Slice
The Pieman's Craft at Una Pizza Napoletana
Photograph from Paulie Gee on Flickr
On Saturday Slice–Serious Eats sponsored a talk called The Pieman's Craft as part of the New York Wine & Food Festival. A crowd of about 35 people showed up for the event, including some familiar faces—and some new faces that we were able to put to Slice screen names (which is always fun!).
Noted pizza expert Ed Levine talked to Anthony Mangieri, drawing out his piemaking history and, eventually, his philosophy.
Photograph from Paulie Gee on Flickr
The session was also a bit of a juxtaposition of styles, with Ed bringing some Vinny Vincenz plain pies to illustrate a very good New York slice and some Totonno's pies (Second Avenue) to rep the coal-oven school.
After about a half hour of talking and eating the first two examples of NYC pizza, Mangieri went to town making the pies everyone had no doubt been salivating for. After the jump, the UPN process.
The UPN Process
Mangieri has a well-organized prep table. The dough-proofing bins are on rails and slide in and out beneath the countertop.
Saucing the dough. Mangieri revealed for the first time that he uses an uncooked sauce on his pies. This came as little surprise.
Adding sea salt.
Next comes the cheese. Mangieri uses only buffalo mozzarella, which he had previously imported from Italy. But we learned yesterday that Mangieri has been getting his buffala from a dairy farm in California. He says that it has a little less flavor than the Italian stuff—but only if the Italian stuff is at its peak. And that, he said, is difficult to procure.
Putting on a nice amount of basil.
Mangieri moves the pie to the pizza peel, and stretches it some more.
Into the oven.
Bringing the pie out.
The process is complete—hot pie.
Party Pics
Longtime Slice reader and frequent commenter Paulie Gee showed up. He's obsessed with pizza ovens, having built one of his own. Here are Paulie's photos of the event.
The Gutter Gourmet showed up wearing this awesome T-shirt. Here's what he had to say about the event.
Scott Wiener (Scott's New York Pizza Tours), Dan Budiac, and Kathryn Yu, who coined the term "pizza upskirt." (Apparently, Wiener hates this term. Boo!)
Here she is examining the upskirt of her own Totonno's slice:
Photograph from Paulie Gee on Flickr
Ed signs copies of his book. If I heard it correctly, this couple came to the event as part of a wedding gift!
That's all, folks!