New York pizza is my favorite style of pizza. Sure, I love me a neo-Neapolitan, sit-down-with-a-fork-and-knife on occasion, and grilled pizzas are fantastic in the summer. Even chewy, Roman-style pizza bianca has its place. But the pizza I find myself most often craving is of the simple, by-the-slice, medium-thin, crusty and lightly chewy style. Here's how to make it at home.
Fermentation is a fascinating thing. It's what gives a great pizza crust (and all yeast-leavened breads, for that matter) its light, airy structure and distinctive complex, slightly sour taste. But what's the best way to ferment dough? This week, I try to find out.
I got this email from Foolish Poolish last night, with the subject line, "You might find this interesting." Well, FP, I think the Slice'rs would find this interesting, too, so I hope you don't mind me sharing it. And, how apropos, given the NYT story that ran this morning. Observe and learn! —The Mgmt. [Photographs: Foolish Poolish] Here is a dough ball. The dough was mixed from just 160g flour and 100g water (no leavening) and left to rest for 20 minutes.During that 20 minutes, the broiler has been directly heating a pizza stone sitting xx" away from the heating...
The poll earlier this week asked how you ate the end crusts of your slices — plain or perhaps dipped in something. The resounding answer was you essentially eat it plain. Fifty percent of respondents chose this option, most noting something along the lines of "it's not good pizza if you can't eat the crust as is." An additional 14 percent said they used it to sort of sop up whatever oil or grease and sauce was left on the plate, which I will take the liberty of interpreting as almost the same thing in that there's no introduction...
Among pizza-eaters there seem to be various crust-eater types*: those who leave the crust as "pizza bones," folks who relish the crust and eat every bit, and those who like to dip it in something to give it a little extra oomph. This week's poll asks which one you are (with a subset of answers on dipping preferences for the dippers among us).
That was therapeutic, wasn't it? I think this week's little group session on "charring" vs. "burned" helped us all work through the issue and come to a better understanding of carbonized crust, of ourselves, and of each other. Though folks in the gimme-char (72%) and the char-it-not (29%)* camps may never see eye to eye, I think the discussion helped us all see the others' arguments, thanks to lots of great insight in the comments. * Yes, I'm aware that adds up to 101%. I think the polling software rounds up with a hand that's a little too heavy....
Quite some time ago I received the following email about Gotham Pizza from Deb Perelman of the popular food blog Smitten Kitchen: This email is entirely about pizza, and this dinky slice place (Gotham Pizza) that just opened a couple blocks from my apartment that I'm kind of in love with. It's not brick-oven, they don't import mozzarella from anywhere, there are no fancy toppings and its MO could be aptly summed up as, "Hey, at least we're not Ray's."But seriously, as much am I waiting with baited breath for Co. to freaking open [I told you this was...
Undisclosed until tomorrow, kids. Until then, enjoy this new step in C.R.U.S.T.™ scan evolution—composite shots. (Someday I'll learn how to seamlessly blend the pieces.)...
Late yesterday afternoon, I posted about my experiment with scanned pizza upskirt shots and asked readers what I might call them. Friend of Slice Dan Dickinson came up with "C.R.U.S.T. — Clear Resolution Upskirt Scanning Technology." I like it, so from now on, any scanned upskirts will be known as "C.R.U.S.T.™ shots" or "C.R.U.S.T.s™". Also, I think it could stand for "Clear Resolution Upskirt Scanning Technique," if you're referring to the process as a whole. So I will probably use them interchangeably. So, thank you, Dan! Next time we're eating pizza together, it's on me! [After the jump, the results...
Measuring the thickness at the highest and lowest points (0.748 and 0.543 inches, respectively) to calculate the average thickness of the cornicione, or "end crust." Here, 0.6455 inches....
