21 ms·

Jeff Varasano's NY Pizza Recipe (2008)

299 points by Alupis 5y ago

kull 5y ago
Honestly, who is reading and following a recipe that is longer than a list of ingredients and a few sentences of instructions?
- dominicjj 5y ago
  People who want to make a pizza as good as Jeff's. I found this page over ten years ago and my pizzas are rightly famous among friends. I'm always happy to point them at the source for the information.
ggm 5y ago
Yea. His legal disclaimer is necessary. Modding your oven interlocks for pizza.. There are good small high-temp pizza oven options. If you care enough about the quality you're heading to something in that space, or building out a brick furnace in the backyard. I think home pizza is great. I love making it, but its nothing on the stuff i get from the two italian joints up the road, professionals get better results. Same with coffee: I'd rather pay a competent barista.. But if I lived in the woods in vermont I might feel different: and I'd have room to make a pizza oven too! If you live in a unit with a wired in oven, and you mod your oven to cook on the clean cycle.. your home insurance is probably void. If you rent: you're probably now in breach of your rental agreement. Not getting his results, we pre-heat some ceramic (we use a plate but friends went to the hardware store and got a large clay floortile) and this, combined with direct radiant heat from the elements, gets a pretty good outcome: fast cook base and crispy finish on the toppings. Also: this americanism to refer to Pizza PIE. Thats Chicago, and is abhorrent sloppy nonsense. I've had one. its tomato sauce in a piecrust. its like eating lukewarm dense tomato soup with cheese topping. I can't imagine why people do this except I also gross out on dirty fries so I kind-of get it, its comfort food for the locals. But anywhere else, pizza means thin crust, and arguments about how much beyond basil and cheese goes on it. (I am australian. I do not put pineapple on pizza. Tandoori Lamb is pretty good mind you.)
- im3w1l 5y ago
  I prefer homemade pizza for one simple reason, I can choose the toppings and their proportions myself. This more than makes up for the deficiencies.
- OJFord 5y ago
  > arguments about how much beyond basil and cheese goes on it. Perhaps my most controversial stance is not thinking cheese is all that important as a pizza topping. My favourite pizza to make is a big mound of spinach (however much you think is way too much will shrink down to nothing) and dollops of ricotta. But if they're not available, I have some grilled vegetables (whatever really) and then find myself grating some cheese on for no reason other than that's what pizza is 'supposed to be like'.
- salamandersauce 5y ago
  While Chicago deep dish pizza more resembles pie, the term pizza pie most likely originated in NYC. Also you're missing out by skipping on pineapple. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/263732/where-does-pizza-pie-originate https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/263732/where-doe...
  - mjevans 5y ago
    I call it a 'Pizza inspired casserole'.
- getlawgdon 5y ago
  I don't know what you're referring to, but that absolutely does not describe any Chicago pizza. And while I'm sure some do, I can't think of many Chicagoans who call it "pie". At all. I dare you to go to Pequod's or Burt's Place or Labriola and tell me it isn't as good as any pizza you've had anywhere. If you think of deepdish as "soup" the you had an unfortunate experience. And Lou Malnati's buttercrust is...everything. There are astonishingly good Chicago-style hole in the walls all around Chicago. So many. But what you described...I think you're talking about something else.
  - 5y ago
CarVac 5y ago
His method of making sauce made a HUUGE difference in my own pizza making. I don't do quite all the way as removing all the seeds, but I immersion blend canned San Marzano tomatoes and then strain all the liquid out of it, keeping only the pulp.
- OJFord 5y ago
  I just use a bit of purée, at most passata. I don't see why the end result would be much different (if you were saying blend fresh, sure, but canned whole/chopped vs. already puréed/passata'd?) and it's less work.
  - CarVac 5y ago
    I think it has less liquid than normal puree.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      After a quick image search, I think there might be a regional difference, and we don't mean the same thing by purée; I mean something fairly viscous that comes in small jars or tubes, like this: https://cdn.bmstores.co.uk/images/hpcProductImage/imgFull/306723-delizia-italiana-double-conentrated-tomato-puree-200g.jpg https://cdn.bmstores.co.uk/images/hpcProductImage/imgFull/30... I can't immediately find an image squirting any, but it's about the consistency of toothpaste. Thicker than pesto. Much thicker than passata or anything sold as a 'pasta sauce'. (Edit, ah - got one - https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/t/some-tomato-puree-comes-out-tube-15293889.jpg https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/t/some-tomato-puree-comes-out-...)
      - jkaplowitz 5y ago
        Maybe that's what the US calls tomato paste?
        Alupis 5y ago
        Tomato Paste (in my experience) is a lot more reduced/dry/concentrated than the puree in the picture above. It's also a lot darker red in color.
bluedino 5y ago
Two things: 1. This guy has it right where he doesn't cook the sauce first. To many people use a cooked pasta style sauce on pizza. It's just not right. 2. This website has that classic, 1998, don't give a shit, just a bunch of HTML and IMG tags look. Love it. It's just a massive amount of information on a single page.
- mushufasa 5y ago
  2. It's easy to forget that the original HTML spec was meant for end-users to use directly to author documents. It was originally designed to function like markdown, because a lot of the DOS-based word processing editors at the time also had similarities that end-users could grok. The current reality of technical literacy, despite the information on html being accessible, is so far from that original ideal.
- leephillips 5y ago
  Fantastic website. Far better than 98% of the sites I’ve visited this year. Far better than any site designed by a front-end engineer. Loaded fast despite all the pictures. No cookie warning. No doorslams. No static elements taking up half the viewport. The only thing it needs is a max-width to limit the line length.
  - cyberge99 5y ago
    Agreed. I even read it in an Italian accent. The content speaks for itself (not pun intended).
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    Yes! I think before someone calls themself a "web developer" they should go view pages like that and bask in the instant load time. View source on that page and take a moment of silence to appreciate it. And then think about it every time they add a newsletter subscription call-to-action or auto-playing video.
    - pedroma 5y ago
      Unfortunately it's usually the bloat that makes money for these websites, whether they're ads or auto-playing videos.
dang 5y ago
Some past threads: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14289307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14289307 - May 2017 (145 comments) How an Engineer Does Pizza - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2023280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2023280 - Dec 2010 (88 comments) The Perfect Pizza - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1464760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1464760 - June 2010 (5 comments)
Confiks 5y ago
TIL: "There is no need to dissolve the yeast in warm water or feed it sugar. 'Proofing' the yeast was probably required decades ago, but I've never had yeast that didn't activate. The yeast feeds on the flour so you don't need to put in sugar. The proofing step that you see in many recipes is really an old wives tale at this point."
- Finnucane 5y ago
  This is true. In my bread-making, I don’t bother with a separate yeast proofing. SAF red is pretty reliable.
- zarzavat 5y ago
  Don't listen to it, it's bad advice. You should always proof your yeast because most people are not baking every day. People will get yeast out of the cupboard that has been there for a few weeks or months and it will be dead. If you proof your yeast, you will find out immediately and can go to the store to buy some fresh. If you don't proof it then you will find out hours later and waste time and flour. This is especially a problem for active dry yeast which has a relatively short lifespan, but even instant yeast will die eventually. If you are in a restaurant kitchen or you know your yeast is good because you bought it recently then yes you don't need to proof your yeast.
  - Optimal_Persona 5y ago
    Speaking as a former pro baker (20+ years) this is the correct answer.
  - yepthatsreality 5y ago
    Wouldn’t it be better to never proof still and just buy your yeast on-demand?
    - crocktucker 5y ago
      I suppose, but it sounds a little like: don't bother testing, just use good code.
inasio 5y ago
I've been using an Ooni pizza oven (gas) weekly for almost a year, it's amazing! You do need to rotate the pizza a couple of times, but the oven reaches 800F in no time, and it's very portable too. Previously I tried a metal plate on a bbq, and a few other bbq implements (ceramic box), but the Ooni is by far the best. Regarding recipes, Margarita is my go-to, more or less same sauce recipe, but I add a full ball of Burratta once out of the oven (too soft to even need to cook it).
- teruakohatu 5y ago
  > I've been using an Ooni pizza oven (gas) weekly Which version of it do you own? Have you found it useful for anything else? They seem to advertise cooking steak on it... Which I am skeptical of compared to a pan.
  - browniefed 5y ago
    Never used my Ooni Koda 16 for any other food besides other bread products like Pita or whatever. It's been fun, but real issue w/ pizza when dealing with friends is trying to get them to put only a little bit of stuff. Load it up with 10 wet items and you get soggy pizza no matter what the oven temp is.
    - dopeboy 5y ago
      I run into same problem! Any ideas on how to overcome the sogginess?
      - ianai 5y ago
        Dry the ingredients and cool it out of the oven for 2-3 minutes on a rack. From the article. Edit-otherwise experiment with baking the crust first.
        hahla 5y ago
        You need lower temp (600F) and longer time if you’re using a lot of ingredients.
ivraatiems 5y ago
I find deep dives like this fascinating. I am absolutely the kind of person who could get this 'into' something if it were what I really wanted to be into, at least for a time, so even though I'll probably never put in the effort to implement Jeff Varasano's recipe, I respect it. I'm absolutely glued to reading this. It seems like his restaurants are successful; I wish him luck. I will say that personally, I treat Good pizza, like this or a "tomato pie" from a great place, as a fundamentally different thing from "Bad" pizza, the kind your cheap local chain sells. (Fast food pizza from Domino's or whomever is just not something I normally consume.) There is a place in the world for "bad", bready pizza with crazy toppings and whatever else. It just isn't what I want when I want the Good stuff.
Arjuna 5y ago
This is the same Jeff Varasano that is an OG speedcuber [1] and author of the book Jeff Conquers The Cube in 45 Seconds, And You Can Too! [2] [1] https://youtu.be/0VfGnvHRXu0 https://youtu.be/0VfGnvHRXu0 [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812870972 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812870972
diego_moita 5y ago
Where "NY style" means really very "NY style": thin and charred. If that's your taste, go for it... But for those more into the traditional original bread-like Neapolitan style I strongly suggest using a sourdough based dough, like Tartine's[0] Bear in mind: this is cooking, not engineering, not math. And, unlike New Yorkers seem to believe, pizza wasn't invented in the land of burguers and hotdogs. Wherever there are Italian immigrants there are variations in pizza all over the world, from Chicago (deep dish) to Sao Paulo (stuffed border, "coroa de pizza"), from Liguria (piscialandrea) to Sicily (sfincione), from Rome (al taglio) to Naples, etc. [0] https://food52.com/recipes/64201-tartine-s-pizza-dough https://food52.com/recipes/64201-tartine-s-pizza-dough Edit: to open your mind I'd suggest "The wild pizzas of Southern Italy": https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-15/the-wild-pizzas-of-southern-italy-have-to-be-seen-to-be-believed https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-15/the-wild-...
- fartcannon 5y ago
  New York style pizza is better than neapolitan style. I believe the interest in Neapolitan is an response to pizza being marketed at children for years in NA. Similarily, comic-sans is perfectly acceptable font. Stop pretending you don't enjoy things you enjoy. Like pineapple on pizza!!
- handrous 5y ago
  A simple & lazy bread machine dough (they have dough settings) will produce a damn good pie, given quality toppings. Best if you can rest it at room temp for a few hours after the machine's cycle finishes, but also OK if you can't. I've done fancier doughs, and it is better, but I mostly just do that these days. With that, you can either get some pizza-specific tools (peel, stone—you need the peel) or you can just make pan pizzas in a cast iron pan, no extra stuff needed—and that method's lower-mess. The down side is it's harder to do multiple pizzas quickly in a row, unless you have multiple cast iron pans, since you can't construct a second one while the first is using the pan, and when it comes out the pan is no fun to work on for a while, as it'll be quite hot. Getting started making decent pizza at home is as simple and easy as a bread machine and a cast iron pan (or two). (pro tip: get small cans of tomato sauce or crushed tomato [yes, use canned] and mix salt, way more black pepper than seems right, and some oregano [fresh is great if you have it, but dried is fine], directly in the can. Boom, nearly zero mess [one spoon, perhaps] sauce, on the cheap, and it's good. You don't need to pre-cook it, just put it directly on as is. You won't be able to beat this cheap, lazy method by too much unless you've got garden-grown sauce tomatoes) [EDIT] other pro tip: you can build a pizza on your peel while another's in the oven provided you have a large cutting board. The pizza coming off the stone will be stiff enough that you can just shove it onto the cutting board. A peel provides little benefit for taking a pizza off a stone in a normal home oven, though it is very nice for putting it on. Further pro tip: avoid pretty, finished wood peels. Smooth-finished wood makes the dough stick way worse.
ynac 5y ago
If you have some brick and a couple of pizza stones, try making a pizza oven. No mortar, but puzzle it together. Here's a profile: +--------------+ +--------------------+ +---------------+ | | Top Pizza Stone |<--+ | | | +--------------------+ | +-----------------------------------------+ | | +----+-----------------------------------------+-----+---------+-----+ | +--------------------+ .-----------------------------------. | | | | PIZZA! |<---------( ) | | | +--------------------+ `-----------------------------------' +---------------+ | <--These are +-----------------------------------------+ | | | all brick +--------------------+ +----+-----------------------------------------+ | | | | Bottom Pizza Stone |<--+ +-----------------------------------------+ +---------------+ | +--------------------+ | | | | Note the gap | | | |at the back of | X X +-----+---------+-----+ | the bottom | X / \ X / \X | | | pizza stone | / \/ \ \ / \\ | | | +--->| / | | | |\ +---------------+ | +--------------------+ | | | \ / \ / | | | | | Fire Box |---+ | \ /\ / / \ / / | | | +--------------------+ | +----\ /--V-\ /---V\ /--+ +---------------+ | | +-----V------V------V---+ | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------------+---------------+ +--------------+ View from the front: +---------------+ Upper stone +---------------+ | +-----------------------------------------+ | | +-----------------------------------------+ | +---------------+ .-----------------------------------. +---------------+ | | ( PIZZA! ) | | | | `-----------------------------------' | | +---------------+-----------------------------------------+---------------+ +---------------+-----------------------------------------+---------------+ | Bricks! | Lower stone | Bricks! | | | | | +---------------+ X X +---------------+ | | X / \ X / \X | | | | / \/ \ \ / \\ | | +---------------+ / | FIRE! |\ +---------------+ | | | \ / \ / | | | | | \ /\ / / \ / / | | +---------------+ +----\ /--V-\ /---V\ /--+ +---------------+ | | +-----V------V------V---+ | | | | | | +---------------+-----------------------------------------+---------------+ Tips: Try to use as few bricks as possible - say 30, but extra points for as few as you require to build Square pizza stones are easier to build with - but round can work too Takes about 25 minutes to get to temperature of 800f but careful, it can get to much more and your pizza with simply burn Fire brick takes much longer to heat to temp Wood peel to place pizza and metal peel for taking out Rebuild often and without reason
r3trohack3r 5y ago
This has been my go to pizza recipe for years. Super stoked to see it on the front page of HN. My favorite step is “jailbreaking” your home oven with a pair of bolt cutters to use the cleaning cycle to get pizza oven temps. > I've cook good pizzas at temps under 725F, but never a great one. The cabinet of most ovens is obviously designed for serious heat because the cleaning cycle will top out at over 975 which is the max reading on my Raytec digital infrared thermometer. The outside of the cabinet doesn't even get up to 85F when the oven is at 800 inside. So I clipped off the lock using garden shears so I could run it on the cleaning cycle. I pushed a piece of aluminum foil into the door latch (the door light switch) so that electronics don't think I've broken some rule by opening the door when it thinks it's locked.
- handrous 5y ago
  Lots of US ovens will hit 550°F without modification, and with a stone your pizza's cooked in ~7 minutes at that temp. It'll still be damn good. Fancy and gourmet and authentic-anything? No, but damn good. It'll even come out looking nice. I just don't want people reading this thread to think you can't make really good pizza at home without buying a bunch of stuff or resorting to modding your stove. You can even make pan pizzas, so you don't have to buy a stone or any of that. More steps[0] but it works, and makes a better pizza than any major chain, with no special equipment whatsoever and very little mess. [0] Pre-heat oven, lightly oil pan, build pizza in cold pan, heat pan on stove top until oil's been sizzling for a minute or so, cook in oven for ~5-10 minutes, turn on the broiler to finish the top when it's almost done—or hit the top with an electric heat gun or butane torch from your garage while it's heating on the stove top at the beginning, for finer control and to save time by skipping the broiler.
  - boynamedsue 5y ago
    I can make excellent NY style pizza at 550F with a Baking Steel in 4 1/2 minutes.
    - tmh88j 5y ago
      I have a 3/8" dough joe baking steel slab and even preheating it to 550 for an hour in a "regular" oven never turns out as good as my Roccbox was capable of. I can never get my crust and cheese to match in baking times at 550 degrees. Either the crust isn't cooked enough for my liking or I end up cooking the cheese more than I'd prefer. The only times I've been able to make perfect pizza with my baking steel is when I used it in a friend's professional kitchen with an industrial convection oven that could go up to I think 700 degrees.
SeanLuke 5y ago
What an oddly biased list for something purporting to be "the best pizzerias in the world". :-( A zillion NY pizzerias, but only a handful from Naples and not a *single* non-Naples Italian place, much less anything in Europe except London. It's as if Roman-style pizza didn't even exist, much less anything between the two cities. Al Taglio entirely missing. And the non-NY US cities are given short shrift. Speaking from personal experience, the only listing in DC is for the extraordinary 2Amys, a Neapolitan shop in a class of its own compared to nearly all NY listings: but there are now many DC Neapolitan pizzerias of very high grade. No mention.
- slow_donkey 5y ago
  To be fair this is a very very old list dating back to 2006/2008 and these were the pizza names that came up constantly at that time - it's also only rating the shops that he personally traveled to which were predominantly NY/Neapolitan because that's likely what he was benchmarking his own restaurant against.
  - killjoywashere 5y ago
    Can someone from Yelp or Google Maps weigh in here? I'll bet 2006 is not that old on the distribution of pizza places by age. probably not even right of median.
    - mypalmike 5y ago
      Neapolitan style pizza places have been popping up everywhere in the last decade. Jeff's website was one of the drivers of the movement.
      - soupfordummies 5y ago
        It's really wild, there was Varasano's and Antico in Atlanta. Antico was huge, it was like the pizza interloper sneaking in on the best restaruants list. Now, I can't even count how many Neapolitan-style spots there are down here. And most of them are really good too!
slow_donkey 5y ago
Also check out https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php which is a treasure trove of pizza experiments. Varasano himself was active on the forum back in the day (~2005) and a few members actually started their own pizzerias.
- fy20 5y ago
  Here is an Italian equivalent: https://laconfraternitadellapizza.forumfree.it https://laconfraternitadellapizza.forumfree.it
diiaann 5y ago
I get the DIY spirit but with any thin crust pizza, I'm happy to yield to my local pizza shops. If I have the itch to make a pizza, I usually make a Sicilian style pizza which I think works better with the average home setup.
ncmncm 5y ago
I used to think you had to do crazy work to get a great pizza. I did most of the stuff on this page (short of breaking my self-cleaning lock). It is all great advice, and if you follow it and practice a lot, you can make great pizzas and wow your guests. BUT! After you have done that, you can also violate all the rules and still get great pizzas. Once, I was in Waipio Valley in Hawaii, with just Pillsbury white flour, bread yeast, a block of cheddar cheese, Wesson oil, tomato paste, fresh oregano, and spring water. To bake I had a gas oven with the rack out, a tall soup pot, inverted with a big skillet also inverted over it, close under the broiler. The pizzas came out fantastic! I could only make them 9" across, so I ended up making 30+ of them. I had no peel. My dough was very, very wet; I scooped enough for each pizza with a big kitchen spoon, spread it out on parchment, drizzled Wesson, smeared tomato, sprinkled oregano, salt, and cheddar, slid it onto the skillet, and started on the next one. The one thing you mustn't ever neglect is letting the flour and water proof for 40+ minutes before you work it. To get decent pizza at almost any American restaurant, you have to insist "burn it!" or they will be afraid you will get mad about a little charring, and so undercook it the way Americans demand. You have to tell them that if it bends, it's not done enough.
- dominik-2020 5y ago
  I stopped reading this when I read cheddar.
  - emsy 5y ago
    Downvoted for truth basically. When it comes to bread and cheese, trust the US to get it wrong :P
    - zippergz 5y ago
      Downvoted for missing the point, that the OP was EXPLICITLY ACKNOWLEDGING that every single component is suboptimal or "wrong" but that they still liked the result. So a response that an ingredient is wrong is not particularly useful.
      - 5y ago
jiinga 5y ago
If you are serious about making pizza at home a $299 Ooni pizza oven is well worth the investment.
gbronner 5y ago
You don't need to clip the oven latch. Relatively easy to rewire the motor that operates it to run manually. Not sure this helps anyone, bit less destructive than snips
raspyberr 5y ago
I learned a trick recently that has been making amazing Italian style pizzas at home. Put a grill (top-down) on highest heat. Put a frying pan on a hob on the highest heat. Stretch out your dough and place it on the frying pan. Put on sauce, cheese, and toppings. Couple of minutes later check underneath. Put the frying pan under the grill for a couple of minutes. Taa daa. Like it was made in a pizza oven.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  What does “under the grill” mean?
  - flyingfences 5y ago
    A "grill" in British English is a "broiler" in AmE.
fredestine 5y ago
"This site is about the kind of pizza that you can get at the oldest and best places in the U.S. or in Naples." americans and their understanding of other countries culture... this is nothing like a pizza you'd find in Naples. patsy is horrible. the burnt dry cheap american "mozarella" on the top is the ever proof that this is not pizza.
nemo44x 5y ago
Great pizza, like great BBQ is as much about the cooking apparatus as much as the ingredients and method.
KozmoNau7 5y ago
There is something to admire when a person goes all-in on trying to perfect a method or recipe. Conversely, I also think a lot of people completely lose themselves in the process and forget when to say "enough is enough". It's just pizza, not some priceless work of art. I've found a pretty good recipe for pizza in a home oven, it's closer to Pizza Tonda Romana than Neapolitan, hence also similar to NY style pizza. In baker's percentages, it's high gluten flour and 60-65% water, 1-3% salt, 1-2% olive oil and 0.2-0.5% instant dry yeast. Play around with how wet/dry you think it should be. The important parts are the olive oil (which helps browning in an ordinary oven), kneading until you can windowpane the dough, and letting it rest portioned and covered at least 12 hours in the fridge. Shape, top and bake at the highest temp your oven can go, a pizza stone or steel is nice, but not mandatory. A sheet tray or a cast iron pan turned upside down also both work great. I like making pizza baking a social activity, everyone in the kitchen, selecting toppings and eating the super hot pizza straight out of the oven, while preparing the next one. Like many things in life, it can be worth it to take a step back and a simpler approach, with a better effort:result factor.
- tech-historian 5y ago
  "It's just pizza, not some priceless work of art" Isn't that highly reductionist? People derive pleasure from immersion and mastery of all sorts of things. I'd argue that food can make you feel just as much, and probably a lot more emotion than typical art does.
  - KozmoNau7 5y ago
    Sure, and that's why I try to get at by expressing my admiration for people who dedicate themselves to a craft. But just because you've mastered making a Neapolitan pizza exactly to the specifications and definitions, does not necessarily mean you've succeeded in creating a good pizza. My point is that some people get so bogged down in minutiae and details, that they completely forget that the entire point was to make something delicious for people to enjoy.
tech-historian 5y ago
This "recipe" reads more like an arXiv paper than a recipe and I love it. So much thought put in and so thorough.
kortex 5y ago
One subtle hack I picked up on was "stealing" yeast from a pizzeria you like. I envision someone subtly coming in with a paper cup of the same kind the pizza joint uses, but it's filled with flour water, leaving it next to them as they eat, trying not to accidentally drink it by mistake, and going home with their prized culture. Also, TIL the word "poolish."
- huhtenberg 5y ago
  From what I understand it's a common misconception that wild yeast is just floating there in the air in sufficient quantities to get a starter going. That, if you think about it for a moment, sounds like a complete load of bull. In reality the vast majority of wild yeast that forms a starter comes from the flour. That's what gets the party started, not the mysterious airborne yeast.
RickG_USVI 5y ago
I've used this approach for years. Autolysing makes a huge difference. My best results, short of a wood fired oven, has been on a gas grill with a heavy stone.
soupfordummies 5y ago
Y'know, I'm a pizza die-hard and I live a couple miles from Varasano's and I've never had it. Never seen that awesome site either! This post is one of those rare hidden gems that make you go "OH YEAH! Forgot about that! What am I waiting for!"
soupfordummies 5y ago
For anyone interested in more of this type of pizza party, there's an excellent book called American Pie by Peter Reinhardt. Has an excellent overview of the scene at the time (the book is from 03) and a ton of theory/recipes for making perfect pizza. One of his oven hacks I remember is getting plain tiles from a flooring wholesaler (be careful, you can't just get any kind and I don't have the book handy to look it up) and line the oven with them to retain heat and increase the temp.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
That perfect char is cancerogenic. Don't eat it. Search term: acrylamide.
SergeAx 5y ago
> recipe on the net for making a true Pizza Napoletana So, we are going to read and follow the recipe of endemic Naples, Italy pizza by some talented chef from New York? I don't get it, what's the point? Can we please have one from Naples, Italy chef?

299 points by Alupis 5y ago

kull 5y ago

Honestly, who is reading and following a recipe that is longer than a list of ingredients and a few sentences of instructions?

dominicjj 5y ago
People who want to make a pizza as good as Jeff's. I found this page over ten years ago and my pizzas are rightly famous among friends. I'm always happy to point them at the source for the information.

ggm 5y ago

Yea. His legal disclaimer is necessary. Modding your oven interlocks for pizza.. There are good small high-temp pizza oven options. If you care enough about the quality you're heading to something in that space, or building out a brick furnace in the backyard. I think home pizza is great. I love making it, but its nothing on the stuff i get from the two italian joints up the road, professionals get better results. Same with coffee: I'd rather pay a competent barista.. But if I lived in the woods in vermont I might feel different: and I'd have room to make a pizza oven too! If you live in a unit with a wired in oven, and you mod your oven to cook on the clean cycle.. your home insurance is probably void. If you rent: you're probably now in breach of your rental agreement. Not getting his results, we pre-heat some ceramic (we use a plate but friends went to the hardware store and got a large clay floortile) and this, combined with direct radiant heat from the elements, gets a pretty good outcome: fast cook base and crispy finish on the toppings. Also: this americanism to refer to Pizza PIE. Thats Chicago, and is abhorrent sloppy nonsense. I've had one. its tomato sauce in a piecrust. its like eating lukewarm dense tomato soup with cheese topping. I can't imagine why people do this except I also gross out on dirty fries so I kind-of get it, its comfort food for the locals. But anywhere else, pizza means thin crust, and arguments about how much beyond basil and cheese goes on it. (I am australian. I do not put pineapple on pizza. Tandoori Lamb is pretty good mind you.)

im3w1l 5y ago
I prefer homemade pizza for one simple reason, I can choose the toppings and their proportions myself. This more than makes up for the deficiencies.
OJFord 5y ago
> arguments about how much beyond basil and cheese goes on it. Perhaps my most controversial stance is not thinking cheese is all that important as a pizza topping. My favourite pizza to make is a big mound of spinach (however much you think is way too much will shrink down to nothing) and dollops of ricotta. But if they're not available, I have some grilled vegetables (whatever really) and then find myself grating some cheese on for no reason other than that's what pizza is 'supposed to be like'.
salamandersauce 5y ago
While Chicago deep dish pizza more resembles pie, the term pizza pie most likely originated in NYC. Also you're missing out by skipping on pineapple. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/263732/where-does-pizza-pie-originate https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/263732/where-doe...
- mjevans 5y ago
  I call it a 'Pizza inspired casserole'.
getlawgdon 5y ago
I don't know what you're referring to, but that absolutely does not describe any Chicago pizza. And while I'm sure some do, I can't think of many Chicagoans who call it "pie". At all. I dare you to go to Pequod's or Burt's Place or Labriola and tell me it isn't as good as any pizza you've had anywhere. If you think of deepdish as "soup" the you had an unfortunate experience. And Lou Malnati's buttercrust is...everything. There are astonishingly good Chicago-style hole in the walls all around Chicago. So many. But what you described...I think you're talking about something else.
- 5y ago

CarVac 5y ago

His method of making sauce made a HUUGE difference in my own pizza making. I don't do quite all the way as removing all the seeds, but I immersion blend canned San Marzano tomatoes and then strain all the liquid out of it, keeping only the pulp.

OJFord 5y ago
I just use a bit of purée, at most passata. I don't see why the end result would be much different (if you were saying blend fresh, sure, but canned whole/chopped vs. already puréed/passata'd?) and it's less work.
- CarVac 5y ago
  I think it has less liquid than normal puree.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    After a quick image search, I think there might be a regional difference, and we don't mean the same thing by purée; I mean something fairly viscous that comes in small jars or tubes, like this: https://cdn.bmstores.co.uk/images/hpcProductImage/imgFull/306723-delizia-italiana-double-conentrated-tomato-puree-200g.jpg https://cdn.bmstores.co.uk/images/hpcProductImage/imgFull/30... I can't immediately find an image squirting any, but it's about the consistency of toothpaste. Thicker than pesto. Much thicker than passata or anything sold as a 'pasta sauce'. (Edit, ah - got one - https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/t/some-tomato-puree-comes-out-tube-15293889.jpg https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/t/some-tomato-puree-comes-out-...)
    - jkaplowitz 5y ago
      Maybe that's what the US calls tomato paste?
      - Alupis 5y ago
        Tomato Paste (in my experience) is a lot more reduced/dry/concentrated than the puree in the picture above. It's also a lot darker red in color.

bluedino 5y ago

Two things: 1. This guy has it right where he doesn't cook the sauce first. To many people use a cooked pasta style sauce on pizza. It's just not right. 2. This website has that classic, 1998, don't give a shit, just a bunch of HTML and IMG tags look. Love it. It's just a massive amount of information on a single page.

mushufasa 5y ago
2. It's easy to forget that the original HTML spec was meant for end-users to use directly to author documents. It was originally designed to function like markdown, because a lot of the DOS-based word processing editors at the time also had similarities that end-users could grok. The current reality of technical literacy, despite the information on html being accessible, is so far from that original ideal.
leephillips 5y ago
Fantastic website. Far better than 98% of the sites I’ve visited this year. Far better than any site designed by a front-end engineer. Loaded fast despite all the pictures. No cookie warning. No doorslams. No static elements taking up half the viewport. The only thing it needs is a max-width to limit the line length.
- cyberge99 5y ago
  Agreed. I even read it in an Italian accent. The content speaks for itself (not pun intended).
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Yes! I think before someone calls themself a "web developer" they should go view pages like that and bask in the instant load time. View source on that page and take a moment of silence to appreciate it. And then think about it every time they add a newsletter subscription call-to-action or auto-playing video.
  - pedroma 5y ago
    Unfortunately it's usually the bloat that makes money for these websites, whether they're ads or auto-playing videos.

dang 5y ago

Some past threads: Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14289307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14289307 - May 2017 (145 comments) How an Engineer Does Pizza - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2023280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2023280 - Dec 2010 (88 comments) The Perfect Pizza - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1464760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1464760 - June 2010 (5 comments)

Confiks 5y ago

TIL: "There is no need to dissolve the yeast in warm water or feed it sugar. 'Proofing' the yeast was probably required decades ago, but I've never had yeast that didn't activate. The yeast feeds on the flour so you don't need to put in sugar. The proofing step that you see in many recipes is really an old wives tale at this point."

Finnucane 5y ago
This is true. In my bread-making, I don’t bother with a separate yeast proofing. SAF red is pretty reliable.
zarzavat 5y ago
Don't listen to it, it's bad advice. You should always proof your yeast because most people are not baking every day. People will get yeast out of the cupboard that has been there for a few weeks or months and it will be dead. If you proof your yeast, you will find out immediately and can go to the store to buy some fresh. If you don't proof it then you will find out hours later and waste time and flour. This is especially a problem for active dry yeast which has a relatively short lifespan, but even instant yeast will die eventually. If you are in a restaurant kitchen or you know your yeast is good because you bought it recently then yes you don't need to proof your yeast.
- Optimal_Persona 5y ago
  Speaking as a former pro baker (20+ years) this is the correct answer.
- yepthatsreality 5y ago
  Wouldn’t it be better to never proof still and just buy your yeast on-demand?
  - crocktucker 5y ago
    I suppose, but it sounds a little like: don't bother testing, just use good code.

inasio 5y ago

I've been using an Ooni pizza oven (gas) weekly for almost a year, it's amazing! You do need to rotate the pizza a couple of times, but the oven reaches 800F in no time, and it's very portable too. Previously I tried a metal plate on a bbq, and a few other bbq implements (ceramic box), but the Ooni is by far the best. Regarding recipes, Margarita is my go-to, more or less same sauce recipe, but I add a full ball of Burratta once out of the oven (too soft to even need to cook it).

teruakohatu 5y ago
> I've been using an Ooni pizza oven (gas) weekly Which version of it do you own? Have you found it useful for anything else? They seem to advertise cooking steak on it... Which I am skeptical of compared to a pan.
- browniefed 5y ago
  Never used my Ooni Koda 16 for any other food besides other bread products like Pita or whatever. It's been fun, but real issue w/ pizza when dealing with friends is trying to get them to put only a little bit of stuff. Load it up with 10 wet items and you get soggy pizza no matter what the oven temp is.
  - dopeboy 5y ago
    I run into same problem! Any ideas on how to overcome the sogginess?
    - ianai 5y ago
      Dry the ingredients and cool it out of the oven for 2-3 minutes on a rack. From the article. Edit-otherwise experiment with baking the crust first.
      - hahla 5y ago
        You need lower temp (600F) and longer time if you’re using a lot of ingredients.

ivraatiems 5y ago

I find deep dives like this fascinating. I am absolutely the kind of person who could get this 'into' something if it were what I really wanted to be into, at least for a time, so even though I'll probably never put in the effort to implement Jeff Varasano's recipe, I respect it. I'm absolutely glued to reading this. It seems like his restaurants are successful; I wish him luck. I will say that personally, I treat Good pizza, like this or a "tomato pie" from a great place, as a fundamentally different thing from "Bad" pizza, the kind your cheap local chain sells. (Fast food pizza from Domino's or whomever is just not something I normally consume.) There is a place in the world for "bad", bready pizza with crazy toppings and whatever else. It just isn't what I want when I want the Good stuff.

Arjuna 5y ago

This is the same Jeff Varasano that is an OG speedcuber [1] and author of the book Jeff Conquers The Cube in 45 Seconds, And You Can Too! [2] [1] https://youtu.be/0VfGnvHRXu0 https://youtu.be/0VfGnvHRXu0 [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812870972 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812870972

diego_moita 5y ago

Where "NY style" means really very "NY style": thin and charred. If that's your taste, go for it... But for those more into the traditional original bread-like Neapolitan style I strongly suggest using a sourdough based dough, like Tartine's[0] Bear in mind: this is cooking, not engineering, not math. And, unlike New Yorkers seem to believe, pizza wasn't invented in the land of burguers and hotdogs. Wherever there are Italian immigrants there are variations in pizza all over the world, from Chicago (deep dish) to Sao Paulo (stuffed border, "coroa de pizza"), from Liguria (piscialandrea) to Sicily (sfincione), from Rome (al taglio) to Naples, etc. [0] https://food52.com/recipes/64201-tartine-s-pizza-dough https://food52.com/recipes/64201-tartine-s-pizza-dough Edit: to open your mind I'd suggest "The wild pizzas of Southern Italy": https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-15/the-wild-pizzas-of-southern-italy-have-to-be-seen-to-be-believed https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-15/the-wild-...

fartcannon 5y ago
New York style pizza is better than neapolitan style. I believe the interest in Neapolitan is an response to pizza being marketed at children for years in NA. Similarily, comic-sans is perfectly acceptable font. Stop pretending you don't enjoy things you enjoy. Like pineapple on pizza!!
handrous 5y ago
A simple & lazy bread machine dough (they have dough settings) will produce a damn good pie, given quality toppings. Best if you can rest it at room temp for a few hours after the machine's cycle finishes, but also OK if you can't. I've done fancier doughs, and it is better, but I mostly just do that these days. With that, you can either get some pizza-specific tools (peel, stone—you need the peel) or you can just make pan pizzas in a cast iron pan, no extra stuff needed—and that method's lower-mess. The down side is it's harder to do multiple pizzas quickly in a row, unless you have multiple cast iron pans, since you can't construct a second one while the first is using the pan, and when it comes out the pan is no fun to work on for a while, as it'll be quite hot. Getting started making decent pizza at home is as simple and easy as a bread machine and a cast iron pan (or two). (pro tip: get small cans of tomato sauce or crushed tomato [yes, use canned] and mix salt, way more black pepper than seems right, and some oregano [fresh is great if you have it, but dried is fine], directly in the can. Boom, nearly zero mess [one spoon, perhaps] sauce, on the cheap, and it's good. You don't need to pre-cook it, just put it directly on as is. You won't be able to beat this cheap, lazy method by too much unless you've got garden-grown sauce tomatoes) [EDIT] other pro tip: you can build a pizza on your peel while another's in the oven provided you have a large cutting board. The pizza coming off the stone will be stiff enough that you can just shove it onto the cutting board. A peel provides little benefit for taking a pizza off a stone in a normal home oven, though it is very nice for putting it on. Further pro tip: avoid pretty, finished wood peels. Smooth-finished wood makes the dough stick way worse.

ynac 5y ago

If you have some brick and a couple of pizza stones, try making a pizza oven. No mortar, but puzzle it together. Here's a profile: +--------------+ +--------------------+ +---------------+ | | Top Pizza Stone |<--+ | | | +--------------------+ | +-----------------------------------------+ | | +----+-----------------------------------------+-----+---------+-----+ | +--------------------+ .-----------------------------------. | | | | PIZZA! |<---------( ) | | | +--------------------+ `-----------------------------------' +---------------+ | <--These are +-----------------------------------------+ | | | all brick +--------------------+ +----+-----------------------------------------+ | | | | Bottom Pizza Stone |<--+ +-----------------------------------------+ +---------------+ | +--------------------+ | | | | Note the gap | | | |at the back of | X X +-----+---------+-----+ | the bottom | X / \ X / \X | | | pizza stone | / \/ \ \ / \\ | | | +--->| / | | | |\ +---------------+ | +--------------------+ | | | \ / \ / | | | | | Fire Box |---+ | \ /\ / / \ / / | | | +--------------------+ | +----\ /--V-\ /---V\ /--+ +---------------+ | | +-----V------V------V---+ | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------------+---------------+ +--------------+ View from the front: +---------------+ Upper stone +---------------+ | +-----------------------------------------+ | | +-----------------------------------------+ | +---------------+ .-----------------------------------. +---------------+ | | ( PIZZA! ) | | | | `-----------------------------------' | | +---------------+-----------------------------------------+---------------+ +---------------+-----------------------------------------+---------------+ | Bricks! | Lower stone | Bricks! | | | | | +---------------+ X X +---------------+ | | X / \ X / \X | | | | / \/ \ \ / \\ | | +---------------+ / | FIRE! |\ +---------------+ | | | \ / \ / | | | | | \ /\ / / \ / / | | +---------------+ +----\ /--V-\ /---V\ /--+ +---------------+ | | +-----V------V------V---+ | | | | | | +---------------+-----------------------------------------+---------------+ Tips: Try to use as few bricks as possible - say 30, but extra points for as few as you require to build Square pizza stones are easier to build with - but round can work too Takes about 25 minutes to get to temperature of 800f but careful, it can get to much more and your pizza with simply burn Fire brick takes much longer to heat to temp Wood peel to place pizza and metal peel for taking out Rebuild often and without reason

r3trohack3r 5y ago

This has been my go to pizza recipe for years. Super stoked to see it on the front page of HN. My favorite step is “jailbreaking” your home oven with a pair of bolt cutters to use the cleaning cycle to get pizza oven temps. > I've cook good pizzas at temps under 725F, but never a great one. The cabinet of most ovens is obviously designed for serious heat because the cleaning cycle will top out at over 975 which is the max reading on my Raytec digital infrared thermometer. The outside of the cabinet doesn't even get up to 85F when the oven is at 800 inside. So I clipped off the lock using garden shears so I could run it on the cleaning cycle. I pushed a piece of aluminum foil into the door latch (the door light switch) so that electronics don't think I've broken some rule by opening the door when it thinks it's locked.

handrous 5y ago
Lots of US ovens will hit 550°F without modification, and with a stone your pizza's cooked in ~7 minutes at that temp. It'll still be damn good. Fancy and gourmet and authentic-anything? No, but damn good. It'll even come out looking nice. I just don't want people reading this thread to think you can't make really good pizza at home without buying a bunch of stuff or resorting to modding your stove. You can even make pan pizzas, so you don't have to buy a stone or any of that. More steps[0] but it works, and makes a better pizza than any major chain, with no special equipment whatsoever and very little mess. [0] Pre-heat oven, lightly oil pan, build pizza in cold pan, heat pan on stove top until oil's been sizzling for a minute or so, cook in oven for ~5-10 minutes, turn on the broiler to finish the top when it's almost done—or hit the top with an electric heat gun or butane torch from your garage while it's heating on the stove top at the beginning, for finer control and to save time by skipping the broiler.
- boynamedsue 5y ago
  I can make excellent NY style pizza at 550F with a Baking Steel in 4 1/2 minutes.
  - tmh88j 5y ago
    I have a 3/8" dough joe baking steel slab and even preheating it to 550 for an hour in a "regular" oven never turns out as good as my Roccbox was capable of. I can never get my crust and cheese to match in baking times at 550 degrees. Either the crust isn't cooked enough for my liking or I end up cooking the cheese more than I'd prefer. The only times I've been able to make perfect pizza with my baking steel is when I used it in a friend's professional kitchen with an industrial convection oven that could go up to I think 700 degrees.

SeanLuke 5y ago

What an oddly biased list for something purporting to be "the best pizzerias in the world". :-( A zillion NY pizzerias, but only a handful from Naples and not a *single* non-Naples Italian place, much less anything in Europe except London. It's as if Roman-style pizza didn't even exist, much less anything between the two cities. Al Taglio entirely missing. And the non-NY US cities are given short shrift. Speaking from personal experience, the only listing in DC is for the extraordinary 2Amys, a Neapolitan shop in a class of its own compared to nearly all NY listings: but there are now many DC Neapolitan pizzerias of very high grade. No mention.

slow_donkey 5y ago
To be fair this is a very very old list dating back to 2006/2008 and these were the pizza names that came up constantly at that time - it's also only rating the shops that he personally traveled to which were predominantly NY/Neapolitan because that's likely what he was benchmarking his own restaurant against.
- killjoywashere 5y ago
  Can someone from Yelp or Google Maps weigh in here? I'll bet 2006 is not that old on the distribution of pizza places by age. probably not even right of median.
  - mypalmike 5y ago
    Neapolitan style pizza places have been popping up everywhere in the last decade. Jeff's website was one of the drivers of the movement.
    - soupfordummies 5y ago
      It's really wild, there was Varasano's and Antico in Atlanta. Antico was huge, it was like the pizza interloper sneaking in on the best restaruants list. Now, I can't even count how many Neapolitan-style spots there are down here. And most of them are really good too!

slow_donkey 5y ago

Also check out https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php which is a treasure trove of pizza experiments. Varasano himself was active on the forum back in the day (~2005) and a few members actually started their own pizzerias.

fy20 5y ago
Here is an Italian equivalent: https://laconfraternitadellapizza.forumfree.it https://laconfraternitadellapizza.forumfree.it

diiaann 5y ago

I get the DIY spirit but with any thin crust pizza, I'm happy to yield to my local pizza shops. If I have the itch to make a pizza, I usually make a Sicilian style pizza which I think works better with the average home setup.

ncmncm 5y ago

I used to think you had to do crazy work to get a great pizza. I did most of the stuff on this page (short of breaking my self-cleaning lock). It is all great advice, and if you follow it and practice a lot, you can make great pizzas and wow your guests. BUT! After you have done that, you can also violate all the rules and still get great pizzas. Once, I was in Waipio Valley in Hawaii, with just Pillsbury white flour, bread yeast, a block of cheddar cheese, Wesson oil, tomato paste, fresh oregano, and spring water. To bake I had a gas oven with the rack out, a tall soup pot, inverted with a big skillet also inverted over it, close under the broiler. The pizzas came out fantastic! I could only make them 9" across, so I ended up making 30+ of them. I had no peel. My dough was very, very wet; I scooped enough for each pizza with a big kitchen spoon, spread it out on parchment, drizzled Wesson, smeared tomato, sprinkled oregano, salt, and cheddar, slid it onto the skillet, and started on the next one. The one thing you mustn't ever neglect is letting the flour and water proof for 40+ minutes before you work it. To get decent pizza at almost any American restaurant, you have to insist "burn it!" or they will be afraid you will get mad about a little charring, and so undercook it the way Americans demand. You have to tell them that if it bends, it's not done enough.

dominik-2020 5y ago
I stopped reading this when I read cheddar.
- emsy 5y ago
  Downvoted for truth basically. When it comes to bread and cheese, trust the US to get it wrong :P
  - zippergz 5y ago
    Downvoted for missing the point, that the OP was EXPLICITLY ACKNOWLEDGING that every single component is suboptimal or "wrong" but that they still liked the result. So a response that an ingredient is wrong is not particularly useful.
    - 5y ago

jiinga 5y ago

If you are serious about making pizza at home a $299 Ooni pizza oven is well worth the investment.

gbronner 5y ago

You don't need to clip the oven latch. Relatively easy to rewire the motor that operates it to run manually. Not sure this helps anyone, bit less destructive than snips

raspyberr 5y ago

I learned a trick recently that has been making amazing Italian style pizzas at home. Put a grill (top-down) on highest heat. Put a frying pan on a hob on the highest heat. Stretch out your dough and place it on the frying pan. Put on sauce, cheese, and toppings. Couple of minutes later check underneath. Put the frying pan under the grill for a couple of minutes. Taa daa. Like it was made in a pizza oven.

mixmastamyk 5y ago
What does “under the grill” mean?
- flyingfences 5y ago
  A "grill" in British English is a "broiler" in AmE.

fredestine 5y ago

"This site is about the kind of pizza that you can get at the oldest and best places in the U.S. or in Naples." americans and their understanding of other countries culture... this is nothing like a pizza you'd find in Naples. patsy is horrible. the burnt dry cheap american "mozarella" on the top is the ever proof that this is not pizza.

nemo44x 5y ago

Great pizza, like great BBQ is as much about the cooking apparatus as much as the ingredients and method.

KozmoNau7 5y ago

There is something to admire when a person goes all-in on trying to perfect a method or recipe. Conversely, I also think a lot of people completely lose themselves in the process and forget when to say "enough is enough". It's just pizza, not some priceless work of art. I've found a pretty good recipe for pizza in a home oven, it's closer to Pizza Tonda Romana than Neapolitan, hence also similar to NY style pizza. In baker's percentages, it's high gluten flour and 60-65% water, 1-3% salt, 1-2% olive oil and 0.2-0.5% instant dry yeast. Play around with how wet/dry you think it should be. The important parts are the olive oil (which helps browning in an ordinary oven), kneading until you can windowpane the dough, and letting it rest portioned and covered at least 12 hours in the fridge. Shape, top and bake at the highest temp your oven can go, a pizza stone or steel is nice, but not mandatory. A sheet tray or a cast iron pan turned upside down also both work great. I like making pizza baking a social activity, everyone in the kitchen, selecting toppings and eating the super hot pizza straight out of the oven, while preparing the next one. Like many things in life, it can be worth it to take a step back and a simpler approach, with a better effort:result factor.

tech-historian 5y ago
"It's just pizza, not some priceless work of art" Isn't that highly reductionist? People derive pleasure from immersion and mastery of all sorts of things. I'd argue that food can make you feel just as much, and probably a lot more emotion than typical art does.
- KozmoNau7 5y ago
  Sure, and that's why I try to get at by expressing my admiration for people who dedicate themselves to a craft. But just because you've mastered making a Neapolitan pizza exactly to the specifications and definitions, does not necessarily mean you've succeeded in creating a good pizza. My point is that some people get so bogged down in minutiae and details, that they completely forget that the entire point was to make something delicious for people to enjoy.

tech-historian 5y ago

This "recipe" reads more like an arXiv paper than a recipe and I love it. So much thought put in and so thorough.

kortex 5y ago

One subtle hack I picked up on was "stealing" yeast from a pizzeria you like. I envision someone subtly coming in with a paper cup of the same kind the pizza joint uses, but it's filled with flour water, leaving it next to them as they eat, trying not to accidentally drink it by mistake, and going home with their prized culture. Also, TIL the word "poolish."

huhtenberg 5y ago
From what I understand it's a common misconception that wild yeast is just floating there in the air in sufficient quantities to get a starter going. That, if you think about it for a moment, sounds like a complete load of bull. In reality the vast majority of wild yeast that forms a starter comes from the flour. That's what gets the party started, not the mysterious airborne yeast.

RickG_USVI 5y ago

I've used this approach for years. Autolysing makes a huge difference. My best results, short of a wood fired oven, has been on a gas grill with a heavy stone.

soupfordummies 5y ago

Y'know, I'm a pizza die-hard and I live a couple miles from Varasano's and I've never had it. Never seen that awesome site either! This post is one of those rare hidden gems that make you go "OH YEAH! Forgot about that! What am I waiting for!"

soupfordummies 5y ago

For anyone interested in more of this type of pizza party, there's an excellent book called American Pie by Peter Reinhardt. Has an excellent overview of the scene at the time (the book is from 03) and a ton of theory/recipes for making perfect pizza. One of his oven hacks I remember is getting plain tiles from a flooring wholesaler (be careful, you can't just get any kind and I don't have the book handy to look it up) and line the oven with them to retain heat and increase the temp.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago

That perfect char is cancerogenic. Don't eat it. Search term: acrylamide.

SergeAx 5y ago

> recipe on the net for making a true Pizza Napoletana So, we are going to read and follow the recipe of endemic Naples, Italy pizza by some talented chef from New York? I don't get it, what's the point? Can we please have one from Naples, Italy chef?