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How to make pizza like a Neapolitan master

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Re: How to make pizza like a Neapolitan master

#131

Post by albmoriconi »

lisper wrote: post #126

I can't speak to pizza, but I have an espresso story to tell. One of my favorite things about going to Italy is the quality of the coffee. I really like extreme dark roast (your typical American diner coffee doesn't even count as coffee in my book). In Italy you can go into pretty much any coffee shop and come away with a top-quality espresso. (Don't even get me started on Starbucks.) It's a taste I inherited from my…

One thing I always found extremely funny is that, while Italy is known everywhere for its love of the espresso (don't get me started on the incredible amount of Italian and especially Neapolitan songs about coffee!), most of us actually do our coffe at home using a simple moka pot [1]. Our grandmothers mostly used the "napoletana" [2] instead, I don't particularly like it but to each their own.

It's such an ordinary, day to day gesture, making a moka when you have a little bit of free time, that I have yet to find an Italian "coffee geek".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moka_pot [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neapolitan_flip_coffee_pot

Re: How to make pizza like a Neapolitan master

#132

Post by CraneWorm »

lisper wrote: post #126

I can't speak to pizza, but I have an espresso story to tell. One of my favorite things about going to Italy is the quality of the coffee. I really like extreme dark roast (your typical American diner coffee doesn't even count as coffee in my book). In Italy you can go into pretty much any coffee shop and come away with a top-quality espresso. (Don't even get me started on Starbucks.) It's a taste I inherited from my…

> It is still a mystery to me how the Italians manage to produce such consistently good coffee

I thought they use moka pots. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moka_pot

Easy to clean, easy to use, doesn't burn the coffee, like a percolator inevitably will.

Re: How to make pizza like a Neapolitan master

#133

Post by w3ll_w3ll_w3ll »

lisper wrote: post #126

I can't speak to pizza, but I have an espresso story to tell. One of my favorite things about going to Italy is the quality of the coffee. I really like extreme dark roast (your typical American diner coffee doesn't even count as coffee in my book). In Italy you can go into pretty much any coffee shop and come away with a top-quality espresso. (Don't even get me started on Starbucks.) It's a taste I inherited from my…

Yeah it's the water.

https://medium.com/@sonicaghi/why-is-espresso-in-america-so-...

Re: How to make pizza like a Neapolitan master

#134

Post by ThePhysicist »

jefftk wrote: post #130
ThePhysicist wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah I see, interesting! I think they call that pyrolytic cleaning in Europe. The problem with that is that some ovens will lock the door for at least 30 minutes to keep people from burning themselves on the very hot surface. I learned this the hard way when I accidentally enabled this program, luckily without having any food in the oven :D

> The problem with that is that some ovens will lock the door... "I clipped off the lock using garden shears"

Ok that’s hilarious. I guess I’ll read the article in full, just briefly skimmed over it so far.

Re: How to make pizza like a Neapolitan master

#135

Post by jefftk »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #134
jefftk wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with that is that some ovens will lock the door... "I clipped off the lock using garden shears"

Ok that’s hilarious. I guess I’ll read the article in full, just briefly skimmed over it so far.

The guy is so dedicated; it's a joy to read

Re: How to make pizza like a Neapolitan master

#136

Post by gregkerzhner »

lisper wrote: post #126

I can't speak to pizza, but I have an espresso story to tell. One of my favorite things about going to Italy is the quality of the coffee. I really like extreme dark roast (your typical American diner coffee doesn't even count as coffee in my book). In Italy you can go into pretty much any coffee shop and come away with a top-quality espresso. (Don't even get me started on Starbucks.) It's a taste I inherited from my…

I don't know much about espresso, but the pourover coffee I make at home is certainly much higher quality than a Keurig machine. The beans are the most important part - you should get them roasted within the last few weeks.

Even the fanciest pourover funnel costs only 50 dollars, but you can certainly get by with a cheap plastic one for a few bucks. If you want to go full hipster, you will also need a temperature controlled electric kettle, and a scale to exactly portion out your coffee.

Then of course there is the grinder. If you are patient enough to hand grind, you can get a Hario ceramic manual grinder for $50 that produces a high quality grind. Otherwise, a quality electric grinder will be more expensive.

All and all, a hipster pourover setup will cost you less than $500 if you go all in. I don't use a scale, a temperature control, or a fancy grinder - I just use a cheap grinder and eyeball my beans, while pouring boiled water over them, so my whole setup cost me about $50 dollars. That coffee still blows the pants off Keurig any day of the week, and I can compost my filters so I am not filling a hole in our planet with a tiny plastic cup every time I want a coffee.

Re: How to make pizza like a Neapolitan master

#137

Post by davidw »

yomly wrote: post #104
misiti3780 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ciao, Come siete ? I'm not sure if you have ever been to NYC but an interesting observation I have had with Gino Sorbillo is the pizza in Napoli is very good, but he/they opened a restaurant in NYC and it's absolutely average at best. I assume they import everything, but quality wise, the places are polar opposites. Also curious your thoughts of Da Michele?

I recently went to Naples and IMO the secret to just how amazing everything tastes there is the quality of produce. I don't know whether you can even export it - I don't know whether that kind of quality travels. On the Netflix show ugly delicious one of the chefs explain supposedly in Naples chefs will choose their mozzarella freshness by the hour (e.g. 6 hours or 12 hours) but to make "authentic" Neapolitan pizza w…

> I recently went to Naples and IMO the secret to just how amazing everything tastes there is the quality of produce. I don't know whether you can even export it - I don't know whether that kind of quality travels.

Bingo. Produce and ingredients are generally very high quality in Italy, because people care about and make their purchases based on that, rather than simply looking at how much they're getting at a given price and how good it looks on the shelves.

Re: How to make pizza like a Neapolitan master

#138

Post by elhudy »

albmoriconi wrote: post #52

I am from Naples and eat regularly at Gino Sorbillo's and Ciro Salvo's places. As it often happens here, everyone will swear by its pretty small and obscure "favorite place", but they are masters without doubt ;) The dough recipe from the article is pretty legit and exactly the way I do it at home; the main problem I see is that it would be pretty hard to find good Mozzarella or Fiordilatte cheese (Fiordilatte di Age…

Are they ever made using sourdough (wild yeast)? I imagine that would be more "traditional"?

Re: How to make pizza like a Neapolitan master

#139

Post by stx »

stevievee wrote: post #19
ThePhysicist wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, he bakes those at 825F (440 °C), which unfortunately is unattainable with most regular home ovens. Mine e.g. maxes out at 300 °C so it's not hot enough to let the crust rise significantly and produce a nicely charred underside, at least not before completely burning the top. What I'm currently experimenting with to solve this problem is to put the pizza on a flat, heavy and preheated iron pan or plancha and hea…

For a quick pizza, I use a "Ooni" pizza oven and the results have been great. It's relatively cheap and you can get the temperatures you are looking for. I joined their first kickstarter and have been buying their ovens ever since: https://uk.ooni.com/collections/shop-all/products/ooni-koda

This is a good cheap alternative: https://www.amazon.com/Breville-Crispy-Crust-Pizza-BREBPZ600... It looks like it might be discontinued although there is a similar one by another brand on amazon. Its major drawback is its only good for a pizza as large as 10-12 inches and if your pizza gets a large high bubble it can touch the upper element. I have made much better pizza with it then my standard kitchen oven. I do want to build a brick oven in the backyard when I get a chance some day though.

Re: How to make pizza like a Neapolitan master

#140

Post by pen2l »

arcturus17 wrote: post #54
eagsalazar2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neapolitan Pizza is the poster child for fetishism, hipster cargo cult, worshiping a style that has only been deemed by the community as superior, not experienced individually to be so. At its absolute best it is significantly inferior to top American examples.

Saying that the best American examples are better is exactly the same kind of fetishism... Me personally, I think Italian (non-Neapolitan) thin crust pizza is the best I’ve ever tried but they’re all just different styles.

I had this fetishism about neopolitan pizzas for a while despite having never actually tried one. Mostly due to reading a lot of what Kenji-Lopez and others wrote on the web.

There's an annual pizza festival in the summer i nBoston, which brings a lot of Italians with their stone ovens making neopolitan pies. So I went there and finally got to try neopolitan pies which according to pizza aficionados are supposedly really good.

Man, I was in for a ride. Just not my taste. I'll admit that I may be a charlatan or have a pedestrian palate, but I can say now I'll prefer a slice of NY pie over an authentic neopolitan pie any day of the week.

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