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.  

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

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.

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.

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.

March 2021 Monthly Pizza Challenge

The monthly challenge on the Pizza Forum (pizzamaking.com) was "smoked."

Over the holidays, one of my neighbors got a pellet smoker. He's been making some really good stuff in there. We had already been talking about collaborating on a pastrami (pastrami is so damn good) and even discussed a few pizza ideas. So when the challenge came up, I texted him and we made some plans.

First up was going to burnt ends. Since the Detroit style pizza I have been working on only takes about 5 hours from idea to baking in the inside-the-house-oven, it was a prefect match for the absurdly windy March we have been having. I made the dough and he dropped off a bag of smoke brisket burnt end pieces. For that pizza, I've got the dough topped with a colby-jack/mozzarella/muenster cheese blend. I put on 6 jalapeno slices so there would be one in each piece of pizza. When the pizza came out of the oven, I added a barbecue sauce drizzle and depending on the eater, a little pickled red onion I made. Personally, I think red onion really perked it up. Made one for me and another for my neighbor.

A little later in the month, we collaborated on a pulled pork pizza. For that, it looked like the weather was cooperating and I was planning to fire up the wood oven for a zoom birthday party (pizzas were made at 5 locations in New York, Connecticut and Wisconsin, it was a fun time). Well, I was expecting a cup or two of smoked pork. He brought me 6 or 7 pounds. And cole slaw. And buns. This is a rough neighborhood.

I ended up making a pretty similar pizza using a different dough and the wood oven. Little bbq sauce on the dough, no Muenster in this cheese blend just colby-jack and mozzarella, some jalapeno, a post bake bbq sauce drizzle and the pickled onion. This came out pretty good too. Made one for my neighbor (also brought them a cheese) and another pulled pork pizza later for me.

When we were talking a few days later, he told me that just before  I dropped the pizzas off, a family had arrived for a pulled pork dinner. So now they've got 2 pizza boxes there. The dad friend asks, "I thought you made pulled pork. You ordered pizzas too?" 

"Nah, those are from my neighbor."

"But they're in boxes?!?"

"Yeah, He really likes pizza."

I think I liked the burnt end pizza a little more. Both we're really good and I definitely would turn down a slice of either right now. The beef was just more flavorful. We had a nice pulled pork dinner the next night, some with bbq sauce and some with a North Carolina vinegar sauce I threw together. There was enough leftover for me to freeze pizza topping sized portions of the pulled pork for future pizza bakes. 

A Tale of Two Pizza Experiences

Another shout out to Mom. I think trying to provide her with a little something to read might breathe some life into this blog. No promises though.

I clearly have a problem with pizza and here are the tales of pizza experiences.

A bit in the past:

Back in February before the country shut down, we went to New York City for a show and then headed to Connecticut to visit my mother (hi mom). I don’t know when, but Colony Grill opened an outpost near her, so we headed over on a Friday night. I had never been and from what I had heard about it was that Colony Grill was one of the original places for a bar style pizza. They were also known for a hot chili oil.

The place was packed.

I mean mobbed. Busier than the New Haven Pepe's on a summer Saturday night. The waiting area was shoulder to shoulder and it was going to be 45 minutes to get a table for 5. Carryout boxes were constantly leaving the door. And bar pies are small so people were leaving with mini towers of pizza boxes. My expectations were getting higher. The crowd at this place was something out of the fantasies of most restaurant owner. Groups of 2, 4, 10 or more. Bar area jammed. Relatively fast table turnover. Plus, a good size crowd of people willing to wait for their chance to get seated at a table.

I hated the pizza. Really hated it. Like getting mad the longer you think about it kind of hate.

Here are some of the pictures I took. They have a very similar look to Start Tavern in Jersey, but Star Tavern is better than this. The photos look a lot better than the pizza tastes.

Bacon

Cheese 

Undercarriage

Veggie

The dough was completely flavorless. It was like someone forgot to add the salt when the dough was being made. They have a salad pizza which is a lovey tossed salad on top of one of their pizzas with or without cheese. It would be better as just a salad. 

Salad Pie

I can not believe the business this place is doing. This is a place that pizza nuts travel to try. It is straight up bad. And all those people leaving with carryout…the edible shelf like on the pizzas is less than 30 minutes. We took out leftovers home and they do not age well. I will give credit where credit is due. The hot chili oil is good, nice flavor and heat to it, but the oil would excel on a better pizza,

Hot Oil Pie

And they serve beer in those good mugs with the little nobby part for your thumb. I don't drink much beer but I like these mugs better than pint glasses.

During a phone conversation with my mother I made a joke about getting some of their pizza to go. My mother said, “I think I’ll go back there never.” Pretty much sums it up. Five out of five of us are fine never returning...

A little closer to the present:

The pizza community is pretty cool. I'm definitely on the outside looking in but you can see how the shared pizzeria experience between people working in the field forge great friendships. I originally joined Instagram to keep tabs on my kids’ accounts. I quickly found there is a pretty large pizza presence. And like any other social media thing, once you find one there are more recommendations and then you find a few people from the pizza forum and it just keeps snowballing to include pizza makers in Italy and around the world. Plus, pizza people are some of the greatest people in general.

One of the people I followed when I signed up was Scott's Pizza Tours. Scott Wiener is by every account a guy with an incredible knowledge of pizza history and the Guinness World Record for most pizza boxes. From following Scott, I was introduced to The Za’Report (Miriam) who is one of the guides for Scott’s Pizza Tours. Since the quarantine started, Miriam has been making pizzas at home for first responders, out of work people and pretty much anyone wanting a pizza. She also does live pizza making things in her apartment in Brooklyn. They are entertaining to watch and they regularly coincide with when I am making dinner. So I prop the phone up and listen to her make pizza while I cook. It has been nice. She also occasionally does “bedtime stories” where she talks about something pizza related. The history of Queen Margherita and the origins of the Margherita pizza was great. Making a long story longer….

Miriam recently started working at the original Paulie Gee’s location in Greenpoint. A pizza maker that trained her there Chris, aka trunkbeer on Instagram, is currently in Albany for the quarantine. Miriam told me he was looking for some supplies (the Jon in Albany handle game me away) so I reached out to Chris to point him towards a few local places he could try.

Well, Chris now has a Ooni or Rockbox, not sure which, and a very pretty spiral mixer (I definitely have mixer envy).and when the mood hits, he has contactless pizza pick up in from of his house. The first few times I was too late to get a pizza. The available pies can go pretty quick. My time slot was 12:30 on Thursday. Now this is exciting, right. You’ve got a professional pizza maker personally making you a pizza at a designated time.

It was nice to meet Chris, even though we were both wearing masks. It was also nice to inhale some fresh pizza. The basil smelled so good. The pizza, already good, is going to get better as Chris continues to dial in the mixer and oven.  He’s started another Instagram account called trunkpizza. I'm guessing future pizza sign ups go through that account. Give both a follow if you want to try one of the Chris’ pizzas. You’ve got a little time. He’s taking this week off.

February 2020 Pizza Challenge

This month's pizza challenge: Make a pizza you have never baked before.

I read the challenge and immediately had a plan: I was going to use the left side of my oven.

My oven floor has two materials. The right side is regular firebrick and the left side is biscotto that I, like a crazy person, had imported from Italy. The idea was bank the coals on the left and I would make a more American styled wood fired pizza with bake times in the 4 minute range. Bank the coals on the right, really crank up the heat and then launch Neapolitan style pizzas on the biscotto tile to the left. I have spent a lot of time trying to dial in my version of the wood fired pizza I ate growing up (serious Pizza Cognition Theory in effect) and now I end up making that with minor tweaks. It can kind of feel like that is the pizza I’m expected to make when the oven gets fired up and it is easy to fall into a rut. So, in all the time I have had a working wood oven, Sunday was the first time I banked the coals on the right side of the oven, got the fire roaring and launched pizza onto the biscotto.

I picked up a bag of Caputo Chef 00 flour. I was going to get an unmalted All purpose but couldn’t find one. If you are cooking at temperatures this high, the malt can burn. Check out a bag of your all purpose flour in the pantry. My guess is that it either has some kind of enzymes added or something with the word malt. That's what makes your cakes and cookies brown at 350 degrees. At over 800 degrees, that would burn. Not all, but most of the Italian 00 flours do not have malt added. Anyhow, Saturday morning I combined 600g flour, 376g water, 18g salt and 0.6 g of instant yeast, let it rest a bit and then did a series did 3 stretch/folds over the course of an hour. This gave made four about 245g balls and let I let them sit in a 60 degreed basement for about 24 hours.

 

 In the end, I think the dough might have been a little under fermented. Might be a bit colder in the basement than I thought. The dough was definitely the weak link of the pizzas Could have been some operator error opening them too. I made 3 Margherita pizzas experimenting with how the mozzarella was cut. Wasn’t impressed with Roma's fresh mozzarella. Tasted like they forgot the salt in the water so I added some salt to 2 of the 3 Margheritas pre bake. The other pie was a pepperoni/green olive that gave me a chance to play with my new olive pitter.

Bake times for these 4 pizzas were in the 1:30 to 1:45 range and the oven floor was about 850. I forgot to toss in a small log before launching the longer baked pie. And yes, I am my own worst critic. You could easily have paid $12 for a worse wood fired pizza than these (ask me how I know).

After making these Neapolitan pies, I took a little nap, let the oven cool down some and then made a bunch of my usual pies. A few for us, one delivered across the street and two were picked up.

 

All in all, a fun day.  Kind of makes me think this could be a regular plan. Blast the oven and make Neapolitan pizzas around lunchtime. Take a nap and the make my usual for dinner. You really can't have too much pizza...

December PIzza Making Challenge

The Challenge:
Make a pizza that demonstrates the most important thing(s) you have learned on this forum. 

I have been thinking about this since the challenge was posted on the 1st. And then I didn't get the chance to bake. Saturday was the first time I fired up the oven since the November challenge. Coming up with THE most important thing I've learned on this forum is tough. So much valuable information is exchanged at pizzamaking.com. I got help with the design, dimensions and masonry tips for my oven build. From techniques to ingredients to recipes to science. It is all being shared on the forum.

I’m going to go with the stretch and fold technique for one of the most important lessons I learned on the forum. I hand mix my dough and I feel that one (or sometimes a few depending on the hydration) stretch and fold really helps make the dough easy to ball. If I am cold fermenting, most of the gluten development will take place in the fridge anyway (biochemical gluten development...it's a good thing).

More often than not, I’m buying my flour at restaurant depot and it is pretty cheap (about $15 for 50 pounds). So when I make dough, I make a lot of dough. When I fire the oven, I bake 8 to 10 pizzas – depends on who is over and which neighbors are home. Leftover dough typically becomes bread or a Stromboli. When mixing, I make 12 approximately 450 gram doughs. At 63% hydration, there is about 3300g of flour and 2100g of water going into a big stainless steel bowl. I combine the ingredients – flour, water, salt, yeast – until everything is combined and all the flour is incorporated. It’s a lumpy mess.

Cover everything with plastic wrap and wait 20 minutes. I take the lumpy mess and stretch it into a log.

It kind of looks like if I knew what I was doing, I could pull noodles. I fold this up in thirds,..

spin the bowl 90 degrees and repeat the log stretch.

It won’t stretch as easy this time. Do the same folding into thirds and then knead by hand for about 30 seconds. That’s it.
 

Divide, ball and put them in the fridge. I’ve been using a plastic bag for each dough lately. But with not much effort, a little over 11.5 pounds of dough got mixed.

One other big thing I’ve learned on the forum is to experiment. A good example is the yeast prediction chart. It is an amazing tool that can really get you close to getting the right amount of yeast given a fermentation time and temperature. But you’ve got to try a few things to dial it in on your own. For today’s bale I tried to formalize a sauce recipe instead of eyeing it. I hated it. Not sure what happened. I didn't add sugar but it tasted like I did. Maybe I’ll get closer next time. On the flip side, I listen to a podcast regularly and they had a football player on promoting something with Pizza Hut. He said he didn’t like pizza sauce. His favorite pie was cheese with sausage pepperoni and banana peppers. I tried it. It was good, but not great to my tastes. I tried it again but added a hot honey drizzle post bake. Now it’s one of my favorites. I think I had 3 slices of this one.