Hi Pete,
Sorry I haven't gotten back to you sooner but I missed your post.
When I was researching The Pizza Book, Lombardi's was no longer a pizzeria, they were a full service restaurant that served appetizer sized pizzettas that were produced from a conventional gas fired range oven. Gerry Lombardi told me how they made the pizza. He explained what type of flour they used, that the dough was very wet and soft and that the key was to let the dough rest at least over night before using it. Now, you must realize that none of these guys ever spoke in terms of formulas, recipes, hydration, fermentation, etc. For them it was a natural process that they'd been practicing for decades. They used their senses of touch, feel and sound along with their history to produce the results. I've enjoyed a nearly 30 year friendship with Gerry Lombardi and believe me, he has shared so much with me that he considers me as part of the family, kind of like his kid sister. At our original meeting, it was Gerry who sent me to Totonno's because he told me that "Jerry Pero is the only one left who still makes pizza exactly the way my grandfather did back in 1905". That's when he showed me the picture of his grandfather and Pero's father standing in the doorway of Lombardi's Pizzeria Napoletana in 1905 and said: "That's Jerry's father standing there with my grandfather. If you really want to know how they did it back then, go talk to Jerry. But, I gotta warn you, Jerry is a real recluse--worse than me and he doesn't talk to no body. Once in a while he comes here by me to eat late at night. He wanted to work the steeple chase at Coney Island but his father made him stay with the family business, so he might not want to tell you anything, but you really have to taste his pizza because that's the way pizza was when my grandfather made it. Oh, yeah, he's only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday until he runs out of dough, so you wanna get there early."
As it turned out, Jerry Pero was a curmudgeon, but I did manage to get under the surly crust and he opened up to me, in fact he loved me, as soon as I would poke my head into the pizzeria, his face would light up and he would greet me with a great and floury hug. Learning from these guys took lots of time because the would impart information along with a wealth of stories and they would show me things, a few things at a time but never the whole process at once. They did not approach what they did scientifically at all, nor did they approach their "business" in a real commercial mode. It took plenty of patience and tenacity to know when and how to press for more information. I learned over time and it took me a while to put everything together. Eventually it did all come together and I realized that the way they explained things by showing me and couching the information in stories was their way of teaching.
I don't recall ever seeing a scale at Totonno's, but I am sure that his hands were just as accurate in scaling out dough. His crusts were thicker than John's and the reincarnation of Lombardi's--not that they were thick by any means, but they had more structure and were crisper on the bottom. He did utilize more dough per pizza. John's had the thinnest crust of all and the smallest rim. Lombardi's was just a bit thinner than Totonno's, but not much.
So where does that answer your question? The recipe in my book calls for more generalized results. If the dough was stretched out to 18 inches, the pie would resemble more of a John's type of crust, at 15 inches it would resemble more of a Tottono's type and at 16 inches, a Lombardi.
The recipe calls for 3-3 1/2 cups of flour (around 1 pound) but because the actual amount of flour could vary quite a bit between type of flour used and method of measurement. The optimum for that recipe is the Totonno version which weighs in at about 15-16 ounces.
Hope this helps,
Evelyne
