:52:00 -0400

Last month I had the incredible opportunity to judge at the largest culinary pizza competition in the USA. The International Pizza Expo has been an annual event in Las Vegas for the past 27 years and it’s seriously wall-to-wall pizza insanity. The competition categories change every year as different styles evolve, but this year I was asked to judge preliminary rounds and finals for both the traditional and non-traditional categories. The five pizzas I’m about to show you are the least traditional of the non-traditional round.

This Japanese pizza started with a rice flour dough topped with dried seaweed, sliced mochi cakes, soy sauce, Japanese mayonnaise, corn, dried-fermented-smoked tuna flakes and a blend of mozzarella and gouda. That’s pretty dang non-traditional! It was actually one of my favorites in the category but execution in the final round wasn’t so hot.

I first saw this pie at a competition in Orlando a few years back and even though I have never personally judged it, Dave Smith III from Smith’s Pizza Palace Plus in Emporium, PA definitely deserves points for pizza insanity. The thing looks like a ninja star! Dave snips the crust and gives the dough skin a quick toss to create these little spikes. Truly amazing.

I have no idea who made this one but it’s designed to commemorate the attack on Lawrence Kansas in 1863. Yes, that’s a pepperoni house and a pepperoni bridge and a pepperoni farm. The meat building on the left was set on fire to illustrate the massacre. Here’s a video if you want to see it in action!

You might need to strap on your 3D glasses for this one to get the full effect of freeze-dried sliced prosciutto wheels and melon balls. The white strings were described to the judges as “mozzarella linguine,” which just means the strands are thin like linguine. That dark goo is 12 year balsamic jam. I have no recollection of how it tasted.

Finally, the tropical “Tequila Sunrise” pie from Goodfellas in Staten Island. That’s right, these guys came from New York, home of contemporary pizza tradition, and made the least traditional of all entries. It has mango, limes, tequila, cilantro — plus the crowning garnish of a pineapple top. I was really skeptical when I saw this one come out but I have to say it really delivered on its promise. This was the winning pie, scoring $10,000 for Goodfellas Pizza on Hylan Blvd in Staten Island.

I Just Scored a Commercial Pizza Oven Stone

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 10:00:32 -0400

The Bari Restaurant Supply store on Bowery and Prince is a magical place. I take tours there all the time to check out pizzeria equipment in a place where actual pizzeria operators are buying it. The centerpiece of the showroom is a brand new oven, which was on location in the store’s manufacturing department. That makes Bari the only remaining pizza oven manufacturer in New York City.

I take pizza tours into the manufacturing area whenever it’s safe (and whenever the door is unlocked) so we can see the process from frame to finish. It’s amazing. I’ve been noticing scraps laying around recently — pieces of marble and stone destined for dough stretching tables and ovens, respectively. When I asked Patsy (the manufacturing honcho) about the bits, he said the stone was heading for the trash. WHAT!?!?!?! So I asked him to chop it down so I could fit it in my home oven and sure enough he did.

This thing is huge. It’s 1.5 inches thick, much larger than the average 0.25 - 0.5 inches of pizza stones made for the home. There’s a good reason nobody sells domestic stones this thick - it would take forever to heat it up. Most pizza stone users don’t realize that it takes at least 45 minutes to preheat a baking stone before it’s ready for use. A quick 20 minute preheat only results in surface heat, which disappears immediately upon releasing a dough onto it. The whole point of a stone is to be saturated with heat in order to conduct directly into the dough.

This stone, which is called FibraMent-D, is going to take forever to preheat in my home oven. The manufacturer actually requires users to pre-dry the stone for 7 hours before first use. YOWZA! So it’s going to be a while before I can really test this thing out. Still, I’m pretty stoked to have it in my possession. Now if only I could track down some older pizza oven hearth materials to test them head-to-head my life would be complete. Too bad the “good” ones are illegal to manufacture because of asbestos issues. Anybody got pre-1980s transite?

I made an interesting discovery last week while doing a bunch of...

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:35:06 -0400

I made an interesting discovery last week while doing a bunch of laundry. Looks like I have at least 34 pizza t-shirts.

Just wrapped 3 glorious days at the International Pizza Expo in...

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:12:29 -0400

Just wrapped 3 glorious days at the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas!

My buds Matt (camera), Justin and Jeff came over to eat a...

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 11:00:05 -0400

My buds Matt (camera), Justin and Jeff came over to eat a homemade Sicilian pizza and stuck around to help me open a pair of amazing packages. Both promise pizza transportation innovation, but do they actually deliver? Find out in this video featuring incredible new products from Scott Pizza Bag (Chicago) and Pizza Cradle (Denmark).

Brooklyn Brainery Video feat. Pizza History Class

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 09:34:41 -0500

Cool video about the Brooklyn Brainery, an amazing place where you can go to learn about interesting things from people who love to talk about them! I did a 3-part class about the history of pizza last October for National Pizza Month and this camera crew from Mailchimp just happened to be there. SWEET!

Anybody speak German?

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:57:29 -0500

Anybody speak German?

Searching for New York's Hidden Coal Ovens

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:00:00 -0500

My journey into one of NYC’s salvaged bakery ovens.

The subject of coal-burning ovens seems to be popping up a lot lately and I have a feeling it’s at least partially because of the recent Grimaldi’s relocation. To sum it up, Grimaldi’s recently moved up the block from its original location after lease problems with their landlord but had to leave the oven behind. Not a huge problem because all they had to do was to build another one in the new location. This sent the press and public into a tizzy because, even though I covered the history of coal-fired ovens just a few months back, people still believe the myth that they are on the endangered species list. The fact is that New York City has more coal-burning ovens than it knows what to do with.

Coal ovens come in several formats, but the oldest are the cavernous mason-built bread ovens from the turn of last century. These beasts are so massive that they were either built out into a building’s back yard or into the foundation itself, extending beyond the building’s footprint. When a bakery went out of business, it was much easier (and cheaper) to slap a wall in front of the oven than doing any kind of demolition. This means that old bakery ovens are very likely still in place, just waiting to be discovered. Here’s a quick rundown of five dormant coal-burning ovens in New York.

Patsy’s Pizzeria
Everybody knows that Patsy’s has been making some of the city’s best pizza in a coal-burning oven since 1933, but not many are aware of the huge bakery oven in the basement of 2287 1st Ave. I only learned about it recently while talking to one of the owners about the history of the building. East Harlem became an Italian enclave in the early 20th century and this block was comparable to Manhattan’s Mulberry Street and the Bronx’s Arthur Ave at the time.

NYC took a photo of every building for tax assessment between 1939 and 1941. Patsy’s is indicated by the white arrow.

As indicated by the building’s tax photo (circa 1940), the restaurant with the apron-clad man outside was flanked by a cheese maker, butcher and bakery. Reverse directories that let you look up a building’s occupant by address don’t go earlier than 1929, but I have a feeling Patsy’s location was a bakery before it became a restaurant.

Beneath Patsy’s Pizzeria in East Harlem.

The adjacent Frank’s Bakery may have baked their breads in the oven beneath 2287 1st Ave for sale in their storefront one building down. This subterranean oven wouldn’t have been ideal for a pizzeria, so they shifted to a more compact unit that better suited their needs. Now the old oven sits waiting, but the building’s owners have no immediate plans to revive it.

8 Mile Creek
Continuing with our theme of underground coal ovens, we head down to Mulberry Street just north of Little Italy’s current boundary. There used to be one bakery per block in this neighborhood, and the building at 240 Mulberry Street was direct competition for the Roma Bakery on Spring and the Parisi Bakery on Mott Street. Although it hasn’t been a bakery for quite some time, the oven remains as a quirky piece of decor for what is currently a bar called 8 Mile Creek.

Enjoy the beautiful oven view whilst sipping your drink at the bar!

Entering the building through its main upstairs door will do you no good, but the descending stairs out front will take you into the heart of an old Italian bread bakery. This place fits the pattern perfectly, with an oven that begins at the rear wall of the building. It extends about 20 feet deep, which you can easily see by opening the old steel door and shining a flashlight inside. It’s beautiful.

Pizza Roma
After Zito’s Bakery closed in 2004, the ovens in the basement were abandoned. I kept pretty close tabs on the space and at least two people planned to resurrect them for use in a pizzeria. One company eventually succeeded in securing the space, but decided not to use the old ovens. Pizza Roma (reviewed here) makes Roman pizza al taglio, so coal ovens would be too hot an unwieldy for this application. They brought in an Italian electric oven, which currently sits in front of the old coal burner. Actually, there’s a whole line of new restaurant equipment backed by a stainless steel wall blocking the oven from view altogether.

These ovens are currently hidden behind the modern kitchen setup.

I had a great opportunity to get into the basement before Roma’s owners installed all the new kitchen gear. What you see is actually two ovens in mirrored configuration. The coal boxes are toward the center and the exhausts are on the extreme sides. It may seem like a waste of old coal-burning ovens but Pizza Roma is actually helping preserve them by shielding them from the chaos of a kitchen.

Birdbath Bakery
The last of our downstairs ovens is located at 160 Prince Street in the old Vesuvio Bakery space. The current tenant is Birdbath Bakery, which serves fantastic cookies, muffins, scones and various other baked goods. This is another instance in which a coal oven just isn’t ideal. A post from Eater quotes a Craigslist ad that offers the space with “two 400 square foot coal bread ovens.”

Shots of the underground oven right next to the coffee station!

It was apparently built around 1920 and only went out of commission in 2008. The lovely folks at Birdbath were kind enough to post some great photos of the oven for the viewing pleasure of their customers.

Best Pizza
This last one is a bit funky. After Saviano’s Bakery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn shuttered, its coal-burning oven was left to fend for itself. The folks who took over the space at 33 Havemeyer Street decided to install a wood-burning oven instead of using the oven that was already in place. But instead of demolishing the existing oven, they built the new one inside of it.

Inside the coal chamber at Best Pizza. The pit in the photo’s center is for air flow, to its left is the side of the WFO.

So this coal oven is hidden completely in pain sight surrounding the wood-fired oven that’s still in use today by the folks at Best Pizza. Besides the six foot diameter low-domed oven, the 15x20 bread oven is completely empty. Next time you’re at Best Pizza, check out the back yard and you’ll see the structure that extends behind the building. There’s your coal-burning oven!

Best Pizza’s oven is obviously built for coal, but the smaller oven within it is designed to burn wood.

Of course some of the city’s old bread ovens have been recovered or removed. The folks at Lombardi’s found one behind a wall at what used to be the Albert Parisi bakery at 32 Spring Street and they’ve been using it since1994. The Parisi family’s current bakery still has a pair of huge coal-burners on Elizabeth Street, one of which is out of service due to being blocked by a more efficient gas oven. Their retail spot on Mott Street had an oven in the basement but it appears as though it was recently removed, leaving a pit in their back yard that lines up with the depth of the basement floor. I have a feeling this list is just the tip of the iceberg, but suffice it to say there are plenty more coal-burning ovens lingering beneath and behind inconspicuous buildings in every city with a Southern Italian immigrant population dating back to the early 1900s.

Electric Oven vs Wood-Fired Brick Oven

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 14:02:57 -0500

I just found this photo I took of two identical margherita pizzas baked in different ovens at a pizzeria called 900 Degrees (RIP) in the West Village. The one on the left baked for 5 minutes and 33 seconds in a brick-lined electric deck oven, the one on the right baked for 1 minute and 24 seconds in a wood-fired brick oven.

Judging by these photos, the wood-fired pie looks way better. The lower temperature electric oven caused the fresh mozzarella to break down before the crust completely baked. You can see why pizza makers switched to low-moisture mozzarella when deck ovens became standard (besides the fact that they had a longer shelf life). The crust on the right looks more even and the cheese/sauce separation has remained intact.

But looks are only part of the picture — almost everyone on the tour that day preferred the taste of the pie on the left. BOOM!

Last week’s slice count. Looks like I went 1 over my 15...

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 08:03:47 -0500

Last week’s slice count. Looks like I went 1 over my 15 slice limit, but it was hard to control myself after that mid-week dip. Highlights include the white slice at Best Pizza, cheese slices at Totonno’s and Difara, montanara (fried pizza) at Don Antonio and my homemade square pie with sausage and red onion.

First Reference to Pizza as a Pie?

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:08:08 -0500

Here’s a reallyyyyyyy early reference to pizza in the December 6, 1903 edition of the New York Tribune. It’s part of a larger article about how much Italians love hot foods (there’s a section that defines pepperoni as hot peppers rather than the later Americanized cured meat) and includes some rather controversial remnants from our lost pizza past. The article doesn’t mention a restaurant name, so it’s unclear whether this is a bakery, pizzeria or somebody’s house. What is clear is that the author directly compares Italian pizza to American pie, making it the earliest reference to pizza as a pie that I have ever seen. We use this slang in the Northeast, but people outside the area always ask me why I call pizza a pie. Here’s why!

But there’s a lot more mind-blowing info in this tiny paragraph. The article indicates a method of dough stretching that is more or less outlawed in both Naples and New York City pizzerias today: the rolling pin. In Naples, all pizza dough is extended by hand with special care taken to preserve the gases of fermentation. New York pizza makers tend to use more muscle with their dough stretching because American flour is much stronger than its European counterpart. But nobody currently making New York or Neapolitan style pizza even owns a rolling pin.

The instructions also say to roll out the dough to an inch thick. WOW, that’s not thin crust at all! Could it have been a typo? A misunderstanding? Lost in translation? Just the wrong person to interview for the article? We may never know, but what’s certain is that pizza has never been a food with strict definition — that’s what makes it so wonderful!

Read the Full New York Tribune Article

Pizza Slice Tracking Technology

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 11:00:05 -0500

Here’s a chart of last week’s pizza intake. Looks like I overshot my limit of 15 slices.

Sometime last year I started keeping track of how much pizza I was eating. It’s not part of a crazy cleansing diet or anything but I figured it might make sense to limit my intake so I don’t risk burning out. In 2009 alone I visited about 400 different pizzerias and ate over 1300 slices. Probably not the best idea, so now I try to stick to a maximum of 15 slices per week. I chose 15 because there are 16 slices in 2 whole pies, so 15 is less than 2 whole pies. It’s really just a psychological trick to make me think I’m not eating that much pizza.

Until recently, I’ve just been keeping a running tally in my head. That worked pretty well until my homeslice Nick from PizzaRules.com turned me on to Daytum, a sweet data tracking app/website. I use a free version that lets me plug in any data I want and organize it into neat charts and graphs. The data is all public in the free version but you can make it private by upgrading for a small fee.

The above chart shows a a blue graph, which is an enlarged version of the highlighted section of the smaller gray graph below. I only highlighted the last week because I track my slices on a Monday - Friday schedule. You can see a short list of pizzerias I visited with the number of slices consumed to the left. Looks like I ate at 8 pizzerias, logged in the data from each and gobbled 18 total slices. So much for that limit. Keep in mind that I physically enter 15 - 25 pizzerias per week with my New York Pizza Tours so I have to restrain myself all the time. It’s especially hard when I’m going out for extracurricular (ie non-tour) pizza. (5 slices at Speedy Romeo, 4 at Don Antonio, 4 at Roberta’s…. yikes!)

I’ll try to post a weekly slice graph every Monday!

Winter Project: Homemade Sicilian Pizza

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:00:00 -0500

There she is, a Sicilian pie so good I emailed a picture of it to my dad.

Winter is the perfect time for thick crusts and gooey cheese, so I decided to make it a February project to learn how to make the perfect Sicilian pizza. After purchasing a coated black pan from Bari Equipment, my favorite restaurant supply store on the Bowery, I set out to craft a square pie that wouldn’t be the all-too-common heavy rock in the stomachs of all wide-eyed eaters. Here’s a rundown of my journey thus far.

I made a batch of dough using little bits of leftover flour from several different sources. This probably wasn’t the best idea, but I couldn’t bare to see lonely little bags of flour just sitting there in my flour bin. So I mixed 50g whole wheat with 350g bread flour and 196g all purpose. I did a 66% hydration with 110g Ischia starter. That means there was 650g total flour, 55 of which came from a starter. If you don’t have a starter, just use 650g flour and you’ll be set (but you’ll have to use more yeast). The 66% hydration means I used a water with a weight of 66% the 650g flour weight. That’s 429g, but 55g of water were already in the starter so I only had to add 374g water to the mix. Confused? Just remember that most starters are 50/50 water to flour, so a 200g portion of starter is 100g water and 100g flour. To boost the air content, I added 1g active dry yeast. After mixing by hand and a 30 rest period, I kneaded in about 15g salt. After another 30 minute rest, I loaded the finished dough into a lightly-oiled container and let her sit in the fridge for a couple days.

My oiled dough prepping for its final rise on baking day.

I ended up baking my pizza about two days after making the dough. Unlike with Neapolitan pizza, square pies require a long rise after stretching and before baking. Getting the dough into the square pan requires a series of short rises inter-cut by delicate stretching. It took about three hours to get the dough from a ball to this square shape. I’m actually going to try a longer rise and a single stretch next time because this pie came out a bit too dense for me. I should note that this dough is lightly covered with oil, so it won’t dry out during the rise.

Topped with watered-down tomato before the final rise.

After the dough has achieved full coverage of the pan, it’s time for the final rise. I picked up a great tip to keep the dough moist from Joe’s Pizza on Carmine Street in Greenwich Village. They suggested covering the dough’s surface with a mixture of crushed tomato and water before allowing the dough to have a final 1-2 hour rise. This way, you won’t de-gas the dough by adding tomato to the fluffy, gassy blob. As you can see from the photo, I covered the topped dough with plastic to keep out unwanted debris.

Pre-baked dough, but looks like a solid focaccia to me!

When the dough had risen sufficiently (ie I was too excited to wait any longer) it was time to bake in a preheated 475 F oven. This is just a pre-bake, so the toppings will come later. This step took about 12 minutes to achieve browning on the crust. I learned from Metro Pizza’s John Arena that it’s best to let the pre-baked crust cool completely before topping and re-baking. He likened it to the physical difference between bread and toast. It definitely kept the crust crunchy!

After cooling down, we topped the crust and prepared for the final bake.

The next step was really fun because a couple of my friends had arrived so we applied toppings as a group committee. This pie had whole milk low moisture mozzarella, salted tomato (slightly pre-cooked Sclafani crushed tomatoes), browned sweet Italian sausage (I cut off the casings on Premio sausage links and mixed in 3 cloves of garlic and some black pepper) and dried oregano. Remember, there’s already some tomato on the crust’s surface, so we started the topping procedure with cheese, followed by sausage and finally finished the party with crushed tomato. This worked great because the cheese was protected by moisture from the tomatoes so it didn’t burn.

Baked and cooling off on a mesh baking screen.

After a final 10 minutes in the oven, we had ourselves a beautifully baked Sicilian pizza. The guys at Prince Street Pizza gave me a great tip for keeping the crunch in your crust by letting square pies cool for 10 minutes on a baking screen. The flavor was great and the texture was almost perfect.

Cross-section of the final product.

As you can see from this photo, there isn’t much air in the crust. I’m hoping to change that by using only All Purpose or Bread flour (no Whole Wheat, it kills the gluten web). But it had a great crunch and tasted better than 95% of the Sicilian pizza I’ve had at pizzerias.

This underside is a bit too dark for me, but it tasted great.

This pie wasn’t perfect, but it was so much better than my first attempt three weeks ago. I’m convinced the next round will be even closer to my goal of crunchy-bottomed, fluffy-interior, perfectly-topped Sicilian brilliance. Stay tuned for more!

2012 Pizza Calendar Roundup

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:00:00 -0500

Three great calendars from three extremely different pizzerias.

Of all the trends hitting the pizza scene lately, the buzz word of 2012 thus far seems to be calendar. Three of the city’s most varied pizzerias each decided to welcome the new year with their very own custom-made wall calendars. And these aren’t lame calendars either, they’re extremely well designed with as much personality as the pizzerias themselves. Here’s a look at what’s to come in 2012 through the eyes of John’s of Bleecker Street, L’asso and Two Boots.

Each month features a still from a famous New York City movie with one major modification: main characters faces have been replaced with those of the pizzeria staff! There’s even a caption with ever page that ties John’s Pizzeria into the film’s plot. It’s pretty goofy but hilarious, especially if you go there often enough to recognize the staff. A company called Three Room Press has made the calendars for John’s Pizzeria since 2011 and it looks like it’s becoming a tradition.

This caption says: “If only The Warriors had made it back to Coney Island without stopping to eat some John’s of Bleecker Street, they might have had a chance. But on the other hand, what a way to go!”

The L’asso calendar is exactly the opposite of John’s. You can tell by its title, Pizza is My Lover, that this collection of photographs will be more than just food porn. Each month features a different pizza pinup, so you can line your high school locker with them and be a real weirdo! March has a Dante lounging in a fluffy chair, October’s San Danielle (prosciutto) dons bondage wear and the July heat is represented by dough and sauce in the raw. Risque, isn’t it? Here’s one of my favorites…

The Gardino relaxes on the beach for respite from the hot August sun.

All photos are the work of Ashley Macknica and Greg Barris. As with John’s, this is L’asso’s second calendar. According to Barris, “All the pizzas were made in the [L’asso] oven at 192 Mott Street and then brought to the photo studio.” The calendars are free for customers at the new East Village location (107 First Ave) or they can be purchased online or at the Nolita location (192 Mott Street) for $10.

NOTE: Help Ashley and Greg by telling them what kind of pizza calendar you want for next year?

As much as I dig the other two calendars, my prize for Most Wall-Worthy goes to Two Boots. It makes sense because these guys have been celebrating the Earth’s trip around the sun this way since they dished out their first slice in 1987. And this calendar feels exactly like the ones I used to buy in 1987. I remember going to the local bookstore every December to select the imagery that would accompany me through the next twelve months. That decision was pretty big and always reflected whatever I was obsessed with at the moment. (One year was Egyptian pharaohs, one was famous drum kits, etc.) The Two Boots calendar really feels like the calendars of my youth. It’s the size of a record album!

Like L’asso, New York’s Pizza Pioneers since 1987 chose to represent each month with one of their pizzas. Two Boots is known for its unconventional slices named after quirky pop culture icons, but their support for local artists is just as prominent in this project. Twelve artists were commissioned to produce unique visual representations of their favorite Two Boots slices. The bottom of each month has a bio and URL for the corresponding artist. But the Two Boots vibe soaks even deeper into the body of each month, with significant holidays indicated (Andy Kaufman’s birthday, crawfish festival, Louisiana Purchase ratification).

February features the Cleopatra Jones (sweet Italian sausage, roasted pepper, onion, mozzarella), as depicted by artist Seth Tobocman. How awesome is that!?!?! One of my favorite listings this month is “rent one Bill Murray movie get one free” at the Two Boots video store on Ave A in honor of Groundhog day. Sorry I’m posting this after the fact. You wouldn’t have missed it if you had the calendar!

Here’s another great one. What an awesome image by the legendary John Holmstrom (founded of PUNK zine (1975) and created two Ramones album covers).

Just one more, possibly my favorite image from the entire calendar. You can just imagine artist J Carlos Pinto downing several Cajun cheeseburger slices (with tasso, andouille, ground beef, cheddar and mozzarella) to get inspiration for this stunning image.

All three calendars are truly amazing. Ask your local pizzeria why they don’t have their own wall calendar and maybe you’ll inspire them to take on the project. Next thing you know, you’ll have a wall full of amazing pizza images!