If it's not too late, return the stone. The stone will give you Ray's quality pies, but you want something better than that- something faster than that. I don't know exactly how long Napoli's was baking their pizzas when you were going there, but you want the most flexibility as possible when it comes to bake times, and, in order to achieve that, you want 1/2" steel plate. It's heavy, but the good news is that you can find it in Denver, and, once you have it in place, you can have any possible NY style bake time you can imagine. The whole "I can't match a commercial deck oven" equation is gone- and believe me, when you're looking for a light and airy non-bready non-doughy crust with plenty of character, the bake time is the biggest contributing factor.
What's the peak temp on your oven dial? Does your oven have a convection feature?
This is going to make your cheese quest difficult, but don't get cheese shipped. Grande is ideal (or a Grande clone), and it has a longer shelf life than most mozzarella, but it still doesn't stand up well to the rigors of shipping. For now, don't rule out your local cheese. Make sure it's low moisture whole milk, and not high moisture (fresh) mozzarella. A huge part in judging mozzarella is getting the crust thickness right as well as the bake time, so the cheese bubbles properly.
00 is almost never used for NY style pizza. You'll find it in some of the legendary coal places, but never for NY style. Bromated All Trumps is quite common in the NY area, at least, it's quite common now, but lower protein bromated flours have a history as well, and produce less leathery pizza.
Here are the brands to look for:
Full Strength
Spring King
Occident
Pillsbury xxxx patent flour
King Midas Special
Superlative
Commander
Majestic
Springup
Perfect Diamond (I think this is 12.5%ish, but not sure)
These are all going to be really difficult to find, but Denver should have some kind of distributor that sells to the public. Give Dawn Foods a call:
4500 Lipan Street
Denver, CO 80211
(303) 455-3296
Some Dawn warehouses will do cash & carry to the public, but many won't. It can't hurt to call.
If worse comes to worse, start calling bakeries and see if one will sell you a few pounds of flour.
Provolone is a tough call. According to my taste buds, I'd say it makes it into about 3% of this area's pizzas, maybe even less, so if you're uncertain, just go with low moisture whole milk. The East Coast blend is 50/50 whole milk/part skim, which will oil off less than whole milk will with pepperoni, but might not oil off quite enough when used for plain pies. You want that drip coming off the edge on a plain pie- and you might not get that with a blend.
Both Stanislaus and Escalon put out quality products. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not sure I see the point in blending them. If you go with Full Red, make sure it's the puree, not the prepared/seasoned sauce, and also make sure the 6 in 1s are peeled ground.
Do you have a digital scale? You can't make consistent pizza without one. How about an IR thermometer? A good wood peel? A good metal peel? Good proofing containers?
