I've followed this recipe to make dough a couple of times and it is solid with regards to developing the gluten.
Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)
51–60 of 152 posts
Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)
#52Warning: this is about American pizza. This is an American cooking site. This guy is not Italian. In Rome and Naples, they think of pizza in a very different way. The dough is more pliable, soft and slightly thicker. They also do care a lot more about quality, origin and freshness of toppings than the obsessive and meticulous dough preparation and baking. Charred bottoms in pizza is not a common thing in Italy. In Sã…
The title clearly says "New York Pizza" so I'm not sure what you're on about. That's a lie, I do know, but I won't humor you.
Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)
#53Earlier 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…
> 5. Experiment. This. I improvised a pan "pizza" that the whole family likes that's non-traditional but delicious... Dice 1/2lb of thick bacon or pancetta. Dice a few yellow potatoes. While the meat bits brown in a pan, parboil the potatoes. Chop a bunch of rinsed kale. Drain the potatoes. Set aside the meat, reserving the fat in two portions. Cook chopped garlic with a dash of salt in one portion of fat, about a mi…
As a founder of Experiment.com, I just want to say that food is such a fantastic library for small science experimentation. What used to live in cook books and secretive restaurant storage rooms as scribbled recipes has changed because of the internet, we can now try so much more and share it so much more widely than before.
It's mind-boggling how deep these new online communities around barbeque, cheesemaking, or sour beer brewing (shoutout to milk the funk) can get, where at a certain point, there's a scientific breakdown of the variables involved. This sort of food science blends anthropology, biology, marketing, and engineering. It's so much fun.
Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)
#54I had a slice of pizza from the 99 cent pizza place across the street from my apartment in Queens. It's still really good. After living in rural Pennsylvania, I don't get why other areas of the country have such a hard time making decent pizza.
I don't get why other areas of the country have such a hard time making decent pizza.
I was on a neighborhood tour of the Lower West Side a few weeks back and this came up when we sampled slices from what I think was the 2nd oldest pizzeria in NY. The guides attributed it to two things. One, the water used, the NY water supply comes from springs in the Catskills Mountains which have some sort of environmental protections. The other is the quality of the ingredients, the guide pointed out that the simple slice of cheese pizza didn't have any oil pooling on top of the cheese, cheap cheese will result in the oil separating during the cooking processed (that seems legit based on the pizza I get in TX).
Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)
#55I'll be moving from NYC to Atlanta soon and the quality of pizza has been one of my worries (stupid, I know, but it's the little things).
Super happy to find out good NYC-style pizza can be produced there. I always assumed the high humidity will mess things up.
Now if someone can figure out how to make decent bagels down there...
Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)
#56> The crust is slightly charred. It has a crisp outer layer, but inside it's airy and light. The ingredients are not piled high, but instead are perfectly balanced. It's sweet, salty, full flavored but not greasy. The tomatoes burst with flavor. Each bite makes you hungrier for the next...
Right away, I immediately thought about my one favorite pizza place in NYC, and guess what:
> This pizza is modeled after Patsy's on 117th street in NYC
Yep. I used to go there (all the way out to 1st Ave! oy vey!) and get takeout slices fresh out of the oven back when I lived uptown. That description gets it just right. Never knew it was considered the best in the US, but it makes sense: that neighborhood was the original "Little Italy" back when the neighborhood was Italian (and Jewish) Harlem rather than Spanish Harlem. I certainly haven't had better in NYC, and I've tried (even the Patsy's on 60th St doesn't get it just right).
Another interesting thing, though it doesn't relate to pizza, it's about a sort-of "restaurant model hacker": around the corner from Patsy's is a very secretive restaurant named Rao's. It does away with the "first come first serve" model of seating at restaurants, and instead you get yourself a sort of "standing reservation" for a table once a week/month/year. It's incredibly challenging to get one of these reservations, although there are stories of well-dressed and charming patrons spending some time at the bar and getting a spot for that evening, if there's space left. Many very famous people (and some important but not-famous people...) hold reservations there; it's known as the most exclusive spot in the city. It's also rumored to be mob-related: eating there back in the 70s, you could leave your furs in your convertible with the top down despite the danger of the neighborhood.
Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)
#57I'll be moving from NYC to Atlanta soon and the quality of pizza has been one of my worries (stupid, I know, but it's the little things). Super happy to find out good NYC-style pizza can be produced there. I always assumed the high humidity will mess things up. Now if someone can figure out how to make decent bagels down there...
This pizza looks pretty good, but it is by no means NYC-style pizza.
Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)
#58Verasanos isn't what I'd call "New York style"... it's more like actual pizza, like, from Italy. Tasty but I am extremely disappointed with having clicked... any tips for imitating the hole in the wall NYC pizzeria?
You can say there's two "New York style"s. There's the average storefront selling slices, and then there's the coal-fired brick oven pizza places, which is what this is about.
Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)
#59I had a slice of pizza from the 99 cent pizza place across the street from my apartment in Queens. It's still really good. After living in rural Pennsylvania, I don't get why other areas of the country have such a hard time making decent pizza.
I don't get why other areas of the country have such a hard time making decent pizza. I was on a neighborhood tour of the Lower West Side a few weeks back and this came up when we sampled slices from what I think was the 2nd oldest pizzeria in NY. The guides attributed it to two things. One, the water used, the NY water supply comes from springs in the Catskills Mountains which have some sort of environmental protect…
Freakonimics (great podcast!) did a test a few years back that pretty convincingly dispelled the whole 'it's the water' argument: http://podcastnotes.org/2015/11/09/freakonomics-food-science...
Re: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008)
#60I'm not going to modify my stove to cook at 800 deg F., so for my money the best way to get half-decent pizza at home is to make a soft, elastic dough and then cook on a surface that has some thermal mass. I've had good luck with a cast-iron pizza pan. https://www.cooksillustrated.com/equipment_reviews/1340-cast...
There are some things that it's better to have specialists do with specialist equipment, and I'm fine with paying them to do that.