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Kenji López-Alt spent 5 months studying Chicago thin-crust pizza

nytimes.com

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Re: Kenji López-Alt spent 5 months studying Chicago thin-crust pizza

#121

Post by joshu »

kenjilopezalt wrote: post #78
joshu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pizza ovens rely on a chain of different skills that all must be done well or the pizza comes out poorly. correctly making the dough, correctly topping it, getting it to slide off the peel correctly, putting it in the right place in the oven, rotating it correctly, and probably several things i'm missing. it leads to an enormous amount of frustration; i haven't gotten something i would consider "good" even once yet.

This thin crust recipe is time consuming but actually solves a lot of those problems. Rolling witb a pin and letting it dry out overnight actually makes it really easy to slide off the peel.

I will try this but as a native New Yorker I just want to get the style I am most comfortable with working first. I have never even had the Chicago thin-style pizza, actually.

Someone got me a “super peel” which has a cloth gadget to drop the pizza. I wonder if it will work or incinerate.

(PS I am one of the people that matched your donation on twitter a few years ago. I miss you there but in retrospect leaving was a good idea.)

Re: Kenji López-Alt spent 5 months studying Chicago thin-crust pizza

#122

Post by boulos »

kenjilopezalt wrote: post #77
chitowneats wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well put. That being said, the Chicago version is still better. NYC pizza is a bad joke. As long as you're only paying $1 it's not that bad for the price. That price point and the places that offered it are going extinct unfortunately. The "slice" is dead. Imagine having to fold your "pizza" because it's just a nasty mess of sauce and cheese.

It’s ironic because those $1 slice places that popped up in the mid 2000s are what actually destroyed decent NY slices which couldn’t compete because transplants and students would rather pay $1 for garbage than $1.50-$2.50 for a true classic NY slice. Very few of them remain now. Instead there’s this divide with crappy $1 joints (that are now a little more expensive) and good $4-5 slice joints that had to differenti…

Sadly, I think this is true about a lot of the food in Manhattan: the middle got squeezed. There's low end, high volume and high-end, low volume. I'm always amazed Manhattan can support so many on the low end with the economics on the rent, but I think they end up with just truly amazing foot traffic and volume that other cities can't touch.

Re: Kenji López-Alt spent 5 months studying Chicago thin-crust pizza

#123

Post by chitowneats »

boulos wrote: post #122
kenjilopezalt wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s ironic because those $1 slice places that popped up in the mid 2000s are what actually destroyed decent NY slices which couldn’t compete because transplants and students would rather pay $1 for garbage than $1.50-$2.50 for a true classic NY slice. Very few of them remain now. Instead there’s this divide with crappy $1 joints (that are now a little more expensive) and good $4-5 slice joints that had to differenti…

Sadly, I think this is true about a lot of the food in Manhattan: the middle got squeezed. There's low end, high volume and high-end, low volume. I'm always amazed Manhattan can support so many on the low end with the economics on the rent, but I think they end up with just truly amazing foot traffic and volume that other cities can't touch.

Manhattan is an absolute wasteland for authentic, cheap food. Queens and Brooklyn are much better. Some of the best food in the country there.

Re: Kenji López-Alt spent 5 months studying Chicago thin-crust pizza

#126

Post by crimsontech »

poloniculmov wrote: post #66
yumraj wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by pizza steel? I’m looking to get a cast iron pizza pan but would love to know there’s a better option.

Something like this[1]. It's easier to use than a pizza stone and yields better results. 1: https://bakingsteel.com/products/baking-steel

I have one of these and haven’t used my pizza oven since.

I turn the oven on as high as it goes and put the steel in and prep all the pizza toppings, then I switch the oven to the grill mode (or broiler in the US) then make the pizzas. It takes about 5 mins per pizza, so it’s a bit slower than the pizza oven but I can make the next pizza while the first is cooking so it’s fine.

My family say they prefer this to pizza made in the Ooni, I think they are both on par with each other but this is less hassle, cheaper than running the Ooni and less stressful because things don’t catch fire as fast.

Re: Kenji López-Alt spent 5 months studying Chicago thin-crust pizza

#127

Post by boulos »

chitowneats wrote: post #123
boulos wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, I think this is true about a lot of the food in Manhattan: the middle got squeezed. There's low end, high volume and high-end, low volume. I'm always amazed Manhattan can support so many on the low end with the economics on the rent, but I think they end up with just truly amazing foot traffic and volume that other cities can't touch.

Manhattan is an absolute wasteland for authentic, cheap food. Queens and Brooklyn are much better. Some of the best food in the country there.

Mostly, I wasn't comfortable saying NYC when people mostly mean Manhattan and fancy parts of Brooklyn for this comparison :).

Re: Kenji López-Alt spent 5 months studying Chicago thin-crust pizza

#128

Post by dole »

graupel wrote: post #60
Kon-Peki wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve only had St Louis pizza in St Louis once, and the big difference is the cheese. I didn’t like it, but certainly a lot of people do like it or it wouldn’t survive as a style of pizza. Edit - Wikipedia says that St Louis pizza crust doesn’t have yeast in it. Chicago thin crust definitely uses yeast.

Provel isn't worthy of using the word "cheese" to describe it. (said lovingly as someone who worked in STL and was often handed pies of "office pizza" from Imo's.)

Each Imo’s franchise is independently owned, and uses either Provel or cheaper “Zesty Pizza Loaf” depending on location.

Now that I think about it, it’s like a white, grainy, Velveeta. One of the biggest problems with a cracker-thin crust is that you need to eat twice as much (or more) to get full, and it’s not any cheaper, but Imo’s does lay strips of bacon across their Deluxe and I’m a basic bitch.

Re: Kenji López-Alt spent 5 months studying Chicago thin-crust pizza

#129

Post by xhevahir »

codemac wrote: post #13

It upsets me this is called "Chicago" when clearly it came from further east - these "working class pizza taverns" being common across Indiana, Ohio, and PA as well. There are plenty of examples of these types of "no I started thin crust and square cut" pizza tavern places everywhere. And even worse is that I am no historian and I'm probably wrong. But my direct experience contradicts a lot of the Chicago-washing of…

I didn't grow up in Chicago but in my experience visiting relatives in the southwest suburbs the thin-crust pizza I ate there (usually Aurelio's) was pretty distinct from other kinds I've eaten in the Great Lakes states. The description other commenters have given of a "cracker" crust is apt. A pizza parlor where I worked in Michigan, for example, had thin pies cut "party-style" but with a much chewier crust.

Re: Kenji López-Alt spent 5 months studying Chicago thin-crust pizza

#130

Post by chitowneats »

boulos wrote: post #127
chitowneats wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manhattan is an absolute wasteland for authentic, cheap food. Queens and Brooklyn are much better. Some of the best food in the country there.

Mostly, I wasn't comfortable saying NYC when people mostly mean Manhattan and fancy parts of Brooklyn for this comparison :).

Agreed. Manhattan and north Brooklyn are very different from the rest of the city.

The Chinese food in Flushing or Sunset Park is incredible, for example.

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