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Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)

varasanos.com

21–30 of 152 posts

Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)

#21
post #7
post #3

surprised to see this here, but it doesn't have style sheets, so maybe not too surprised ;) jeff varasano's website is a great resource for pizza hackers and lays a lot of myths to rest (like proofing). my own process (which I cook in a blackstone pizza oven at ~800°) has a bit more in common with tony gemignani's basic neopolitan (described in his pizza bible ), with the addition of the earlier and longer autolysing…

Pizzaiolo is good, reminded me of Paulie Gee's and Speedy Romeo, both of which are places in Brooklyn I really like. I always find Una Pizza Napoletana extremely soft and doughy, and personally I think it's really overrated. Maybe I've just gotten bad pies on the two occasions I've tried it.

I agree - not about Una Pizza in particular but about the Neopolitan style in general.

When pizza crust resembles naan (overly soft, pliable after baking) things have gone too far.

Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)

#22
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pizzaiolo is good, reminded me of Paulie Gee's and Speedy Romeo, both of which are places in Brooklyn I really like. I always find Una Pizza Napoletana extremely soft and doughy, and personally I think it's really overrated. Maybe I've just gotten bad pies on the two occasions I've tried it.

I agree - not about Una Pizza in particular but about the Neopolitan style in general. When pizza crust resembles naan (overly soft, pliable after baking) things have gone too far.

This is from the Italian 00 flour. I think it's a nice alternative.

Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)

#23
post #8

Folks who know pizza: What can those us with regular ovens do? You know, the sort of oven you find in most kitchens that top out at 250C (500F)?

1. Make great dough. The ingredients are cheap, it doesn't take much manual time -- but you want to let it ferment in your refrigerator at least overnight. 2. Make your own sauce. The ingredients are cheap, and a little experimentation will get it to the taste that you want. 3. Don't overtop it. The natural tendency is to want more - more sauce, more cheese, more whatever else. Start off very simply. Scatter little b…

Great advice. Another point (related to 4) is don't trust your oven to tell you when it's up to temperature. The oven is measuring the air temperature and not the temperature of the stone/steel. I always make sure to give it about 40 minutes to heat up.

Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)

#26

Folks who know pizza: What can those us with regular ovens do? You know, the sort of oven you find in most kitchens that top out at 250C (500F)?

https://www.amazon.ca/Elements-Pizza-Unlocking-Secrets-World...

I've been reading this book and it has a good mix of history/context, technique and recipes. It is aimed at folks with a regular oven. Its process for Margherita is multi-step and uses the broiler aggressively; more than I would normally be comfortable with. The output from my regular oven (max 550 C) matches the cover image from the book.

The dough is key, though. I like high salt, low yeast, long fermentation styles. I'm still doing trials with different flour (e.g. caputo 00, blue bag (a standard pizza flour) vs. generic all-purpose flour) to suss out the difference flour makes but the book goes into this in depth, including a basic overview of what the different ingredients are for, chemically, to give you a sense of why some recipes are different (long vs. short fermentation influences amount of yeast/salt.)

Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)

#27
post #8

Folks who know pizza: What can those us with regular ovens do? You know, the sort of oven you find in most kitchens that top out at 250C (500F)?

1. Make great dough. The ingredients are cheap, it doesn't take much manual time -- but you want to let it ferment in your refrigerator at least overnight. 2. Make your own sauce. The ingredients are cheap, and a little experimentation will get it to the taste that you want. 3. Don't overtop it. The natural tendency is to want more - more sauce, more cheese, more whatever else. Start off very simply. Scatter little b…

I did a lot of cast iron tortilla pizza in college, its no joke you can get a really good "pizza" without point 1.

Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)

#28

Folks who know pizza: What can those us with regular ovens do? You know, the sort of oven you find in most kitchens that top out at 250C (500F)?

I get ok results even with thin crust at 550F. Baking stone is a must. Cover with parchment paper right before putting the pizza on, optionally (we had issues with our stones cracking before we started doing that).

You want a peel. Coarse ground cornmeal, coarse Durham wheat flour, and other course-ground wheat products all work well to keep your dough mobile. Make sure you can shake it on the peel before trying to transfer. Build the pizza on the peel or you'll make a mess of it.

You can probably get away with a lower oven temp with pan pizza. Oil cast iron pan, preheat oven. Build pizza in pan (dough running up the sides). Cook on stovetop until it starts to sizzle (I also hit the top with a heat gun at this point, but you don't have to). Move to oven, turn broiler on, cook until the top looks done. May take some experimentation, but it takes less equipment than using a stone and peel. Note: I haven't done this one in a while and I think maybe I cooked it for a few minutes before kicking in the broiler, but I'm not sure. Experiment.

You can make pretty good pizza with dough made in a bread machine. If you have one, consider starting with that. Much easier.

[EDIT] more lifehack protips now that I have a keyboard:

1) If you like pepperoni pizza, try the sandwich-slice stuff at the deli counter. Even the cheaper varieties of this are better than the small ones you find in packages. If you're going to a real deli or whatever keep doing what you're doing, but this will help with ordinary grocery store shopping.

2) You don't have to have fresh mozz for every pie (though man is it good) but do spend up slightly on the cheese if you can, and favor block over pre-shredded (no anti-caking agents in the block cheese). HOWEVER, as long as you don't get the absolute worst cheese you can find, cheaping out a bit here will not ruin your pizza, it just won't be as good. You can still beat all the major chains with Kraft. Also: consider mixing in other stuff with your mozz for some depth, especially if you're not paying for high-end cheese. Provolone's a common option.

3) Don't spend a ton on San Marzano (or "San Marzano Style") canned tomatoes, unless it's a really special pizza. If you garden, consider growing your own San Marzanos and canning (you'll have too many to use in a Summer even with just 3-4 plants)—it's the very best option, flavor wise. Having-a-religious-moment good. For your everyday pizza just get decent canned tomatoes. Do not use fresh tomatoes unless you know the person who grew them (this goes for practically any dish that calls for tomatoes). Again, you're gonna have to buy the worst canned tomatoes you can possibly find to maybe make your pizza worse than the major chains—not that they necessarily use tomatoes that bad, but home-made pizza tends to be so good that you have to really screw up ingredient selection to ruin it, though obviously good ingredients are necessary if you want to achieve Pizza Nirvana.

4) Beware under-salting your dough and sauce. No, that recipe you found isn't wrong, and yes you should put that much black pepper in pizza sauce. In fact maybe give it another couple turns.

Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)

#29
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Make great dough. The ingredients are cheap, it doesn't take much manual time -- but you want to let it ferment in your refrigerator at least overnight. 2. Make your own sauce. The ingredients are cheap, and a little experimentation will get it to the taste that you want. 3. Don't overtop it. The natural tendency is to want more - more sauce, more cheese, more whatever else. Start off very simply. Scatter little b…

I've been making my own pizza at home for around a decade now and your 5 points are very good advice. I think 5 is probably the most important. I have recently been on a calzone kick[0] and have been experimenting with different ratios of cheeses. [0] Not sure why I've never tried before. I guess because the pizza's been so good.

What kind of results are you guys getting?

I tried for a while but then gave up. Just not hot enough. I actually found Jeff's recipe waaay back before he opened his restaurant, I remember him announcing it, and I was really upset when I got to the oven temperatures.

Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)

#30

Folks who know pizza: What can those us with regular ovens do? You know, the sort of oven you find in most kitchens that top out at 250C (500F)?

We can settle with "good enough" which is a popular way to a pleasant mental state in general, too.

Every time I've made pizza the stuff I've put in the oven has been pretty good when I take it out. The pizza usually comes with a very short time window for availability: then it's gone. It probably requires great talent to majorly fail a pizza. If you only fail your pizza slightly, it's still damn good.

Now, I'm quite sure that you can even objectively establish that there are better pizzas than what I make. The point is then: why would I care if I'm happy with whatever I currently make?

If I fell in love with a truly, absolutely and universally the greatest pizza then I'd just be disappointed with my own pizzas afterwards and I'd have to learn how to make those great pizzas. Instead of an upgrade that actually sounds more like a net loss to me because now I have to work to get back to where I was, i.e. happy with my pizza.

If you're happy with your pizzas, change nothing and continue.

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