New York Style Pizza

See previous blog post for the homemade sauce.

I would not argue with anyone about the significance of using New York City tap water or any other aspect of this recipe. I read quite a lot on the subject and my experience is limited. The subject of making a bonafide New York Style pizza is very touchy, but I have done it myself and can swear by this being dare I say damned good pizza. I am pretty darned good at writing recipes, though, and you’ll not find another place that has concise directions without all the fluff. It is assumed you have a pizza stone and pizza peel. No mixer is needed. YOU are the mixer.

Ingredients:

But first, lets talk about using the best ingredients:

• Flour - You should use a high protein bread flour such as King Arthur bread flour (or, if you can get it, their “Special Patent Flour”) or General Mills “All Trumps Flour”. Using a better quality all purpose flour is also acceptable (to me at least).

• Water - Use only filtered tap water

• Yeast - Active Dry yeast such as Flieschman’s or Red Star

• Sugar - Use pure cane sugar

• Honey - Not particular about which brand of honey

• Salt - Use fine sea salt. It contains more minerals than Kosher or table salt and is finer grained than Kosher salt. Do not use iodized salt.

• Extra Vigin Olive Oil - I recommend California Olive Oil that is made from olives grown in California and NO OTHER OILS.

Amounts of each ingredient:

It makes sense to make enough dough for two to four pizza crusts and refrigerate what you don’t use right away. How large each pizza is is up to you. This is enough for two 14” pizzas.

• 2 1/4 cups flour (and up to 1/4 cup more as needed)

• 3/4 cup warm water

• 1 packet instant dry yeast

• 1 tsp salt

• 1/2 tsp sugar

• 1/2 tsp honey

• 1 tsp olive oil (and 1 tsp more for drizzling on top)

• Homemade New York Pizza sauce (about 6 oz per pizza)

• Low moisture whole milk mozzarella cheese, grated (about 8 oz) (Note: this may be a mixture including some Parmesan and/or Romano but mostly mozzarella)

• Optional toppings

Directions:

1. Start by filling a large bowl with the water, yeast, sugar, and honey. Mix and watch it get foamy, which will take about 5 minutes.

2. Mix the salt into the flour in another bowl.

3. Slowly add the flour and salt to the large bowl. Mix as best you can to form a rough shaggy dough ball.

4. Turn out the shaggy dough ball onto a large work surface. A large cutting board or granite/marble countertop works well. Begin kneading the dough by pressing down and forward on the dough ball then rotating it 90 degrees and repeating. Do this until the dough gets too sticky to handle. A little extra flour may be needed if it is just too wet.

5. When the dough is too sticky and can no longer be kneaded, cover the dough with a clean bowl inverted or with plastic wrap. Make sure to completely cover the dough.

6. After 30 minutes, remove the lid. The dough will be less sticky. Continue kneading. You want to make sure that you knead the dough for at least 5 minutes. After you finish kneading the dough, cover it again and wait 30 minutes before balling the dough.

7. Portion the dough to your desired sizes. You have plenty of dough to work with. When working with each dough ball, keep the remaining dough covered so it doesn’t dry out. Ball the dough by repeatedly pulling the sides of the dough underneath. Do it about 20 times until a smooth ball is formed.

8. Pinch the underside of the dough ball to lock in the gasses.

9. Make other dough balls as you did the first one.

10. Place dough balls in individual plastic containers or separated on a cookie sheet that will fit on a shelf in your fridge… all covered in plastic wrap.

11. Refrigerate for 24 hours.

12. The next day, remove the developed dough ball(s) from the refrigerator. If you had just used a cookie sheet for all of them, it would be a good idea to store what you won’t be using today in individual containers.

13. Lightly flour a working surface (hopefully you have a pizza peel to use) and press the pizza dough out with your fingers so it is about 1/4” thick and no wider than your pizza peel (and stone) allows. You may toss it and look like a pro. You might flip it over. You’re a Pizza Boss. Make sure (possibly adding more flour underneath) that the dough slides on the peel when you shake it from side to side.

14. Let it come up to room temperature (30 to 60 minutes). Meanwhile, place your pizza stone on the middle rack and preheat oven to 500 deg F for one full hour. If your oven goes up to 550 degrees, that would be better (and reduce baking time slightly).

15. Spread your New York Pizza sauce very thinly over the crust almost to the edge. (Other types of pizza use significantly more sauce, go easy.)

16. Sprinkle evenly with whole milk low moisture mozzarella cheese.

17. At this point, check once more that the pizza still may be slid around on the peel.

18. Add optional toppings. If you would like to add some fresh basil leaves, put them on last and make sure you coat them with olive oil so they don’t burn.

19. Drizzle up to 1 tsp olive oil and up to 1/4 tsp salt on top (both are optional but the extra olive oil is recommended and as stated in the previous step the fresh basil, if used, will need it).

20. Slide pizza off the pizza peel onto the middle of the piping hot pizza stone.

21. Bake for about 5 minutes (4 to 6 minutes). Note that when you open the oven door some heat will escape, so try not to do this too soon. Use the oven light. It should be browned on top with cheese melted but not burned. Check the bottom, too. It should not be burned nor undercooked.

22. Remove pizza using the pizza peel and turn off the oven. Allow to cool for a few minutes before cutting.

23. Serve and enjoy!