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.