Do You Remember Linden's Cookies?

The other day I was sitting in front of the candy machine at work looking for a a tasty snack. I decided on a cookie and purchased a "GRANDMA'S" brand Chocolate Chip cookie. As I was munching on my cookies at my desk it occurred to me how crappy these cookies were and I slowly drifted off down memory lane to a time when a prepackaged bag of cookies tasted great. But what were those cookies? Then I remembered ... they were Linden's cookies!

Anybody who grew up in New York or even the tri-state area knows what Linden's cookies are. They are a hard chocolate chip cookie that come 3 per a pack. They were sold in probably every school cafeteria in the New York metropolitan area. The last time I had Linden's cookies was on a Jet Blue flight about 4 years ago (prior to that my last Linden's cookie was probably in High School). Unfortunately Jet Blue no longer offers Linden's cookies as an option. So if anybody with any authority from Jet Blue Airlines is reading this please consider adding Linden's cookies back as a snack option on your flights.

Now it turns out that Linden's cookies are unavailable on the west coast. Or at least I was unable to find them. So what does one do when they can't buy Linden's cookies locally. Simple you just go on line to the Linden's Cookies web site and order them! You can have a box of 18 chocolate chip packages delivered straight to your door for $18 plus $6.95 for shipping and handling. That works out to about $1.50 a pack which isn't unreasonable considering my crappy "GRANDMA'S" cookies cost me almost $1.

When my cookies first arrived I was so excited. The brown and white package looked exactly as I remembered. However the first thing I noticed when I opened the package was the cookies seemed infinitely smaller than I recalled. But my wife reminded me that I had probably grown quite a bit since I regularly ate these cookies. "Besides" she said "size doesn't matter!" After that comment I was left with that uncomfortable feeling that she was lying to me and perhaps these cookies would not be as good as they once were.

Low and behold my first bite was heavenly. Maybe the cookies are smaller or maybe not but they still tasted amazing. Each bite was like a trip down memory lane. So next time you are standing in front of a candy machine looking for a cookie, turn around and head straight back to your desk and order yourself a box of Linden's Cookies and take a trip down memory lane.

Lindens' Cookies

Linden's Cookies, Inc.
25 Brenner Drive, Congers, NY 10920
Tel: 1-800-660-5051 Fax: 845-268-5055
Email: info@lindencookies.com

If You Can't Find New York Pizza Make It, Stupid! (Part 3)

Hopefully by now you have read the other two segments on making New York pizza.  We have covered everything from some simple not well known basics (i.e. using high gluten flour)  to a very complicated recipe from Jeff Varasano.  And if you are anything like me you have tried all of these techniques in varying combinations and had some great pizzas and some bad ones.

So this final post on the subject is really about introducing consistency into your pizza recipe so you can turn out a great New York pie over and over again.  After reading all these resources it is easy to see that baking is as much a science as it is an art.   When one is dealing with Art and Science it is best to learn from a master.  Who better to turn to then the master baker himself Peter Reinhart.

The Perfect recipe | Instant Yeast | Consistency

After years of making pizzas using the previously mentioned resources I stumbled across Peter Reinhart's book titled The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread. Peter Reinhart is a baking instructor at Johnson & Wales University and a professional baker.  In his book is a very detailed recipe for pizza dough that gets really specific on some of the techniques we have discussed.  Even better when you try this recipe you will get amazingly consistent results.  I won't reprint the recipe here but it has been reprinted on other blogs.  If you want to see a scaled back version of the recipe check out Heidi Swanson's 101 cookbooks blog.

The first thing I took away from Peter's book was what yeast to use.  Until I read Peter's book I was stuck between using Active Dry Yeast or Using a Sourdough yeast culture as described in Jeff's recipe.   I always got inconsistent results with ADY and I found Jeff's Sourdough technique to be immensely time consuming (note if you are interested in trying the sourdough technique you can read Ed Wood's Classic Sourdoughs: A Home Baker's Handbook).  Peter's recipe was the first I had seen exclusively calling for instant yeast.   I have found instant yeast much easier to use and my dough appears to come out much better.   Much like high gluten flour, instant yeast is hard to come by in your typical supermarket.  I purchased mine from our local Cash and Carry. 

The next great part of Peter's recipe is the wetness of the dough.  Peter describes what the dough should look and feel like better than any recipe I have read.  This is really helpful since a lot of baking involves just knowing what the dough should feel like.  In addition the weights and volume measurements he provides give truly consistent results.

Finally Peter gives very precise instructions on rise times and locations.  I think this is the most critical and important component of this recipe.   Until I read Peter's recipe I was all over the map with my rise times and where I allowed the dough to rise.  Dominic's book calls for a 2 hour rise prior to refrigeration where Jeff's recipe has a completely different solution.   If I follow Peter's recipe to the "T" my dough comes out perfect almost every time.  Even better the dough is VERY easy to work with!

Closing thoughts

If  you decided to embark on the quest to make a great New York pizza I hope these past few posts help you along the way.  To recap some of the key points in these posts:

• Try and find high gluten flour it will help you make dough that stretches with out breaking
• Let your dough rise for at least 24 hours in the refrigerator  (I prefer3 days)
• Your dough should be fairly wet with a hydration level of around 60% or higher
• Make your sauce from uncooked San Marzano tomatoes
• High Heat is critical to a successful pizza
• Consider using instant yeast

Until next time happy New York pizza making!

If You Can't Find New York Pizza Make It, Stupid! (Part 2)

In our last post we reviewed Dominick A. Deangelis' book The Art of Pizza Making: Trade Secrets and Recipes.   If you read the book you will quickly learn that Dominic is an engineer by training and his book is peppered with some of the science behind pizza making.  Well being an engineer and being obsessed with making pizza must have some correlation because not only do I also have an engineering background but so does the author of our next resource Jeff Varasano.

Jeff Varasano originally posted his multi-page dissertation titled Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe in 2006.  It has since become one of the most referenced resources for making New York Pizza on the web.     The rest of this post discusses some of the highlights of Jeff's recipe/dissertation.

00 Flour | Wet Dough | SAN MARZANO TOMATOES | High Heat

One of the first things Jeff discusses in his document is that you don't need high gluten flour to create a great pizza.  Jeff discusses some other options including using 00 flour which is a super fine Italian flour.  This was news to me since before I read Jeff's article I assumed you would fail with anything other than high gluten flour.  Jeff provides additional methods on how to knead the dough to develop the gluten even with lower protein flour.  00 flour is usually only available in Italian import stores.  I buy my 00 flour from DeLaurenti Specialty Food and Wine in Seattle's Pike Place Market

The next eye opener for me was the amount of water in Jeff's recipe which results in a very wet dough.  This was very different from my older recipes which were much drier. Jeff suggests hydration levels of over 60% (in baker's percents) compared to the 50% in my older recipes.   This really made  a huge difference in my pizzas both in flavor and my ability to work the dough.

Another little tidbit which I already knew but is quintessential for any pizza maker is that a good pizza sauce is really just crushed uncooked tomatoes.  And specifically the best pizza sauces use imported Italian San Marzano tomatoes.  The reason for using uncooked tomatoes is that the oven is so hot that the tomatoes cook while on the pizza in the oven.  If you precook the sauce you are basically cooking the sauce twice.  This flies in the face of most peoples first instinct which is to make a cooked tomato sauce.  Like the 00 flour, San Marzano tomatoes are sometimes difficult to come by but I have found them in most high-end supermarkets including Whole Foods.  In the summers I actually grow my own tomatoes and make a sauce using the Velox Tomato Press / Tomato Strainer.

Last but not least Jeff describes the need for VERY high heat.  I don't think I appreciated how critical this was to success until I read Jeff's article and tried using a high heat oven myself.  The difference in your pizza will be dramatic.  Now if you follow Jeff's suggestion you will be breaking the lock off your oven door and running it on cleaning cycle (not a good idea).  If you want an alternative check out Kiko Denzer's book titled Build Your Own Earth Oven, 3rd Edition: A Low-Cost Wood-Fired Mud Oven; Simple Sourdough Bread; Perfect Loaves.  I cooked my first "high heat" pizza in one of these home built ovens and it was fantastic.  I plan on building one in my own yard.

There are lots of other great tidbits in Jeff's article.  I highly suggest you read this dissertation on pizza making if you want to make a great New York pizza pie.  Here is the link one last time for everybody.

Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe

In the next post we will discuss the final reference that opened my eyes to pizza making and some closing thoughts.

If You Can't Find New York Pizza Make It, Stupid! (Part 1)

Ok I just called the few people who read my blog stupid. In the marketing and PR world the only person who would be called stupid would be me!

But seriously folks what does one do after they have identified the New York food they crave and discovered there are no restaurants in their area that fulfill this craving. Well you do the very next best thing which is try to make it yourself.

Now I will be the first to tell you that it is very difficult to make food at home that tastes like what you can find at a restaurant. Reasons abound, but the biggest are equipment, ingredients, temperature control, and last but not least LOT'S of salt and butter. I believe it was Anthony Bourdain in his book Kitchen Confidential who enlightens us to how butter and salt are key to restaurant food! All that said I still think with a bit of effort one can come pretty close to restaurant style in their house.

What I want to talk briefly about is making New York pizza at home. Now before you all go expecting a thirty page dissertation on pizza making I will just say this subject has been covered and recovered by countless people in countless books, blogs, and papers. So I will just cover some of the highlights and link to my favorite recipes and sources of information. This started as one post but as I started writing I quickly discovered it would be better if I broke it into parts.

High Gluten flour refrigerated Rise Even Heat

The first time I tried to make a New York pizza I actually tried to fly dough home from my favorite place in New York. That didn't work and I will leave it at that!

After that debacle I searched Amazon.com for a book on the subject of pizza making and came across a little gem called The Art of Pizza Making: Trade Secrets and Recipes by Dominick A. Deangelis. When it was finally delivered to my house I was amazed to see a tiny book that looks like it was printed at Kinkos! But in true keeping with the age old saying "never judge a book by its cover" this book had some VERY valuable information.

The first thing this book teaches you is that the secret to why Pizza dough stretches as it does is because of gluten. Gluten is a composite of proteins that gives bread and pizza dough it's elasticity. Hence if you want your pizza dough to stretch without breaking you need a lot of gluten. Since gluten is a function of protein a high protein flour can be key to developing gluten. Hence this book explains that many pizza places use high gluten flour (In a later post we will discuss other ways to develop gluten without high protein flour). So if you are taking your first stab at pizza making I HIGHLY suggest you go find yourself some high gluten flour.

Now the problem is that high gluten flour is very hard to find. I have searched every supermarket far and wide and have yet to find it. In my early days I actually purchased my high gluten flour from a bakery/cheese shop on Divisadaro in San Francisco. This isn't something they actually sold and I think they just gave it to me at cost. But once I really got going I wanted a more steady supply and they only place I could find was the local Cash and Carry. The great thing is they actually sell high gluten flour. The downside is it comes in very large fifty pound bags! Another option is to order it online from companies like King Arthur, however be prepared to pay more for shipping than you paid for the flour.

The next great "a ha" moment in this book is that you should slowly (as long as 3 days) let your dough rise in the refrigerator (sometimes called retarded rise). By letting the dough rise in the refrigerator you slow the fermentation process down. This allows the flavors to better develop and totally changes the texture of the end product. If you want chewy pliable New York Pizza dough a refrigerated rise is a must.

Finally there is the notion of having even heat distribution. Basically when you cook a pizza you want all parts of it to cook at an equal temperature otherwise the bottom might burn before the cheese melts or vice versa. You also want all sides of the pizza to cook evenly. Throw a thermometer in any home oven and you will discover temperatures vary widely within the oven. Hence a pizza stone is critical since it helps distribute the heat evenly below the pizza.

That is it for part 1. In my next post I will move to Jeff Varasano's "dissertation" on New York pizza making and discuss cooking with very high temperatures, higher water content, and using imported 00 flour.

Tat's East Coast Delicatessen in Seattle

Probably the easiest way to locate New York food in your area is to find restaurants who use New York vernacular that is descriptive of New York in the title. For example you might find a restaurant called New York Pizza or Gotham Subs. You know what I am talking about. I am sure just like me you have veered off a highway going ninety miles an hour just because you saw a sign for some sort of New York food. And that my friends is what led me straight to Tat's East Coast Delicatessen.

Now lets focus for a second on the particular vernacular used in this case ... "East Coast". Now anybody who is from New York knows that "East Coast" in general is used to describe a place that is like New York, perhaps close to New York and whose foods are similar, but yet is not New York. These "East Coast" places like Philadelphia and Boston have some great food of their own and they have some foods that are about as close to New York style as you can get but when push comes to shove they are really just distant cousins or faraway suburb of New York. And so it goes without saying the "East Coast" title always raises a slight red flag.

So now that I offended a good deal of people (like any good New Yorker should) lets get back to the task at hand. Tat's Deli is owned an operated by two gentleman who grew up in Philadelphia and New Jersey (i.e "East Coast") who missed their hometown foods. So they decided to open up a restaurant that would serve their favorite foods in Seattle.

The word Delicatessen is a little misleading in that Tat's is really more of sub shop. Somewhere between a local pizza place serving Chicken Parmesan subs and an Italian or Kosher Deli offering sandwiches with various cold cuts. Their real claim to fame are their cheese steaks. Now I love a great cheese steak but cheese steaks are a Philadelphia thing so I will leave the cheese steak review for the guy who writes the phillyfoodanywhere blog!

I was here to try the classic New York favorite a chicken Parmesan sandwich. I have quite a few things to say about this sandwich so lets take the bullet list approach

What I loved:

• When I asked if the chicken was breaded the person taking my order gave me the "are you crazy" look and said "of course".
• When I asked if there was going to be lettuce, tomatoes, mayo or any other non-authentic ingredient on my sandwich he gave me the "are you crazy" look and said "of course NOT".
• The bread was excellent and when I got my sandwich the bread was toasted but still chewy just the way it is supposed to be.

What was ok or not so good:

• I found the sauce to be somewhat flavorless.
• The chicken was fairly soggy (I will add that to this day I have no idea how somebody makes one of these sandwiched and keeps the chicken cutlets crispy ... but some are able to).
• The chicken looked and tasted like some of those frozen breaded chicken cutlets.

So to sum it up I think this Chicken Parmesan sandwich was a solid B+. The essence of the sandwich was there but I think they could execute a little better on some of the fundamental components of the sandwich. All that said I would say for sure this is the best Chicken Parmesan sandwich I have found to date in the Seattle area so I encourage you to give it a try.

As for the rest of the menu, there looks like there are some interesting and tasty meals to be had . Like I said earlier this isn't a true delicatessen in the sense that you can go have any sandwich you desire created but they do have a bunch of great sounding sandwiches on the menu. options that I hope to try one day include Tat's Italian, Hot Pastrami, and the Reuben. I will let you know when I have given them a try. In the mean time you can find more information about Tat's East Coast Delicatessen below.

Tat's East Coat Delicatessen Menu