Pizza – Sep 24

I told you yesterday that pizza and mozzarella were coming up today, and I am mostly a man of my word. I did make pizza, however, I did not make the cheese. When I looked in the fridge I saw I had some real mozzarella (not the shredded stuff) so I wanted to use that up before continuing with the mozzarella experiments. I’m sorry if I let you down and I promise never to mislead the scores of my readers (mostly family who feel obligated). 

BUT, I did continue tinkering with Jeff Varasano’s recipes from his now-well-known pizza page. I found out yesterday that Jeff is opening his own pizza place in the Mezzo building on Peachtree Rd. I am seriously excited about this. Any man who calls the pizza at Fritti “cardboard” in comparison to his own is making a bold statement. I also discovered that Jeff set the US Rubik’s Cube record at age 14 in 24.67 seconds.  You can even watch Jeff and his pizza making talent on YouTube. Obviously, Jeff is a talented man who has decided to focus his genius to create what will be his opus – the perfect pizza.

Let me get started with my dough making process, modeled after Jeff’s recipe. Though, it should be noted that I don’t have the ingredients or equipment that Jeff recommends, particularly in the way of live yeast cultures, which I have yet to order off the interwebs. Mine is definitely a bastardized version of which I’m sure Jeff would not approve. 

Below I have started the dough. I put one packet of dry yeast in about 100 grams of warm water (aka 100mL of water because the density of water is 1g = 1ml duh) and let them activate. Meanwhile I have meausured out about 200 grams of White Lily flour and dumped 75% of that flour into the mixer (and I am using the dough hook versus the blade). After a few minutes I added the water/yeast mixture to the processor, as well as a pinch of salt. 

This is a part that is different to me. You should see how thin this is – in the words of Jeff, the consistency should “probably be closer to batter” than to dough. 

Jeff recommends that you mix this on low for a while – this is where the yeast is really doing the work to create the tastey pizza dough. If your dough is dense you can’t work the yeast around in the dough, you are just moving the dough ball around. In this case, the hook is moving through the batter, mixing it all up and letting it work. After this mixing process I let it sit for about 20 minutes and let the ingredients “marinade”. Then I started mixing again and added the remaining flour, a little bit at a time until I was left with a VERY sticky dough ball. You don’t want it too dry. You want it to be so sticky it is almost too difficult to work with. 

Flour a surface, work the ball a little bit, then place it in a slightly oiled tupperware/gladware. 

Jeff recommends you put in the fridge for 1-5 days at this point. Last time I tried this recipe I did put it in the fridge, but in this case I was eating in 3.5 hours and wanted to leave it out and see my results. About 1/2 hour before I was ready to cook the dough looked like this.

It had flattened out and expanded greatly, and was actually looking too light and puffy. Using other common pizza dough recipes (Joy of Cooking and Epicurious.com) in the past, I always left the dough out for 2-6 hours and it never produced this consistency. I believe the different mixing steps are the reason for this change. Using Jeff’s techniques, I think that putting the dough in the refrigerator is key, so that the dough doesn’t rise too much. Jeff puts his in the fridge then takes it out before cooking, looking at how much it has or has not risen when deciding how long prior to cooking to remove it from the fridge. I will try this out next time and record my results. 

Next I made the sauce using Jeff’s instructions. Again, using an uncooked sauced has produced SO much better results than using a canned or homemade cook marinara sauce.

Plus, it’s easier using an uncooked sauce. Here is my version of Jeff’s easy steps:

• Start with a can of peeled whole tomatoes (san marzano if possible)
• Crush them by hand
• Pull out the whole pieces of flesh and put them in the can
• Take the leftover liquid/seed mixture and strain out the seeds (discard seeds)
• Put the tomato flesh back into the strained liquid
• Add a pinch of salt, sugar, dried oregano, and shave a small amount of parmesan cheese into the tomato mixture
• Give the tomato mixture a few pulses in a blender and you are ready to go