I saw the sign

So, back when we got some snow over the holidays, I noticed my neighbor was out of town. I was already out with the snow blower, and I got it over there and cleared their driveway in less than 10 minutes. Really not a big deal. Didn't think twice about it. Actually before they lived there, I had cleared that driveway for the previous owners several times, and once when we were away, they cleared our driveway.

This is Upstate, New York. Decent neighbors do that kind of thing for each other without a second thought. I know I didn't think about it again.

Well, when they got home from vacation, it was obvious someone had cleared the driveway. Turns out, I was captured on camera moving the snow. 

Little background, this is the house with the two adorable little girls. These are the girls I put pineapple on a pizza for. (I'm not going to eat it because I don't like cooked or hot pineapple, but knock yourself out if you like it.) These two adorable little girls picked out a thank you gift for me. I should rephrase that. These two adorable girls picked out THE THANK YOU gift for me. Look at it. It's beautiful.

How cool is that? I picked up some clear sticky hanger things to hold the sign in a window. Got it all set up yesterday. Check this out.

 I had already said thank you, but I had to say it again.

 

 

It's my favorite food too, kid. Now when I fire up the oven, I'm also going to have to fire up the sign.

Pizza Mari

I'll get right to it. Alex is making really solid pizza at Pizza Mari. 

Pizza Mare opened a few months ago, and I've been meaning to get over there to try so pizza since opening day. The shop hours right now are limited (Saturdays and Sundays 11-4, Friday afternoons just started) and will be expanding in the near future. For the incoming storm, a decision was made to close on Sunday and extend Saturday's hours through dinner time. Letting me know this important fact is probably the best use of Instagram in the last 10 years. When I followed the shop on Instagram a few months ago, Alex sent me a message. I am a combination of proud, humbled and embarrassed that I have been blathering on and on about pizza in various places online long enough that he recognized my screen name. 

All the kids are gone, so unlike my recent Romo's plan, I only went with two pizzas: a plain cheese (sauce, both fresh and aged mozzarella, Parmesan, olive oil and basil) and The Collar City (roasted oyster mushrooms, creme fraiche made in the shop, Jasper Hills Alpha Tolman cheese, aged mozzarella, pickled red onions and then finished with Parmesan, some microgreens, fresh cracked black pepper, and Sicilian olive oil) for a 6:30 pickup.  

I got there early to watch some pizza being made and maybe chat. The attention to detail in this shop is high. The dough is made with a blend of 5 flours. I am a pizza nut. I have never gone above three flours. The dough looks like it stretches really well. Toppings are strategically placed on a pizza, not just tossed on there. The oven is a PizzaMaster, looked like it was set around 650. I don't know enough about the ovens to know if that is both top and bottom. You can set them to be different temps. I also have mixer envy, there was a nice, big Sun spiral mixer there. I go back and forth between wanting a smaller Sun or Famag, and now since I've waited too long, Spiralmac has entered the conversation. I don't get a lot pizza in the Albany area, but one more detail: this is the first time I have seen Perfect Crust pizza box liners in the area. Maybe other places use them, I don't know. They are supposed to be the best at keeping the pizza warmer and preventing the bottom from steaming. I considered buying a box of them myself, but the majority of my to-go orders are across the street with no real travel time.

While the pizzas were made and cooked there was a nice conversation ranging from pizza places we've been to, my pizza experiences and the pizza community in general. The shop itself is small, at least the customer side, but nicely decorated and inviting. Everything about this place makes you really want to the pizza to be good. I had my handy pizza delivery bag to keep the pizzas toasty on the ride home.  If I speed, I can get pizza from Pizza Mari to my table in about 10 minutes. Obviously I sped to minimize any impact of the travel time. Here are the two pizzas. 

To me, the crust is the foundation of a pizza. The crust at Pizza Mari is very nice. It might be a little dark around the rim for some (the lighting and my lack of photography skills make the plain look a bit darker than it was), but who cares about those people. These are people that think pizza in New Haven is burnt too. The dough has a nice flavor with a little bit of sourdough coming through. Good texture too. There are three temperatures for eating pizza - hot/fresh out of the oven, room temperature, and cold. I'm not a reheat guy and this crust eats well at all three temps. This small sampling from Pizza Mari makes me want to go through the whole menu. Depending on when you catch them, slices are available. That might be a quicker way to try them all. A potato pizza that might be phased off the menu soon sounds very good, and so do the Carbonara, white pizza and tomato pie. I'm sure I'd like the Pep and Pepp which is pepperoni and hot pepper, but my wife doesn't do spicy. That'd be a good one for me to try as a slice.

The last time a local pizza shop made me think about possible changes to my own pizza was when I took the pizza class at DeFazio's way back in 2014. I messed around with some semolina in the dough for a while before phasing it out of my process. These two pizzas from Pizza Mari made me reflect on what I'm doing. First, I should look into expanding on the mushrooms I've been using. I've always gone with white button or crimini with a strong preference to smaller sized mushrooms (they slice and eat better). The oyster mushroom were really earthy and flavorful. Straight up delicious if you like mushrooms. And the other take away, I might also have to do restart doing poolish experiments with my dough making process. It's a quality pizza that makes you think about implementing aspects of it to improve your own pizza.

Swing and a miss

We really don't go out to dinner regularly. And me, ME, coordinating a handful of mouths to go out for pizza in the Albany area, basically unheard of. Don't think it has ever happened.

Thursday night, I loaded up the mini van with me, my wife, both daughters and a boyfriend and headed off to finally try Romo's Pizza. I'm excited. I've heard good things about it. I drove past the new, larger restaurant on my way to get apples for Thanksgiving. Pretty sure they had a pizza do well at the pizza convention in Vegas. Been meaning to go for a long time. It is incredibly rare for me to be excited about trying pizza this close to home. 

A co-worker offered some tips for things he and his wife had like there (they are regulars). In fact, I'm told last time they were there with their two kids, his wife asked, "What do you think Jon would say about this?" Now, I find that hilarious for two reasons. First, I have never met her or discussed pizza with her. Anything she knows about me and pizza is second hand from my coworker, who has been over to the house for my pizza - at least once a year I bring the gang over for pizza and call it team building. And second, I can't believe that anyone thinks about how I would react to a specific pizza. That's nuts.

So, we get to Romo's at 6:30. The parking lot was a little exciting, and I eventually find a spot to park the family truckster and we head inside. Looks crowded, but no lines and no customers standing. There is a completely open 6-top directly behind the host stand. Here we go.

Table for 5, please.

Do you have a reservation? 

I didn't know you took reservations (most pizza places don't unless it is for a large party, would have thought that started at 6 or 8).

We take them for parties of 5 or more. Unfortunately, we are completely booked up for the rest of the night. It's trivia night.

There's no more seats for the night?

No, I'm sorry.

OK. I thought trivia nights were in places that featured a bar. This looks like it has a bar, but it is mainly food. Not a place you would stop for a few beers. I also thought Trivia Nights were Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday to drive up traffic on slower nights. Thursday through Sunday, I would have expected a pizza place to want to turn over tables. 

There was a brief discussion about takeout, but I didn't want to do takeout pizza (depending on the place, it can really lose a lot in transit). We drove past something that looked like a Japanese restaurant on the way. The map on my phone said it was good so off we went. It was good, service was very friendly and we had a really nice time, but totally a swing and a miss. Probably late May will be the next time I have enough people at the house to order a lot of food at Romo's. Oh well. If current events teach us anything, there are much worse things than a failed pizza night.  

We built a firewood shed

This past fall, I was looking to re-up the pile of firewood I keep for the wood oven. Unfortunately, that time of years is very busy in the firewood community. Lots of order for people stocking up to heat with wood. I didn't wan to get in the way of that so I made some other arrangements with someone at the office whose husband had a small firewood business on the side. They don't sell full cords otherwise I would have been buying from them. Anyhow, I was able to get enough wood to get me through Thanksgiving and several pizza bakes. I could hold off on buying a cord until spring.

I poked around online and looks at plans for sheds. The tarp system I was using is cheap and mostly effective but it does have it's drawbacks. The ground where the wood was stacked  is soft so the concrete block supporting the firewood settle unevenly. I have had to stack to wood more than once because it tipped over. The tarps would also rip and were a general nuisance. For $7,, I bought some plans for a layout that looked good on Etsy.

The following construction story was witnessed by the entire neighborhood as they walked by, checking out the daily progress:

Starting just after the 4th of July weekend, we broke ground. Dug out some dirt, filled back up with compacted stone and then put down a concrete post support. We went with 6, probably could have gotten away with 4. The extra two should help prevent uneven settling.

From there, we went up. Columns and floor supports and then a coat on paint/stain.

 

The floor was next. Pre-painted as much as we could there. Slats on the sides. 

Then a piece of plywood for the roof.

And then shingles. I've worked on a few roofs and I can say this with certainty - hire someone else to work on your roof. They will do a better job.

This time of year, when I called for wood, they asked what day and time. That was on Monday. The wood was here on Wednesday afternoon

And then here it is stacked. Should be enough for quite a few wood oven adventures. Construction supervisor in the photo looks like she approves.

The things we do for pizza...

Father's Day Pizza

For Father's Day, my family brought me to one of the most exclusive, hard to get into pizza spots in Upstate, NY. You need to know someone, plus the timing is hit or miss and sometimes weather dependent. I mean, sure it's my backyard and I was making the pizzas, but I stand by it.

I've gone on about the Pizza Cognition Theory before, basically the first pizza you appreciate as a child become pizza for you. I've heard of exceptions like adult pizza snobs that grew up on chain pizza, but I've found that for the most part, the theory holds true. My Pizza Cognition Theory pizza is from a long gone restaurant called The Brick Oven formerly in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I think It's a Brazilian place now. 

Don't get me wrong, I really like the pizza I make in my wood oven, but it isn't the same as the pizza I grew up eating. However, every now and then there are flashes of Brick Oven pizza coming out of my oven. Kind of like a time traveler trying to break through some force field into present day. 

I made twelve pizzas plus a gluten free square on Sunday. Why did I stop? Because I ran out of cheese. And speaking of cheese, I used a different mozzarella and I now have a new go to brand. If I didn't have to buy Grande mozzarella by the case, I probably would have been using that. Over the years I've gone through all the supermarket brands, the BJ's brands, a few from Whole Foods, some from Honest Weight and all the options at Restaurant Depot. I had settled on the Saputo Mozzeria brand From Restaurant Depot as a combination of good price and decent cheese. Not the best cheese, but decent. Saputo makes another brand I like better, but that's a hour round trip every time to get.

When I was in Restaurant Depot to pick up cheese, more cans of tomatoes and to replenish the cup n char pepperoni supply, I saw a new option. Empire mozzarella from Cuba, NY. In one of the old work trips across the state, I have been to Cuba and I have been to this cheese shop. Had to try it.

The cheese was really good. A definite improvement over the Saputo and taste-wise, a major step towards marking something that tastes like the Brick Oven used to taste like. Another thing I did was use a more heavily seasoned sauce on the pizza. This sauce has salt, garlic, oregano and olive oil instead of just good tomatoes with salt. The two combined to give me several flashes of Brick Oven pizzas from the 80s. Especially on the mushroom slice (no photos of that one), but also on this cheese pizza. 

I think a slightly bigger dough ball and a little longer bake would get me pretty damn close to those pizzas of my youth. And I should be good on pepperoni for a bit.

Some more of the 12 pizzas...

Sausage, pepperoni, banana pepper and hot honey

Buffalo Chicken to go

A Nonna Marie - cheese, dollops of sauce, Parmesan post bake

(this is a really good pizza, might be my current favorite)

and the gluten free

I'm done with the Times Union

We still have a subscription because my wife likes a Sunday paper, but my part going forward is picking the newspaper up off the driveway and bringing it inside the house. Maybe.

Chris Churchill is the local opinion columnist. The day after the election he wrote a completely bullshit column about the electorate being informed and very concerned about immigration and the economy. It's not often I write the paper, but maybe still a little groggy in the morning, I did:

I imagine you are going to get a lot of email on this one. Seriously, columns like today's are the reason I stopped reading your stuff regularly.

"He won mostly because of honest-to-goodness issues, inflation, illegal immigration and war above all."

It couldn't possibly have anything to do with a constant shitstorm of unchecked misinformation and racism. It was purely issues.

Piss right off.

 

Chris, that's how he signed his email so we are on a first name basis, wrote back:

 

Thank you, John. Appreciate your thoughts. Dismissing the win as about nothing more than misinformation and racism seems like a way to let Democrats off the hook for their failures, and it ignores that Trump received significant, if not historic, support from Black and Latino communities. Isn’t it more reasonable to think that those communities were concerned about immigration and inflation?

Chris 

 

This response to his email went unanswered. I guess the first response fulfilled his obligation to engage with subscribers:

It is not my intention to say the Democrats should be let off the hook, nor did i say it. There is plenty they have done wrong, especially in the last 15 years. I'm saying misinformation and racism are large pieces of the puzzle left out of today's column.

I became a Democrat by default a little over 4 years ago so I could participate in a primary that turned out to be meaningless. That was after about 25 years of being an independent. I think there is a lot wrong with both parties. Enough wrong to not want to be in either.

I would argue the Democrats shouldn't have run Hillary Clinton- not because she was necessarily bad or unfit, but at that point she was divisive because right wing media made her a villain. After 4 years of Trump they came up with Biden. Worked in the short term, but you can see where that got them now. Maybe,if they actually had a real primary 5 years ago, that candidate would have ran for reelection.

Everyone that was upset about "her email" doesn't care about a bathroom full of classified documents. Is handling classified information the issue or is it something else? We're so tough on crime, our candidate has a sentencing hearing coming up.

Is immigration an issue or are "they coming to eat your cats and dogs?" Have you seen how much "Your body, my choice" men have put online already since Tuesday? Check this out.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCDgEizuFmH/?igsh=MXA0dndiNjdqaDZzYw==

(it's a link to that asshole whose name I'm glad I can't remember, brick ceiling bullshit rant)

That's the new Republican base. And they wonder why they can't find a date. At least they're heavily armed. 

Our current inflation is corporate gouging. Inflation and record breaking profits don't go together. You think companies are going to pay Trump tariffs or we are? When you go to a restaurant and use a credit card, you often pay a 3% upcharge. That's a tariff. You say anything about a Trump tariff raising prices, that's a lie. People don't believe the cost will fall back on them.

You ever watch George Carlin? Instead of believing we have a well informed electorate, I think it is more reasonable to believe a lot of people were duped to believing they are in the club. Sooner or later they will see, they ain't in it.

Jon

 

This is the Carlin piece I was referencing. 

I'm done. One of the head writers at the Times Union is clueless. It is going to be sad watching people be surprised when the Department of Education falls apart and they realize a little voucher isn't enough to pay for a private school education. You think health care is expensive now? Now imagine it with a tariff on absolutely everything in a hospital or doctors office that isn't made in the US. You think your daughters and grand daughters are going to have OB/GYNs? I bet a lot less pre-med students are going into that field when some random person can make a phone call and turn a doctor's life upside down with an accusation. You dumb enough to think the mass deportation concentration camps are going to be safe? Fuck you. I can not stress this enough. Fuck.You.

Just piss off with the well informed electorate argument. The more I think about it, Chris me accused of letting the Democratic Party off the hook. I think the column was more about letting his newspaper and himself off the hook.

RIP, foreplease

foreplease was his pizza forum name. Tony is the name he went by. It was his middle name though, turns out he was a Joseph. I don't recall him telling many golf stories but he was very into turf management. I know he made fairways on several golf courses...and baseball or softball fields, football turf, probably had some soccer pitches in there too. 

Just a really nice guy. Always welcoming to new people online, happy to offer solid pizza making advice and words of encouragement. Tony really loved some traditions, we share that. One of his biggest traditions was meatballs. He made and gave them out at the holidays. Everybody loved them. The list of recipients continued to grow until he got pushed out of the house and found space in a commercial kitchen to make them each year. Thousands of meatballs over the years.

The last 5 or 6 years, Tony was dealing with some pretty aggressive cancer. He got into a few trials and lived his final years as a science experiment receiving new drugs and cancer fighting treatments. On more than one occasion, I believe he was the first human test subject. The treatments worked pretty well for some time. Got Tony some pizza making time with grandkids. He beat 5 relapses. The 6th relapse got him.

Over the years, enough people had asked about him and his treatments so they set up a blog/email list. Every once in a while there would be an Update On Tony. Most were written by Tony describing his treatment and what was going on. I knew another treatment had started in August. When the posts started to not be written by Tony in September, I knew it wasn't a good sign. That was when I started cyber-stalking Tony. He wasn't posting on the forum much, but you can tell when someone had logged on. If Tony was still logging on most days to poke around, I had hopes he was doing OK. I sent a private message to kind of check in and wish him well. It took a few days for him to get back. That hadn't happened the past. Responses came in hours.

Tony passed away last week. His funeral was Saturday. I made a batch of his meatballs.

 

If you want to make a batch of Tony's meatballs, the recipe is in the second page of this thread.

https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,45810.0.html

And Fuck Cancer.

 

Pizza Line Of Sight Theory

There are a few "Theories" or general rules of thumb that seem to hold true. Sam Sifton came up with The Pizza Cognition Theory (basically the first pizza that you appreciate become what pizza is to you, might be Dominoes, or local place you went to aster a game, that's what you look for in a pizza). Angelo Womack has a theory about the quality of a pizza being directly related to how formally dressed like a chef the pizza maker is. If you look like you were just chef-ing it up in a super formal fancy restaurant, the pizza probably isn't very good.

Here's my Pizza Line of Sight Theory:

If you are in a pizzeria and you cannot see anyone making pizzas, the pizzas is not going to be great.

Sure that pizza might be passable and fill you up if you are hungry, but those slices are never going to be in the discussion about great pizza. I tried a family dinner package from a local place I had never tried out before tonight. I had driven past it for years but the last time I looked it up online the photos were of pizza I was pretty sure I was going to hate. When I looked tonight, the pizzas looked like they could be OK. So I got the large cheese, boneless Buffalo wing bites and garlic knots combo, Picking up the order, there was a display case with slices. They looked OK. I was getting my hopes up, even though all things pizza production were in a back room kitchen.

Opened the box and looked at the bottom of a slice. It was cooked on a screen. Another theory: Great pizza is not cooked on a screen. Again, pizza on a screen might not suck, but I don't know of a great one. Tasted it, the crust was bland. The texture was commercial. I'd bet this place is buying dough instead of making it. The boneless wings were clearly premade/purchased. Overall, the pizza looked like it might be alright, but it wasn't.

Anyhow, let me know if you have a place that disproves my line of sight theory. In my experience, it has been rock solid.

Ending 2023 on a high note

My wife asked if there was anything I wanted to do over the holiday break. If the weather cooperates, I'd want to make pizza. For the most part, the weather cooperated today. Was a little windier than I like. This temp with no wind is actually nice pizza making weather. Add a good breeze like today and it can get chilly.

Anyhow, I made pizza today. Nothing major. Didn't invite anyone over. No special plans. Just relaxed pizza making. Tried a dough experiment that worked so-so. Like most research, that dough procedure requires more research to be conclusive.

I delivered a few around the neighborhood. A meat lovers to the lady who sometimes lets our dog out during the day. One of my original deliveries across the street was out of town. I texted the relatively new neighbors to see if they were around. It had looked like they were away for a few days. 

They were around and excited for some pizza. I've written about them before. The kids are really cute. How cute? I've put pineapple on pizza for them. That's how cute. Since I had extra dough, I made them two pizzas - a Hawaiian and a pepperoni - and walked them across the street. I got a cute chorus of "Thank you!" from the girls as I left. A few minutes later I got follow up text and one of the girls (she's Kindergarten/1st grade age) paid me a nice compliment.

"How come this pizza is so good!" 

She's invited back.

Intense Milk

My oldest daughter was home this week for spring break from college. She brought home some Intense Milk. It is sold from some dedicated Intense Milk only vending machines and also available in some campus shops. It has been a while since the 4 of us went on a Fussy Little Blog tour and ranked something, so I made up some score cards and we had a tasting. On the ballot:

Vanilla: Weighing in at 490 calories per container.

Strawberry: This lowfat version weighs in at 330 calories per container.

Chocolate: Also lowfat and the lightest at 320 calories per container.

Mint Chip: Eerily green and weighing in at 490 calories per container.

On the plus side, these all have a good amount of calcium.

I went with the tasting order of Vanilla, Strawberry, Chocolate and Mint Chip. The idea was to go from mild flavors towards bolder tastes like a wine tasting. I put too much thought into this. Here are some tasting notes:

Vanilla

Jon: Tastes like melted ice cream but a little chalky

Amy: Smooth like melted ice cream

Allison: Tastes like vanilla ice cream, very sweet

Casey: No comment

 

Low Fat Strawberry

Jon: Looks like pepto, tastes like vanilla with strawberry chemical

Amy: Sweet, has an after taste

Allison: tastes like strawberry milk, i never liked strawberry milk that much

Casey: Elementary school strawberry milk flashbacks

 

Low Fat Chocolate

Jon: Kind of like melted chocolate soft serve. Little metallic and the end

Amy: Could use more chocolate

Allison: Pretty good, I can seen how it is more chocolate ice cream than just chocolate milk

Casey: Powdered chocolate milk vibe

Mint Chip

Jon: Decent mint chocolate flavor

Amy: Nice flavor

Allison: Tastes like mint chip ice cream. Can I take points off for how atrocious it looks?

Casey: No comment

The report coming back from campus is that Chocolate is the O.G. flavor (that means Original Gangster, mom) and probably the most popular on campus. The scores-

Parents: We had identical scorecards. Strawberry left off the podium, Chocolate taking the bronze. Vanilla with the silver and in a twist that surprised no one more than me, the very green Mint Chip takes home the gold.

Young Adults: They came close to agreeing. Both had Strawberry in last place, Chocolate and Mint Chip in for silver or bronze (Allison preferred Chocolate and Casey gave the edge to Mint Chip), and Vanilla on top of their podium with gold. 

And there you have it. 

Stewart's flavored milks are better.

Am I wrong or is this shop owner?

So this shop is located in the space where another pizza shop used to be. The original shop was here for decades, and about 20 years ago, maybe a little more, built a new, bigger space about a 1/4 mile away. Since then, I thought a few other mostly to-go places (pizzas and others) have been in this space. Maybe it was just this one with different owners. I was unaware the current version of the pizza shop was there.

Bill Dowd has a blog with local events, opening and closings, that kind of stuff. Earlier today I saw that the current tenant of this space has the store up for sale and clicked on the link. They are doing a starter only/"natural" yeast concept. Here's what the owner (with a bachelors in Nutrition Science) said:

"We are huge fans of all things wild and this includes yeast. Pizza Buono uses wild yeast exclusively to leaven our dough. While commercial yeast is often all GMO, single strain yeast that relies on added sugars for its rise, wild yeast feeds on the wheat protein -- aka the gluten -- in the flour, reducing it to a very nutritious, digestible form. Wild yeast culture can be unpredictable and costly, which is why most pizzerias do not use it, but we believe the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. We also use King Arthur Flour exclusively -- no bleach, no bromate, no GMOs."

1. I don't know about ALL commercial yeast, but the one I see most places using is SAF Instant which is labeled as non gmo. I think past version of it had something GMO in the citric acid. So maybe at one time anyhow. Lesaffre (the company that makes SAF Instant) also makes a compressed yeast that is also listed as GMO free.

2. Every yeast I have used will work without added sugar. I haven't put sugar in my pizza dough for years. The times I've used a starter, there was no added sugar either. Yeast doesn't need added sugar. Not for nothing, if you're making booze, you just need to properly cook corn in water and add yeast. If you add sugar, you'll get more alcohol, but you don't need the sugar to get alcohol. No "all grain" whiskey has added sugar.

3. This is the first time I recall hearing yeast ate gluten. Not a food scientist, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't. Starches/sugars sure, but protein/gluten? Don't think so. No one is adding gluten to wine so the yeast can eat, and the gluten free pizza dough I make without any added sugar literally has no gluten and the yeast makes it rise.

4. Not the first place I've seen the digestibility comment. I personally think it is more about properly fermented dough than strain of yeast, but at least that is open to debate. This seems more anecdotal than test based.

5. Can't argue with unpredictable, expensive and most commercial pizzerias do not rely solely on a starter. So I guess the owner is not completely wrong.

Part of me wants to drive out and try what they are selling, but I'm not sure it is worth the trip. I'm guessing it would make me mad. Probably about 15 minute drive away. Here's the link to the original post

https://dowdnotesonnapkins.blogspot.com/2023/03/a-niskayuna-wild-yeast-pizzeria-goes-up.html?view=classic

And here's the menu. 

https://www.pizzabuonomenu.com/

I'm guessing it is a broad use of the word Neapolitan. The one undercarriage photo online I found showed they are using screens, you know, like classic Neapolitan wood fired pizza <sarcasm font needed>. For just $259,900, the store can be yours.

 Photo from 2019 taken by Frances L. found on Yelp

 

Pizza Memories

After Thanksgiving, I brought my mother back to Connecticut. After I pulled out and started the return trip home I had an idea. The road I take goes pretty close to a restaurant in Stratford. When I was a kid, the people running this place made the pizza that is my personal Pizza Cognition Theory pizza and are really the inspiration to the wood fired oven in the back yard. The obsession started there. The current restaurant is fancier than the original location. Pizzas are only to go which would be fine tonight.

I pulled over, looked up the number on the phone and ordered two pizzas. A cheese and one with bacon. My plan was to pick up the pizzas, then keep driving and stop in a VFW parking lot, eat and then continue on my way home. I got there and paid as the pizzas were coming out of the oven. The tops looked good and had that hypnotic cheese boil going on.

Off I went, basically adding no extra travel time to the trip. Perfect.

Well, the lights were all off at the VFW so I drove right past it in the dark. No worries, there was a gas station a little ways up. I'll eat in the lot there, and then run in for a drink.

The pizzas were so disappointing. Like, crushingly disappointing.

I've had the pizza in the back and considered it kind of a hollow shell of it's past. It was never bad pizza and there were always a few bites that brought back memories of pizzas from long ago. Not this time. The crust had nothing in common with the historic pie. It was under salted and under fermented. The sauce was flat. The flourish of was oregano missing and even the cheese melt was different. And the worst part, was that the bake was completely unbalanced. The top was done but the undercarriage of the crust was blond and missing any browning or char the old pizzas used to have.

I wonder if the new oven isn't as good. I'm tempted to try a pizza from the original location. The photos don't look promising, but you never know. It is a Brazilian-Italian place now. Interesting combo. But I think I'm done trying to relive my pizza memories here. If I return, it will be for something else on the menu....but probably still a pizza to go. There's always a little bit of hope left.

Also, while I'm whining here:

A Margherita pizza is a Margherita pizza. There is no such thing as a Margherita pizza with or without something. Been seeing things like a Margherita pizza with pepperoni or a Margherita pizza without basil. These are no longer Margherita pizzas.

Just like pouring a beer in a wine glass doesn't make it wine, roasting any cut of beef doesn't make that roast Prime Rib.

Signs

I don't get the upside of putting a sign for a politician in your yard. Is it supposed to change someone's mind as they walk or drive by? Is it just for name recognition? Why?

I've only had a political sign in the yard once. The few times I've been asked to put a sign up, I just say I live at the end of a dead end street. No one but me will see the sign. But the time I put a sign up, one of my neighbors was running, it was his sign, one house over had the opponent's sign and he wanted one of his near the opponent's sign. I avoided the awkwardness and said sure.

I voted for the opponent.

That was some time ago. Years before Trump's Republican party. These days I would have dealt with the awkwardness and said something like, "I suspect it will be a full generation before I even consider voting for you or any other Republican." And based on some political conversations in the time since, I don't think he'd ask again, to spare himself the awkward conversation.

On the Saturday before election day, a different house put up some signs. I already knew they probably leaned right. But there's a level of leaning right and then there's thinking that election conspiracy, anti-LGBTQ, anti women's health Lee Zeldin is a good choice level of leaning right.

I was left with questions.

Why even bother, there isn't much traffic past this driveway and the election is in 3 days?

Really?

You know voting for him is a vote against your daughter having decent healthcare in the future, right?

You've got signs for Zeldin and Velella, but skipped Liz Joy. She's too bat shit crazy for you but the other pair are OK? 

The "Don't say gay" bill would lead to a lot of really, really bad, cruel things. You're good with that?

I was disappointed in my neighbors. Maybe I'm over reacting. Sure doesn't feel that way though. On the positive side, Zeldin and Velella both lost. No idea if the signs had any impact on the neighborhood vote, but they didn't work overall.

I get not being thrilled with Hochul. I'm not. The campaign donation followed by a big contract is sketchy at best. The football stadium is stupid. I guess that's her expensive bridge. Hopefully she doesn't name it after her father. Her election bid was one October screw up away from a loss. I saw something on elections recently that made a lot sense. Basically it said elections are like public transportation. You pick the candidate that is going to get you the closest to where you want to go. I don't want to go anywhere with Lee Zeldin.

Saw this from a Canadian election observer. It's got to be tough to watch. It ain't exactly fun being a part of the mess either.

Road Trip to Queens

Not quite a month ago, I had to go on an overnight for work. I'm still leery of being out a lot. Ordering take out and not dining in, masks and all that. So obviously when faced with an overnight trip to Queens, I pulled up map and tried to correlate places I could stay and pizza shops I wanted to try.

The list of pizza places I'm curious about in Queens isn't huge. I'm sure there is more worthwhile pizza than the list. But in no particular order, the places I'd like to try are:

Lucia Pizza, Flushing

Amore Pizza, Flushing

Philomena's, Sunnyside

Louie's Pizza, Elmherst

Brother's Pizza, Flushing

Rizzo's Fine Pizza, Astoria

Margherita, Jamaica

Rosario's, Astoria

Bellucci's Pizzeria, Astoria

There's already another story behind the Bellucci's that I posted about a year ago. The original Bellucci's was opening at the end of Untitled Pizza Movie. But there was a falling out and Andrew Bellucci left and has since reopened another pizza place a few blocks away from the first. Anyhow, the shop currently being run by Andrew Bellucci wasn't open that night and this list of pizza places is pretty spread out. I decided to pick the one I wanted to try the most and get a hotel fairly close with a parking option.

I found a hotel with a parking spot about a mile away from Philomena's. It looked like it would work well. A nice walk there and back plus I was pretty close to where I had to be in the morning. Checked into the hotel, hung out for a bit in the room and set off on my straight shot walk up Queen's Boulevard to Philomena's. The weather was nice and the walk was good. It was nice to be out of the car.

When I got there, I came close to ordering one of everything of the slice offerings and a root beer. While they were reheating, I asked the guy making pizzas if he was Dave. He said he was. I let him know Scott from Boston says, "Hi," Scott is a pizza shop owner in the Boston area and a pizza consultant and incredibly knowledgeable about pizza on the forum and by all accounts incredibly nice. So we briefly talked and then my slices were ready so I headed to a bench outside the shop to eat.

Everything was good. This is pizza made by someone who cares. I think the 2 squares probably could have used a little more top heat during the reheat, but the place is solid. I wouldn't call it destination pizza. If you're nearby, definitely go. I don't think I would be heading out to make a special trip for Philomena's.

With nothing really on the agenda for the rest of the night. I people watched for a little bit to let the 4 slices settle and went in to try some other offerings. I considered ordering a square, but decided that was just too much pizza and picked a small sausage and broccoli rabe pizza to go and was told it would be about 20 minutes. No worries, plenty of time to kill.

A few doors away from Philomena's is a White Castle. I have had microwaved White Castle Sliders but never had the real deal. 

So I walked over there and ordered a slider. It felt like I was the first person in history to have ever ordered a single slider. I had already eaten 4 slices and had just basically ordered 4 more but it still felt weird. 

The White Castle slider tasted like a cross between meatloaf and sloppy Joe. I ate about half of it. I think this might be a thing you had to have growing up to love. It's not for me. Or maybe I ordered wrong. Anyhow, I headed back to Philomena's for my pizza. Once there, I was waiting for my pizza and Dave called me back to where he was working to talk pizza a little more. He told me about his dough and the changes he makes. Right now he is using a poolish and the dough that day was 4 days old. You can definitely taste the poolish. There is kind of a mild, fermented, not quite sourdough flavor in the background of the dough. It was fun talking dough and about the places Dave worked before going out on his own (he started with wood fired pizza).

When my pizza was done, Dave's assistant let him know that he had made the wrong pizza. There is the broccoli rabe and sausage combination, but there is also a vegan combination with a chickpea base and broccoli rabe with garlic. He had made the vegan one. I said it wasn't a problem but he wasn't having that, so he made the sausage/rabe pizza I had ordered and gave me both.

Chickpea with broccoli rabe and garlic

Sausage with broccoli rabe

I went outside and wanted to try the pizzas while they were still hot. They were both good. My only complaint would be that the rough chop on the broccoli rabe was a little too rough and the pieces were uncomfortably lard to eat. The chick pea topping was delicious. Truth be told, the vegan combination was better than the sausage combination. The chickpeas had a coarse grind to them and weren't smooth like a hummus. They were well seasoned and combined with the garlic and broccoli rabe it was my favorite of everything I had tried at Philomena's and before I fell asleep, all the pizza was gone and I didn't really eat the next day.

So Philomena's is good pizza and worth visiting if you are nearby. I still think about that chickpea topping and how I could copy it. But I wouldn't give Philomena's a destination, drive a few hours just to get it, kind of a rating. In fairness, that is an incredibly short list and two of the places making up probably half of the list that comes to mind would also require a time machine.

Winter Pizza Challenge and a confession

The winter pizza challenge was to revisit one of your Signature pizzas. I had made what I call the Fancy Pants Mushroom pizza back in November of 2019. The pizza has a base of creme fraiche (fancy pants sour cream), mushrooms sauteed in olive oil with garlic and a splash of wine. Usually some oregano in there. I've been prepping some topping in the oven during the preheat (a sheet pan of bacon cooks surprisingly quickly and well in there) and I had seen something on roasting mushrooms figured I'd give it a try.

Monday was President's Day so a day off from work. Temps were also in the 40s.  I lit the oven a little after 10. Fun fact - starting a fire in a wood oven with a weed burner is oddly satisfying. It's weird, a stick light feel soulless compared to a match, but the weed burner is fun. Don't need any newspaper.

Anyhow, for this go around of the Fancy Pants Mushroom, I roasted the mushrooms in the oven and added the seasoning and other ingredients later.

The dough was a little under fermented and I didn't like the cheese,

The line at Restaurant Depot was insane and I was only getting cheese so I stopped at Shop Rite for some other toppings and grabbed their house mozzarella. Good news, the cheese was on sale. Bad news, it grated funny, was bland, melted a weird shade of white and will not be purchased again. But I did also pick up some Seabrook Farms creamed spinach. I kind of wonder how that would do on a pizza.

the mushroom were ok, but there is more flavor to them when sauteed. The garlic gets a little softer too. Next time, I think I will try adding the garlic and a splash of wine to the sheet plan when the mushrooms come out of the oven. There should be enough heat left to incorporate them. I supposed I could just slide the pan I use in the oven too. In the end, I'm pretty sure I was the only one nit-picking the dough, cheese, and flavor of the mushrooms. Something, something, own worst critic...

I also tried a new go at the gluten free pizza. I used a blend of gluten free flours, water, yeast, salt and some olive oil. The mixture all combined kind of comes out like spackle. I think an offset spatula would help spread it in a Detroit style pan. So after about 24 hours in the fridge, the dough was spread in the pan, then there was a 4 hour room temp rise. I par baked the dough with just a little bit of cheese around the edges so stop the dough from shrinking. Cooled that off and then topped it just before a final bake. Went half cheese, half mushroom. It came out pretty good. I think this is the gluten free pizza path of the future. I've got 2, dedicated gluten free pans for this.

All in all, that was a good day. So the confession: I've never put pineapple on a pizza. I can't think of a time when I have liked cooked pineapple. Anyhow, when we were meeting the new neighbors, it turns out one of their little kids likes pineapple on pizza. I thought I'd try to make the best pineapple pizza she ever had. The plan was:

1. Take some fresh pineapple (I will not put canned pineapple on a pizza)

2. Glaze/caramelize it with a little brown sugar

3. Make a Hawaiian pizza (even though that topping combination was created in Canada by a Greek immigrant with no ties to Hawaii) with the pineapple and some good, real ham

4. Walk it across the street

5. Sip an adult beverage and think about what I had done

But none of this happened.The neighbors were out of town during the school break and we had the pineapple with dinner on Tuesday night. My pineapple-less streak received a stay. Not sure how long the stay will be. My wife noted that all it took to get me thinking about pineapple on pizza was a little kid making the request. A few adults have brought it up in the past and I kind of pushed it off.

What can I say? I've got a soft spot for little kids that like my pizza. It's not like I'm going to eat pineapple on pizza myself.

Unless it looks and smells really good. 

Then maybe. I doubt it. Probably not. But maybe.

Pierogi Day

Yesterday was pierogi day and I do love a good pierogi day. I've posted about pierogi making but I don't think I ever wrote about the origins of the day. Every year, Christmas Eve is at my wife's Aunt Carol's house. There is an absurd amount of food, a lot of fun and games including a holiday themed bingo game with bingo card that date back to the 90s. One of the main foods besides the shrimp and ham are a ton of pierogi.

Well, after I officially married into the family in 2000, being the food nut that I am, I asked for a pierogi making lesson. We picked a day and my wife and I went over to make that year's holiday pierogi. Well, it turns out that I'm pretty good at rolling them out and my wife is pretty good at filling them. The four us (Uncle Lou was there too) started at about 8 in the morning and were done before noon. Aunt Carol was stunned. Normally this was just the two of them cooking which means Aunt Carol doing just about everything and then Uncle Lou boils the pierogi. They used to start at like 7 in the morning and finish around dinner time, sore and cranky with their basement kitchen trashed, and barely on speaking terms.

So from there, we started coming over to make the annual Christmas pierogi. And then my brother in law and sister in law moved back home from North Carolina and the party grew. And then the kids started coming and the event grew even bigger. Aunt Carol has written records for the most pierogi out of one batch of dough and she keeps track of how many we make each year. The number fluctuates with how stuffed they get but also, the blocks of farmer's cheese used to come in all sizes, it's just a straight 3 pound block now. Many hands makes it go quick. They get stuffed almost as fast as the circles get cut, the next batch of dough is usually ready to go before it is needed, and two pots of water are boiling them as they get made. We usually start a little after 10 and are done making pierogi about 2 hours later.

Two years ago, my nephew took an interest in rolling out the dough and cutting the circles. Last year, for the first time in a long time, there was no pierogi making party. Carol and Lou made a batch and delivered them on Christmas eve to all the families that would have normally been at their house. This year, I brought a bench scraper and my nephew was even more into it. I think my job as official Dough Roller may be in jeopardy. Official Dough Roller Supervisor is probably a pretty good gig.

Pizza Sauce Evolution

The sauce I use for my wood oven pizza has been evolving slowly over the years. I specify wood oven, because when I make Detroit style that is thicker than the wood oven pizza. The pizza sauce has gone from almost always being Pastene Kitchen Ready ground peeled tomatoes to various Stanislaus once I was able to get inside a Restaurant Depot. Stanislaus only make those really big #10 cans of tomatoes. But in their product line, I went from 7-11 which are a crushed tomato, to Tomato Magic which is the same as 7-11 except the tomatoes are peeled, to Alta Cucina which are whole peeled tomatoes in a packing liquid. With the crushed tomatoes, I sometimes used them right out of the can and sometimes I combined out of the can with some run through a food mill. I had been running these whole tomatoes through a food mill and including the packing liquid which is something I just assumed pizza places would do. Through all this, the sauce is just tomato and some sea salt. I like to add oregano on top of the cheese. As the cheese greases off a little and starts to boil, that oregano cooks into and seasons the pizza.

I saw an interview with Angelo Womack, he worked at Roberta's when it was just starting out and is now a pizza consultant, and in the interview he mentioned that if you were using the packing liquid from the can of Alta Cucina's the sauce wasn't everything that it could be. So the last time I made pizza, I used only the whole tomatoes and I liked the sauce. But was it really that different?

I had forgotten about wanting to look into this a little further and remembered when opening the can. I was trying to be a little scientific but was making it up as I went. I tired breaking down the can into parts. I'm using grams but they are really just ballpark numbers since there is some tomato left in the can, in bowls, on the food mill, on the counter...there will be rounding errors.

I ran all the whole tomatoes through the food mill using the coarse plate.

Pulp left behind in the food mill: 244 grams

Packing liquid remaining in the can: 876 grams

Tomato sauce that came through the mill: 1614 grams

Totaled up that's 2735 grams. The can says 2.89 kg, or 2890 grams making 155 grams of gone AWOL. I tasted everything. The pulp left behind is awful. Really terrible. Don't eat that. The canning liquid is fine, nothing really special about it. That is until you taste the milled tomatoes, then the canning liquid is definitely lacking. The milled tomatoes are bright and fresh tasting with a tartness on the finish that just isn't in the canning liquid.

I made a blend of the milled tomatoes and the canning liquid to estimate what I'd have if I had just run the whole can through the food mill. I'm not sure this is the right way to estimate the proportions. If I had just pulsed a stick blender in the can, I'd have the pulp in there too. In any case, I made a blend of milled and liquid. There was no way around it, the canning liquid dulled the flavor of the sauce. I added some salt. It helped but not enough. I brought in my wife as a second taster. She agreed. The milled tomatoes by themselves were better. I'd argue that using just the milled tomatoes was like using a different ingredient. 

Since I'm already a little nuts with the pizza, moving forward I plan to only use the milled tomatoes. That amount will get me through a typical wood oven bake with a little left over. Maybe I'll combine the leftover with the canning liquid to make a pasta sauce later in the week. For how often I fire up the oven and the cost of a can of Alta Cucina was under $5 the last time I bought a case, it isn't a big deal or really wasteful.

Where the experiment falls short: I didn't try comparing the two sauces on a pizza. Cooking could change it. I was just so surprised at how different the two sauces were and how much more I liked the milled tomatoes only, I used that sauce in the bake. Since it is just me making pizzas in a relatively small wood oven, side to side comparisons in the past haven't been true side by sides. The two pizzas would probably come out over 10 minutes apart, the oven conditions are constantly changing and it is generally difficult to create an "all other things being equal" kind of condition by myself in the backyard. This could also be less apparent in a more seasoned sauce. Also, if you are going for a sauce with a specific flavor profile, this might not help. I'm guessing most pizza shops either aren't milling the tomatoes (though some definitely do) and are using a combination of canned tomatoes. Maybe like 2 cans of crushed and 1 can of something thinner. When I took that class years ago at DeFazio's, they were using 2 different Stanislaus products with some water in a batch of sauce. There's more than just salt in their sauce too.

Overall, a very interesting taste test. Glad I remembered. It changed the way I will be making sauce moving forward. But the sauce is always evolving. The next change probably isn't too far off. 

El Presidente

I came really close to not saying anything about this, but pizza...

Dave Portnoy from Barstool Sports was in the area this week doing his pizza reviews at a handful of local places.

As someone not into sports, all I know about Barstool is the bad stuff that looks to be pretty well documented...sexism, anti LGBTQ, harassment. This is a quote from a 2017 Sports Illustrated article by Richard Deitsch and Chris Chavez on ESPN cancelling its partnership with Barstool after 1 episode:

At a certain point over the last week, Skipper became more aware of the historical content of Barstool Sports away from the popular Pardon My Take podcast, and specifically, the ugly comments made by Barstool founder and president Dave Portnoy in 2014 about ESPN Sunday NFL Countdown host Sam Ponder.

I will mention that during the pandemic, Barstool did good work helping out restaurants, but let's just say Dave Portnoy is not in the running to replace Alex Trebek either.

A good way to gauge if a reviewer's tastes are in line with your own is to compare their notes to yours on a visit to the same place. The first Barstool pizza review I saw was for Mama's Too! in New York City. It was the 300th review and Portnoy did it wearing a "Jew Crew" t-shirt. He was unimpressed and gave it a score of 6.8. This review went up in February of 2018. Mama's Too! was one of the places I visited on a pizza tour with some people from the pizza forum. The place stole the day. It was amazing.  It looks like Dave Portnoy and I do not have the same tastes in pizza. Turns out I wasn't the only one impressed by Mama's Too! because in November of 2018, Mama's Too! was given a star by Pete Wells in the New York Times.

From the Time's review:

It is as if Frank Tuttolomondo, the owner and pie architect of this informal but very serious pizzeria on the Upper West Side, has learned how to genetically modify pizza.

From the bits of the local reviews I watched, Portnoy burnt the hell out of his mouth on a slice early in this pizza tour so who knows if he could actually taste anything and each place I saw scored higher than Mama's Too! including one that is pretty close to my house. Trust me, if there was pizza as good as Mama's Too! close to my house, I'd be there regularly.

On top of all the problematic behavior, I don't think Portnoy's pizza reviews are that good either. His highest score locally (DeFazio's in Troy, not close to the house) would also be one of my higher scores locally, but overall, I think the Barstool pizza ratings are more a reflection of Portnoy's current mood as he hams it up for a camera than a real pizza ranking.

Pizzamaking.com

Might have some new people poking in from Chuck Miller's blog. I had a nice conversation with him not too long ago and I think that goes online this weekend.

First things first: I was a little nervous during the our talk - looking at a recording camera and speaking is not one of my strengths - so I'm going to mention a few things that I got wrong. Try to set the record straight. 

The biggest and dumbest mistake was saying this blog started in 1998. It was 2008. What's a decade, really? I was going off a vague memory of looking at things online back in an apartment before I was married, but that memory is of a barbecue ListServ-forum-ish thing from back in the day. So this space was inspired by Michael Ruhlman's blog and the names I couldn't remember: Chef Bob Del Grosso and Chef Mike Pardus who had a blog called The Hunger Artist. Before them, I didn't know what a blog was.

The slightly less big and dumb mistake was not clarifying that I am not really a pizza expert. Enthusiast is a better word. That's not to say I don't know a good amount about pizza, but many know more than me. So they would be experts and I'm an enthusiast. Pizza nerd works too.

The last thing that comes to mind is another name I couldn't come up with on the spot. We were talking about local entrepreneurs and the name I couldn't come up with was Cory Nelson. He's the founder of Troy Kitchen and then Cloud Food Hall in Albany. I would bet that whatever project he decides to do next, it will be creative and worth checking out.

Hopefully I caught all my glaring mistakes. On to a blog post....

If you are stopping by from Chuck's blog looking for pizza making tips, I would encourage you to join the pizza forum - www.pizzamaking.com. It is free, but you do have to send in an introductory post that might take a bit for a moderator to approve (weeds out robots and spammers, plus it is nice to say hello). After that, you have free reign on the forum. 

Pizzas are divided into styles, recipes and techniques abound, plus it is a very friendly community. I've had the opportunity to meet a few forum members in person and they did not disappoint. There's some talk of a New Haven pizza crawl sometime this summer. Going to try to make it if I can. Screen names become familiar and the people behind become "friends." You cheer for their pizza successes, worry about them when they are ill, and miss them when they aren't around.

There used to be a thing on the screen that let you know how many hours you had been logged onto the forum. It's still there, but you have to dig for it now. Anyhow, I remember posting about the first pizzas I made after joining the forum and the clock showed a little more than 10 hours of poking around the forum. This was back in February of 2013 baked using a homemade pizza steel at my former house where the oven went to 550.

The stats say I have spent 72 days, 2 hours and 13 minutes looking at the forum as I type. Here's a fairly recent pizza out of the wood oven.

Practice helps. A lot.

So if you want to get into pizza making, join the forum and poke around. Also a kitchen scale really helps too and you don't need a mixer. Many say hands are better for small batches anyhow. There's even a "fork mixer" that tries to mimic hands working dough.

Thanks, Chuck. It was fun talking to you.