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.