Thoughts on Pizza…
With Shavuos starting this week, the focus is on dairy recipes. Cheesecakes! Blintzes! Pizza! Yes, pizza. At my house, Shavuos lunch is the time for my annual pizza making blitz, where I make (or attempt to make) a selection of gourmet or fancy pizzas. I don’t have a full review of what pizzas I’ll be making, but here’s some of my thoughts and plans:
- Styles of Pizza – A great pizza is whatever style of pizza you like the most. Deep dish, thin-crust, stuffed-pizza, doughy and chewy – they’re all good. My style of choice is the one that is commonly referred to as New York Style (go figure). Fairly thin crust, floppy enough that the slice needs to be folded to be held. My crust recipe comes from Peter Reinhart’s American Pie.
- Oven Automation – I think I’ve mentioned my hacked oven here before. My oven predates Sabbath/Holiday modes, so I had to build a circuit into it so I could have it turned on automatically on Yom Tov. I assume no responsibility if you’re crazy enough to try the same.
- High Temperatures – This particularly verbose page has changed my pizza baking forever. The most important factor is a high temperature oven. Commercial pizza-ovens reach a minimum of 750 degrees. 550 degrees just won’t cut it. My oven also predates an open-door sensor, so I clipped the lock and bake pizzas during the self-clean cycle. Neither I nor KosherBlog.net will assume any responsibility for people who decide to do something so monumentally stupid! I haven’t gotten an infra-red thermometer yet, but I’m guessing that I’m baking pizzas at about 900 degrees. It takes about 2 minutes to cook a 9″ pizza! The crust comes out better than any I have ever made. Crispy, bubbly, amazing.
- Cheese – I like to try a variety of cheeses on my pizzas. This year I’m using pepper-jack and fresh mozzarella di buffala for the first time. The mozzarella came from KosherItalia.com. Just a word of advice – I found the cheese rather bland, straight from the package. 2 days before using the cheese, I added a 1/2 teaspoon of salt to the water the mozzarella balls are floating in. It improved it considerably, in my opinion. Also make sure that you dry the cheese off as much as possible before baking, or you will have a super-hot puddle on top of your pie.
- Toppings – Some ideas I’m toying with. Caramelized Onions. Potato & Rosemary. Wild Mushrooms & White Sauce. White Pizza (ricotta cheese). Roasted Garlic. Roasted Poblanos & Pepper-Jack. My kids are partial to canned-corn on their pizzas.
Have a good and tasty Yom Tov!
¶
How Brazilian of your kids. Do they also put mayonnaise and ketchup on their pizza? (that’s how brazilians eat it)
Ah, you’ve beaten me to the punch — I’ve been pondering a pizza article myself. Here are my two cents.
Temps: For those who’d prefer not to void their oven warranties, use pizza stones or tiles, heated at 500 degrees for an hour. You’ll get a nice, crisp crust (without alerting the local fire marshal).
Cheese: Do not buy kosher shredded mozzarella. Do not buy kosher shredded mozzarella. Got it? They just don’t have enough fat to melt properly. Unless all the area supermarkets are out of it, I use Cappiello mozzarella and shred it myself. The Miller’s mozzarella wheels (about 5″ diameter) also work decently, but they don’t have as much flavor.
Toppings: Whatever you choose, err on the side of paucity. I just use enough sauce to coat the dough. The cheese-to-sauce visual red/white ratio is probably 50/50. Other toppings are full-flavored and sparse — caramelized onions gingerly dropped here and there with little dollops of ricotta, or little crumbles of strong blue cheese with some chopped dried fig are among my favorite combinations.
Dough: whatever recipe you use (or if you buy it pre-made at the market), make sure your dough is room temperature. I can’t stress this enough: cold dough is impossible to stretch out to the proper thinness.
(Remember, even with a “cool” 500-degree oven, you only have 10 minutes to cook everything, so bringing all your ingredients to room temperature, using minimal toppings, and stretching your dough thin gives your pizza a head start.)
More comments as they come to me :)
I’ll see your 2 cents and raise you 2 cents:
Temps: I found that pizzas baked at 500 degrees were only really good while still warm, and rarely good as leftovers. The super-high temps seem to result in a crust that tastes better, longer.
Cheese: You’re just a cheese snob. Sometimes, the shredded stuff in a bag works just fine. And at 900 degrees, everything melts properly :)
Toppings: Indeed, don’t overdo it. The wife and kids always ask for more cheese and more toppings – but it can barely stay on the crust. And watery-vegetables (like fresh tomatoes) can be dangerous, since the water in them gets hotter than the solids. Roast/fry/saute the veges to drive off some of the water.
Rachel,
Plenty of places that have no clue about pizza put corn on it. My Hungarian relatives love it. Feh.
Fantastic post as usual. Jabbett, if you really don’t think there is enough fat simply buy the kosher shredded muenster cheese. That should solve the issue.
sweinberger,
Another great article. I will have to revisit the mozzarella di buffala with the salt added to the brine…
I will have to agree with jabbett though about the oven temperatures. My oven does not get hotter than 550, and I usually bake pizza at 500. I usually don’t make enough for leftovers, but the one time I did, it was perfectly fine.
I partially pre-bake the crust, making sure to dock it thoroughly so it doesn’t puff up.
Using a cast-iron pan will yield the best crust, and I usually use a 10-inch lodge cast-iron skillet for pizza, and I find that it makes great deep dish pizza as well.
I’ve found that corn is a popular topping in Israel. It’s an unusual flavor, kind of adds a sweetness. Not something I would order for myself, but if it’s being served, I won’t complain
velorutionary: As it turns out, a zesty sauce and a good browning more than makes up for the blandness of the cheese. I didn’t remember to salt all the cheese, and it turned out fine.
While there are many ways to get delicious pizza, I maintain that for a true “New York Slice” – crispy, bubbly crust, thin, floppy slices – the high heat bake is the only way to go. Jabbet’s Pizza (at least for this post :) ) appears fairly doughy. Baking in a cast-iron pan is interesting – can you get a thin crust?
Howie: An Israeli pizza place was also the first place I ever saw hard-boiled eggs on pizza.
The first time my kids were given the choice for pizza toppings, they chose tomatoes, corn & spaghetti – all together! I’m open minded when it comes to pizza toppings – just no anchovies.
This is my big pet peve about all kosher pizza parlors – none of them use real mozzarella, they all use wisconsin cheese.
true for nyc–but detroit,cleveland,montreal kosher pizza uses mozzerella.milk st cafe,boston pizza tastes better than nyc and so does the new pizza shop on route 9 in lakewood!!!!!
abe: It would be more accurate to say that none of them use fresh mozzarella or mozzarella di buffafla or water-packed mozzarella – which I’m not 100% sure of, either. Surely it’s uncommon. Personal preferences aside, low-moisture mozzarella (the pre-shredded, bagged stuff) is mozzarella – and it can come from anywhere.
joe benjamin: Good pizza can be found anywhere, and is a matter of personal taste. While I can name many NYC pizzerias with sub-par pizza, my interest was in New York Style pies.
Hey guys,
I just made my first pizza two nights ago, and I I’m ready to join the club. I think I’ll write up a post, too — a different kind of post, to reassure beginners. (No offense, but you passionate pizza people can be a little bit intimidating.) I’m definitely going to get a pizza stone and pizza peel now, but I was able to do without them this time and I still got a nice crust. What surprised me most was that making pizza “from scratch” was no more labor intensive than most of our weeknight suppers. I used Barilla tomato sauce, mushrooms and shallots sauteed in white wine, and fresh mozzarella — delish!
Howie, if you’re around, I am also curious the cast-iron pan idea. Without a pizza peel, getting the pizza in and out of the oven is a bit of a challenge, and having a handle would help a lot. (Unfortunately, I can’t use my cast iron crepe pans in a 500 degree oven because — unbeknownst to us when registered for them — they are coated with teflon :-(
Does anyone on this site know where I can buy the same pizza sauce that all the kosher pizzerias use in brooklyn?I love it and can’t seem to duplicate their recipe, so just want to buy it.I would really appreciate a response.
I don;t know what sauce they use, but i use Don Pepino’s Pizza Sauce with good results. Currently, i add 4oz apple juice to the 15oz can, and i use a lot of sauce. The sauce makes the pizza.