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Native Chicagoan here. Not totally a snob, but getting there. I didn't usually encounter really crispy crust growing up, but I'm not saying it's wrong. He does
by AlbertCory 4y ago
Native Chicagoan here. Not totally a snob, but getting there.
I didn't usually encounter really crispy crust growing up, but I'm not saying it's wrong. He does a lot of things here I've never tried, but now I'm going to.
I had an Ooni, and after 5 or 6 meh attempts, I sold it. I also exited the r/ooni subreddit. I'm also out of love with the Neapolitan style baked at 700F+. Come at me.
I think a pizza steel preheated in a kitchen oven at 500F gives you a perfectly good pizza, and the fact that you can slide out the oven rack and use gravity to launch the pizza off the peel makes it a total win.
(On r/ooni, they advise turning the heat down or off when you actually launch. I'm going to try blowtorching my pizza steel to 700F, just to simulate this process. Stay tuned.)
On the intersection with computers: the early Apple people used to go for lunch at Cicero's Pizza. It's still around and Steve Wozniak still goes there.
- antihero 4y agoThe best way to make pizza better is to drink more. I’ve eaten some fantastic artisan sourdough wonders here in London but nothing compares to being wasted as fuck and finding the one place that’s open at some ungodly hour after a heavy night of eating fuck all and getting your teeth into some greasy monster made of the worst possible ingredients.
- chitowneats 4y agoWell put. That being said, the Chicago version is still better. NYC pizza is a bad joke. As long as you're only paying $1 it's not that bad for the price. That price point and the places that offered it are going extinct unfortunately. The "slice" is dead. Imagine having to fold your "pizza" because it's just a nasty mess of sauce and cheese.
- kenjilopezalt 4y agoIt’s ironic because those $1 slice places that popped up in the mid 2000s are what actually destroyed decent NY slices which couldn’t compete because transplants and students would rather pay $1 for garbage than $1.50-$2.50 for a true classic NY slice. Very few of them remain now. Instead there’s this divide with crappy $1 joints (that are now a little more expensive) and good $4-5 slice joints that had to differentiate themselves. The workingman’s NY slice might not have long to live. All that said, it sounds like maybe you’ve not had good NY pizza the way you’re describing it. The sauce and cheese should not be messy, it should be minimal. The fold is so you can walk down the street while eating it in one hand.
- chitowneats 4y agoI appreciate the context you're adding here. I lived in NYC for the better part of a decade. I feel I got a good sampling of the pizza scene. This was in the 2010s though so I can't speak to how it was before that. I still haven't found anything that beats a Lou's pan pizza.
- boulos 4y agoSadly, I think this is true about a lot of the food in Manhattan: the middle got squeezed. There's low end, high volume and high-end, low volume. I'm always amazed Manhattan can support so many on the low end with the economics on the rent, but I think they end up with just truly amazing foot traffic and volume that other cities can't touch.
- chitowneats 4y agoManhattan is an absolute wasteland for authentic, cheap food. Queens and Brooklyn are much better. Some of the best food in the country there.
- boulos 4y agoMostly, I wasn't comfortable saying NYC when people mostly mean Manhattan and fancy parts of Brooklyn for this comparison :).
- chitowneats 4y agoAgreed. Manhattan and north Brooklyn are very different from the rest of the city. The Chinese food in Flushing or Sunset Park is incredible, for example.
- frakkingcylons 4y agoYep. Take the 7 train to queens and have your pick of great international food for like 30-50% of the price of Manhattan food.
- Balgair 4y ago
- quags 4y agoThe secret of course is the best pizza in the NYC area is in Northern New Jersey.
- konfusinomicon 4y agocentral jersey does alright too but the best I've had was a bar called Mario's in clifton.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> the best pizza in the NYC area is in Northern New Jersey Keep going: the pies around central Jersey are a celebration of tomatoes. That said, not a New York slice (north shore included.)
- chitowneats 4y agoWhere, in your opinion, can I get the ideal New York slice?
- rubiquity 4y agoIn Buffalo
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> where…can I get the ideal New York slice? Scott’s pizza tour [1]! (No affiliation.) Coal-fired slices are rare, now. I tend to like a charred, crisp crust and simple toppings that can be bitten through. This is a city that cares about its pizza. We don’t run impostors out of town. But the pizza is great, and there is no single ideal. Buy it, fold it, and enjoy. (Grimaldi’s and Joe’s. Di Fara and Lucali rub me like Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, Arizona. Pizza isn’t a food for lines.) [1] https://www.scottspizzatours.com/ https://www.scottspizzatours.com/
- 4y ago
- wtf_is_up 4y agoFolding pizza is insane to me. I'll eat it with 2 hands if I have to. Even a fork and knife is preferable.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 331c8c71 4y agoMy impression is that in Europe we quite often tend to go for a kebab in such circumstances:)
- antihero 4y agoI’m in London so fried chicken is the one
- AlbertCory 4y agoExcept in the UK, where it's curry (AFAIK).
- noneeeed 4y agoDepends if you are going for portability. If you want something for the walk home it’s got to be a kebab really. But if it’s the middle of the evening sit down meal before getting a taxi home then it might well be a curry.
- dave_sullivan 4y agoKebabs are alright but the Europeans need to find out about burritos, they don't even know.
- VeejayRampay 4y agohow condescending of you to think that "europeans" need to find you about burritos (of all things)
- malermeister 4y agoI've lived in California for almost ten years, had many a drunk burrito and missed kebabs every time :(
- AlbertCory 4y agoYeah, kebabs really aren't a Thing here, for the most part. Nor is poutine, or "curry." You can find all of those, but they're not on every corner. What's drunk food in China, I wonder. Anyone?
- wirthjason 4y agoInteresting comment from an interesting username. Antihero, a somewhat strong IPA, from Revolution Brewing in Chicago is my favorite beer. I’ve definitely craved pizza after downing one too many antiheros.
- kenjilopezalt 4y agoThat’s fitting because John Carruthers, who founded Crust Fund Pizza in Chicago works for Revolution Brewing as his day job.
- analog31 4y agoThe best way is to sit at the dining table with a glass of cheap wine, watching pizza being made in the kitchen, as I happen to be doing at this very moment.
- karaterobot 4y ago> I think a pizza steel preheated in a kitchen oven at 500F gives you a perfectly good pizza, and the fact that you can slide out the oven rack and use gravity to launch the pizza off the peel makes it a total win. For me, the pizza steel is also plenty good compared to the portable gas ovens. Some other tricks I use are adding diastatic malt powder to the dough, and par-baking the crust before adding the toppings, to let the middle get crisp.
- robshrk 4y agoThe one minute par-bake also makes it so much easier and stress free to slide a fully loaded pizza onto the stone. I don’t even use cornmeal just lightly dusted whole wheat flour for the raw dough. The par-baked crust needs nothing.
- gnicholas 4y agoWe used to cornmeal lightly but then discovered parchment paper. It's super easy to slide off with a spatula underneath. When you par-bake, how long does it take you to then add the ingredients? Do you have to rush? Or is it better to take a few minutes, so the oven can re-heat itself?
- AlbertCory 4y agoSemolina's better than cornmeal, but yeah: parbaking or parchment paper sounds much better.
- stevenwoo 4y agoOne issue with parchment paper is the max temperature rating is 425-450 and I've gotten best pizza crust results with temperature of 500 with my oven and that scorches the none food covered parts of parchment paper when I tried it. I don't know if it's toxic when overheated and burned like that but it is super convenient for lower temperature usages.
- telchior 4y ago
- Stratoscope 4y agoBefore Apple, Old Tymers [1] like me went to Cicero's in the early 1970s when it was still called Coppola's [2] [3], in its original location on Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road before that was called De Anza Blvd. The pizza came on a typical aluminum pan, and you didn't get a plate for your slice. You would just put a napkin or two on the table. Messy but good! The Cali Brothers Mill and Feed Store [4] was just around the corner on Stevens Creek. It had a drive-thru where you would drive inside the building to pick up your farm supplies. Different times! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymshare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymshare [2] http://www.cicerospizza.com/CicerosMenu.pdf http://www.cicerospizza.com/CicerosMenu.pdf [3] http://www.cicerospizza.com/pub_html/Restaurant%20Cicero's%20Pizza.htm http://www.cicerospizza.com/pub_html/Restaurant%20Cicero's%2... [4] https://historysanjose.pastperfectonline.com/photo/41B3BE66-0B1D-4A14-A6AA-224117526403 https://historysanjose.pastperfectonline.com/photo/41B3BE66-...
- AlbertCory 4y agoShameless self promotion: Cali and Cicero's both mentioned in my book The Big Bucks.
- rhino369 4y agoMost tavern style places in Chicago don’t really have a cracker crust. Rosatis thin crust (which isn’t very good) is the type most independent shops sell. Pats in lake view has great cracker crust.
- vidanay 4y agoVito and Nick's has the best crust IMO
- joshu 4y agopizza ovens rely on a chain of different skills that all must be done well or the pizza comes out poorly. correctly making the dough, correctly topping it, getting it to slide off the peel correctly, putting it in the right place in the oven, rotating it correctly, and probably several things i'm missing. it leads to an enormous amount of frustration; i haven't gotten something i would consider "good" even once yet.
- kenjilopezalt 4y agoThis thin crust recipe is time consuming but actually solves a lot of those problems. Rolling witb a pin and letting it dry out overnight actually makes it really easy to slide off the peel.
- joshu 4y agoI will try this but as a native New Yorker I just want to get the style I am most comfortable with working first. I have never even had the Chicago thin-style pizza, actually. Someone got me a “super peel” which has a cloth gadget to drop the pizza. I wonder if it will work or incinerate. (PS I am one of the people that matched your donation on twitter a few years ago. I miss you there but in retrospect leaving was a good idea.)
- shaklee3 4y agosuperpeels work wonders. I've had mine for about 6 years.
- kenjilopezalt 4y agoI’m a New Yorker as well. For NY style I strongly recommend getting a wooden peel and a metal peel. Wood to launch and metal to turn and retrieve. You also need to top and launch fast to keep the dough from sticking.
- AlbertCory 4y agoThe owner of Cicero's actually told me they use a rolling pin.
- yumraj 4y agoWhat do you mean by pizza steel? I’m looking to get a cast iron pizza pan but would love to know there’s a better option.
- poloniculmov 4y agoSomething like this[1]. It's easier to use than a pizza stone and yields better results. 1: https://bakingsteel.com/products/baking-steel https://bakingsteel.com/products/baking-steel
- AlbertCory 4y agoYes. Weighs a lot, but it'll never crack like a stone will.
- OJFord 4y agoJesus, $120? Does it knead, stretch, and top the dough itself too? Seriously, is it really supposedly that much better than my £15 cast iron 'stone'? (I put a lovely seasoning on it initially, but didn't look after it very well and it's all cracked and flaking off, so I need to start again really I think - I suppose it does save that maintenance work... but still, I could just buy a new one and start again several times for $120!)
- convolvatron 4y agoyeah. thats silly. my 'stone' is a piece of scrap 6mm steel. even new it shouldn't cost more than $8 or something
- kencausey 4y agoMaybe, but have you bought anything like that recently? Probably if you know the right place to shop or the right people it wouldn't be much more, but I needed a bit of metal pipe to use as a lever and spent $40 on 3ft of 1.5in diameter pipe at Lowe's. I don't think I paid much more than that for the ratchet set I was using it with.
- jrexilius 4y agoNative Chicagoan here as well. When I was growing up we called this "party" style pizza, while deep dish was just called pizza. After living in Austin for last 8 years, I still desperately miss good deep dish pizza, but thin crust is easy to find outside of Chicago...
- dreamcompiler 4y agoWhat's your opinion of Conan's? That used to be the deep dish pizza place in Austin but I haven't eaten there in many years.
- pcl 4y agoA couple years ago, when I was on a pizza kick, the thing that worked best for me was to start cooking the dough on the stovetop on a very hot cast iron skillet. I would cook it long enough for the dough to start to change color and bubble a bit (45-60 seconds), and then make sure it was releasing from the pan. Then, I would sprinkle on oil, tomato sauce and toppings and move it from the skillet to the preheated stone, and leave it under the broiler for another couple minutes. The initial cook on the pan got the crust going, and so the oven time was mostly focused on the toppings.
- Ductapemaster 4y agoKenji has a recipe [0] for this method but using a tortilla instead of pizza dough. At first glance I was skeptical it would be any good, but it's turned out to be a fantastic low-effort way to make a "pizza" when you are craving it! [0] https://www.seriouseats.com/extra-crispy-bar-style-tortilla-pizza-supreme https://www.seriouseats.com/extra-crispy-bar-style-tortilla-...
- rootw0rm 4y agoi use naan bread for "pizza", it's decent
- ghaff 4y agoYeah. I may explore other options one of these days but using the store-bought naan breads for flatbread pizzas using a pizza stone is a pretty decent and simple store-bought option to assemble a pizza.
- mNovak 4y agoI use store-bought pitas, sliced in half (thickness-wise, takes some practice). Very easy, and gets nicely crispy.
- OJFord 4y agoI do similar but not particularly purposefully - I always top the dough with it already on my (pre-heated) cast iron 'stone'. (Otherwise trying to transfer it is a disaster that I've been known to pretend was an intentional calzone - I don't have a peel.) I do so as quickly as I can, but of course it starts to cook the dough as I do; I've never seen that as a bad thing. If there's any holes where it stretched too thin, it holds it still allowing you to fix them too.
- chrsstrm 4y agoI use the oven method with a pizza steel exclusively but the recent spike in natural gas costs in SoCal had me cut back considerably on making pizzas. I was looking into alternatives like the Ooni and the Breville countertop pizza oven, but the reviews on the Breville aren’t inspiring. Kenji’s multi-day method for making his thin crusts seems absurd but after testing same-day and “cured” crusts, it’s worth it.
- balfirevic 4y ago> but the recent spike in natural gas costs in SoCal had me cut back considerably on making pizzas How much in gas cost can making a couple of pizzas a week take?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> the early Apple people used to go for lunch at Cicero's Pizza Didn’t know! We’d go there after little league and for Boy Scouts white elephant, the latter where, without exception, someone would pick a gorgeously-wrapped (once spray painted!) rock.
- mrexroad 4y agoMmm. Cicero’s is my favorite pizza spot atm. My kid recently started making pizzas w/ a cast iron skillet in oven at 550, not quite the crispy crust that Cicero’s has, but not entirely bad. Good to hear about your take on the Ooni—-I think I had started buying into the hype and was starting to eye one in next year or two. Your comment gave a nice reminder to work through some other approaches first.
- AlbertCory 4y agoif you get on r/ooni, all you'll see if Food Porn and lots of advice on how to do it right. After reading all that, I would notice that my kitchen oven pizza was excellent, while the Ooni had all sorts of issues.
- lukevp 4y agoWe make amazing pizzas on a 3/8 inch baking steel in a 550 degree oven with convect bake and a 1 hour preheat. Switch to convect broil right before putting the pizza in. My friend said it was the best pizza he’d ever had. We make all styles of pizzas (Chicago deep dish, Detroit pizza, NY style, all sorts of stuff). I’ve made hundreds of pizzas and doughs. We bought an ooni and I made probably 10-15 garbage pizzas. I read all the advice before, tried several recipes, tried metering the heat different ways and different rotation strategies. We returned it and I’m convinced now that it’s mostly hype. The pizzas never came out as good as the steel pizzas, and if you look at the pictures for the pizzas most people churn out, they’re overly burnt on top and the crust is barely done, even if you make it super windowpane to a ridiculous point.
- AlbertCory 4y agoHear, hear. I also tried naan, as a last-ditch attempt to save the Ooni. It was also lousy.
- mysterydip 4y agoI know this isn't directly related, but what's your recommended baking for a deep dish pizza? I get Giordano's shipped a few times a year as there's nothing remotely close locally (also open to other shipping options!). I tend to burn the crust before the toppings are done.
- forgottenlogin9 4y agoI’ve never tried their mail-order pizza, but Pequods is very tasty. https://www.goldbelly.com/pequods-pizza https://www.goldbelly.com/pequods-pizza
- emidln 4y agoGrowing up in Springfield, IL (3 hours south of Chicago), most of the pizza served ourside of chains was the ultra thin crunchy square-cut pizza mentioned in the article (or NY-esque Neapolitan slices). Vic's (rip) Sam's (rip) Gabatoni's Joe's JT Costello's (more recently) all served delicious crunchy thin crust with heavily spiced sauce cut thin and usually sent out covered in paper. Any bar that didnt serve frozen pizzas served a variation of this thin crust pie. Notably, Gallina's Pizza and Lucca Pizza were both Neapolitan style.