I’ve read all of Jeff Varasano’s thoughts on his website, but it isn’t going to make great pizza for you. Pizza is all about experience; trial and error. I record hydration levels (use a scale, not cups when measuring dough). I try different flours, vary cold fermentation times, amounts of salt, pizza stone position, etc. A lot of the variables that I change are based on experience and feel. If I see that a particular batch of dough is more active than usual, maybe I will use it after two days instead of three and I won’t let it sit out on the counter very long before cooking. And when cooking at 800F+, cook times can vary greatly. When I say greatly, that could mean twenty seconds, but when the average cook time for me is 140 seconds that can be the difference from a just crispy enough crust and a burnt to hell pizza.

The latch on my oven being broken, the highest temp I’ve measured is around 870 degrees. The window of my oven is lined with foil. If hot cheese/sauce/water was to come off the pizza at that temp, it could shatter the glass. There’s a reason you’re not supposed to be able to open your oven when it’s that hot.

800-850 degrees is great for cooking the top of the pizza, but it’s too hot for the bottom. The pizza stone will completely char the bottom before the top can cook. So while the oven is warming up, aluminum foil (a large length fold back over itself numerous times) is placed on the stone. Based on my experience, the stone will be 150-200 degrees cooler than the ambient temperature when using foil.

Then you can measure ambient temperature by using an infrared temp gun and pointing it at the foil.

This is right up against the edge of how much char I like on pizza. Maybe a little less would be preferable here.

This pie was good and cripsy, no doughy center in the edge of the crust (aka the cornicione).

This one was slightly undercooked – just under two minutes. I learned most pies needed 140-150 seconds to be as crispy as I’d like.

I’ve also got better at working quickly with a somewhat sticky dough. The key is to have everything ready, judicious use of bench flour, and the whole time the dough is on the peel I’m shaking it with one hand while adding the toppings with the other. Adding minimal toppings helps too.

I also learned that my oven/stone has hot spots, and if I don’t give the pie a 180 degree, I will end up with some severely burned spots on the crust and the bottom. This turn is after sixty seconds.

140 seconds. Delicious.

Another experiment. I like putting the basil on both before and after cooking. It’s obviously much more aromatic after.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m quite the “list & series” type of person, which really fits my Type A (uptight?) personality. I keep lists for everything. You ought to see my car mileage, maintenance, and oil records.

Before I dig into this post (TWIST!), I thought it would be an appropriate time to pass along some quick pizza news:

• Varasano’s announced that for $12.95 you can try every pizza on the menu. All the pizzas. $12.95. No-brainer.
• There is an awesome video chronicling a day at Una Pizza Napoletana in NYC. They are one of the most heralded pizza places in the country, and though the video is short, it’s insightful and shows the love that goes into making great pizza.
• The Food Network did an experiment to try to find out for sure – does the water used in pizza matter? Some people claim the NYC water is the reason why the pizza is so good up there, but I’m of the opinion that it’s a load of baloney. In my post on Pizzeria Venti, I stated my opinion on this matter, and the Executive Chef of Pizzeria Venti commented on the post with some interesting thoughts on why water from a specific area can be important. Check out the FN video here to see the surprising results.
• The first coal pizza oven in Georgia is coming soon, to Max’s, a Concentrics Restaurant. In case you didn’t know, the first pizza joint in the country, Lombardi’s, uses a coal oven, so this is definitely not a new concept, but it’s slightly ground-breaking for our area. As Cliff said, the pizza wars are going to be in full effect.
• Finally – would you pay $100 for this? Bricks seem to do just fine.

Back to the post at hand!

I was stoked to see that the April issue of BA had a section on pizza parties, and they had a few topping/sauce suggestions that seemed worthwhile. Also, I just received a mixer for my birthday, so I’ve been eager to make some dough.

My dough recipe is a dumbed-down version of Jeff Varasano’s – I had a post about it last September. My pictures sucked pretty bad back then, and my dough kinda did too. One problem was that I was using a food processor with a dough blade, and I had to sit there for 5 minutes and pulse the dough/batter mix every few seconds. It’s a real pain in the ass and the dough doesn’t get worked properly. With the mixer, I create the really wet dough (seen below) and can just set the mixer on low for 7-8 minutes before it’s initial rest, followed by the addition of the remainder of the flour.

After the 7-8 minute mix, the dough rests for 20 minutes. Then I start the mixer back up and slowly add the rest of my flour over the course of 6-7 minutes. When it’s barely workable, but still very wet, the dough gets dumped out onto my well-floured counter and worked into two dough balls.

Here’s what it looked like right before I put it in the refrigerator.

Now compare that dough with the picture above, which is from the last time I made pizza. See how much smoother it is when I use the mixer? My new dough was dreamy.

My brother Thomas was helping out and got started with the Arugula-Pistachio Pesto from BA.

Meanwhile I roasted some Roma tomatoes with fresh oregano, salt, and pepper.

Here the pesto is done and looking mighty green.

The other sauce we made from BA was their Roasted-Tomato sauce.

With our sauces ready, we were off and running. I used too much pesto but hey, worse things have happened.

This pizza was topped with the pesto, olive oil, sliced/steamed potatoes, and mozzarella. The dough was thin, crispy, and it even held up pretty well considering the extreme amount of pesto.

Next up – roasted tomato sauce, fresh jalapenos, mozzarella, and smoked Boston butt from Patak.

Weil called this “gumbo pizza”, and I have to agree with him. The sautéed red sauce plus the smoky flavor of the Patak’s meat was definitely reminiscent of gumbo. It was interesting…not my favorite ever, but actually not too bad.

Finally, the next day I created my last pizza. The remainder of the pesto, mozzarella, sliced onions, scallions, and sliced radish from The Local Farmstand. Yay for freshness.

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In another effort to shift your mind away from the fact that I haven’t actually reviewed a new spot in the Atlanta Pizza Days in a week or so, here’s another home-made pizza for your eating pleasure.

But wait! First I have some topical links to share:

1) About.com has a video on how to make Chicago style pizza. Chicago style pizza is a different kind of animal: fun to try, but not great for every day consumption. Kind of like acid.

2) Writer Kenji Alt of Cook’s Illustrated came up with a new way to try to get a good char on your pizza. I don’t have a gas stove because my neighborhood is stupid, but I think it’s worth a try if you don’t want to go all Jeff Varasano on your oven.

3) There is now a microwave that has a pizza toaster built in. For serious.

OK back to my pizza. I had another ball of dough left from last weekend, and it was going on day 3 in the refrigerator. This dough was actually easier to work with than the day before (which was from the same batch).

I had some leftover cubed potatoes from my breakfast the previous morning, which I lightly fried and doused heavily with salty Greek seasoning. I love having steamed potatoes ready for any use – breakfast burritos, tacos, corned beef hash, pizza, really whatever my heart desires.

My basil plant is long dead, so here I’m using Costco pesto. It’s decent and comes in a huge jar for a fair price. I recommend taking half of it and freezing it as soon as you buy it. There’s too much to use before it goes bad. I used a lot of pesto here, I could have gone less.

Cheeses from left to right: Fontina, mozzarella, and parmesan.

All loaded up and ready to go in the oven. I added sliced garlic to it as well.

It cooked for 6 minutes at 550 on a stone that had been preheated for about 40 minutes. I cooked it about 1 minute to0 long.

The dough was a little on the over-chewy side, but the pie was fantastic. I think the excessive amount of olive oil from the pesto helped create a crispier upskirt, and the flavors worked really well. I could have gone a little lighter on the pesto and on the Greek seasoning (it was pretty salty), but that’s the worst I can come up with.

For the dough I’ve been creating lately, I think day 3 is really when the magic happens. The endcrust had better structure, it was softer, it didn’t deflate, good flavor.

However, this does not mean I’m giving up on pizza, I just plan on going back to primarily making my own. With that thought, I whipped up some dough on Saturday and had some pizza for lunch today. I’m still using a modified version of Varasano’s recipe, the main differences being that I don’t have a good mixer so I don’t mix it for nearly as long as he does, I don’t use live yeast culture, and my oven only cooks at 550.

I’d like to address these problems soon, probably starting with the mixer, then the yeast, then possibly breaking the latch on the oven. Regardless, today’s pizza was some of the best that I’ve made in a long time. The dough had been in the refrigerator for about 48 hours. I used less salt in this batch but all the other quantities were pretty much the same. You can see some past dough attempts here.

My dough never looks as smooth as Jeff’s. It is all wrinkly, it’s more dense, and it doesn’t expand as much. I’m hoping the mixer + yeast will help with this problem.

I used the Trader Joe’s Roma tomatoes to make the sauce. The tomatoes didn’t look very good – I had to remove the exterior and the cores from all of them and I threw a few tomatoes out altogether. The sauce ended up tasting really good though. I used the immersion blender to make it and it ended up slightly chunkier than usual. It was the normal raw Roma sauce of tomatoes + sugar + salt + oregano + parmesan.

For the toppings I used cubed mozzarella, green onions, and some Italian country ham that I picked up from Whole Foods yesterday. This stuff is great and it’s on sale right now for $10.99 a lb.

I preheated at 550 for about 45 minutes, cooking the pie in about 5.5 minutes.

I was really happy with how the dough came out. It had some nice color (not a char, but at 550 I’ll take it), it bubbled up a bit on the endcrust, it was chewy, flavorful,  I used the right amount of salt, and used the right amount of sauce because it didn’t get soggy despite how thin it was.

Lately my dough really reminds me of the dough at Shorty’s, which was one of my favorite spots during the Pizza Days. I guess I’m just partial to this style, but now I’m ready to take the dough to the next level. Expect to see some more posts on this during the coming months.

If you try making some pizza yourself, I’d love to see some photos and if you’d like I’ll throw them up here so everyone else can share in the pizza love.

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Jim Lahey of Co. in New York City (new, hot pizza spot right in NYC) recently offered up his recipe for no knead pizza dough. I haven’t had the chance to try it yet, but his pizza looks like good stuff some I am eager to give it a shot. 

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Curious about all the different styles of pizza we have here in the US? The awesome pizza blog Slice has a great list here. Slice has been featuring my picture of the arugula pie from Shorty’s for almost a week now on their homepage, check it out! 

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The lovely ladies over at Atlanta Dish have a post up about an on-going fundraising effort at Pizza Fusion. $8000 was raised at a Pizza Fusion in Arizona to help a family in need, only to have the money stolen that night before it could be deposited. All Pizza Fusion’s will be offering up a free pizza through a donation, for a great cause. More info available here. 

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Looking for more great ways to cut the perfect slice? Check out the pizza circular saw that has been making its way around the internet here.  

That doesn’t impress you? Check out this video on Foodie Buddha! 

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Have a great weekend! See you on Monday for #10 in the Atlanta Pizza Days series!

The Thai Lime & Chili Cashews sounded intriguing. I figured it would be good for salads, stir fry, and snacking. 

They are pretty good actually. The lime and chili is fairly subtle up front, with a fair amount of heat on the finish. I chopped some up to put in a salad for lunch. 

The salad was TJ arugula, carrots, and a salad dressing of Ken’s Soy Ginger dressing mixed with sambal oelek. Garnished with the Trader Joe’s 3 cheese flat bread. Good stuff. 

I also gave their pizza dough another shot.

While their dough was easy to work with, and appears to have risen nicely, it really didn’t do anything for me. I liked it less than last time. It had very little flavor, plain and simple. Also, it was too “doughy” if that makes sense.

I actually have two restaurant posts queued up, but there’s no time as I have to get a bunch of work done before I head to South Carolina for Thanksgiving. Tonight my mother is making a homemade ricotto cheese and sundried tomato compote, lamb curry, and chive risotto cakes with fontina and yogurt filling. I found the latter item on TasteSpotting and mom agreed it sounded worth a try. I can’t wait. 

Back to pizza. I have two attempts for you. The first one is a “Mexican” pizza. I had one batch of dough left in the fridge, roughly 80 hours old, so it was probably pretty close to the end of its lifespan. 

You can see the bubble, which is an indication is has been “working” for quite a while. 

I sauteed some onions, turkey, and a chopped jalapeno with some fajita style seasonings. 

As this is Mexican pizza, we are using salsa instead of regular pizza sauce. Craaaaaazy. 

Monterey jack cheese, pinto beans, and my sauteed toppings, ready to go in the oven. Some may think this is gross. 

I actually enjoyed it very much. The dough was great. 

And now for pizza #2. 

This one is from a different day, and a different batch of dough. This time is used Italian Caputo 00 flour, which I had not used in prior dough attempts. I picked it up from Toscano & Sons. The flour was noticeably different when I was working with it. The finished product ended up much dryer and it wouldn’t stretch out as well without tearing. Maybe I need to change the hydration level in the recipe, though it was still very sticky when I put it in the fridge for the cold rise. 

This dough was in the cold rise for 24 hours or so. 

Just a few photos this time. 

It tasted great though. It didn’t rise up and create the very large dough bubbles I like, but maybe I needed more yeast. The texture was very good, very chewy, and it help up well on the flop. It had a very awesome crunchy exterior with some inside on the end crust. I also used more salt this time and that added a lot of great flavor. Success!

I used the same fresh mozzarella and the same sauce, but this time I used about 1/3 less sauce. 

Here’s what the dough looked like right of the fridge. 

….and right out of the oven. I went for a more circular shape to appease my critics. 

Another angle. I was happy with the crust. I didn’t stretch this one out as thin, especially on the outer edge. 

The “flop”. 

Great chewy crust with more bubblin’ dough than I’ve had in the past. 

Another shot where you can see how thin it stayed in the middle, while rising significantly on the crust. 

You could say I am happy with how things are going. Am I ready for the leap to live yeast cultures???

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