Author Topic: Pizza Town (Elmswood Park, NJ) (Read 4699 times)

PapaJon · « **on:** February 25, 2011, 05:46:48 PM »

Pics for now, review later, however this place ranked pretty high for me for NY thin crust style.

89 US Highway 46
Elmwood Park, NJ 07407
(201) 797-6172

PapaJon · « **Reply #1 on:** February 25, 2011, 05:47:23 PM »

more pics

PapaJon · « **Reply #2 on:** February 25, 2011, 05:47:57 PM »

and even more

scott r · « **Reply #3 on:** February 26, 2011, 07:23:43 AM »

oh man that looks perfect. All your pics from this trip are killing me!

scott123 · « **Reply #4 on:** February 26, 2011, 10:36:53 AM »

I just keep scrolling up and down, and up and down. I'm mesmerized.

JConk007 · « **Reply #5 on:** February 26, 2011, 10:43:06 AM »

Is perfect ! My Favorie pizza in the area of the 100 ? places I have tried! fresh sauce they use Local Flour from hackensack NJ and thinly sliced block Mozz. lots of semolina on the bench. only offer a few toppings. They Cook at 600-650 . I spoke with the owner they are very tight on the info. But he did tell me many pizzerias are afraid to cook at higher temp. Thanks for posting
which way are you heading on your trip I can recommend a few good ones to try!
John
ps slice is still only $1.55 right? but I cant stop eating it when I go there!

dellavecchia · « **Reply #6 on:** February 26, 2011, 11:00:12 AM »

Those slices look very similar to Pavones, my childhood pizza shop. They look incredible.

John

Pete-zza · « **Reply #7 on:** February 26, 2011, 01:28:36 PM »

Quote from: scott123 on February 26, 2011, 10:36:53 AM

I just keep scrolling up and down, and up and down. I'm mesmerized.

scott123,

I remember a member (ghost) who used to ask me from time to time how to get a small, flat, dense rim with small alveoles/cells, without almost no oven spring, for the NY street style. I'd love to know how Pizza Town does it. How do you think they do it?

Peter

scott123 · « **Reply #8 on:** February 26, 2011, 02:15:26 PM »

Peter, finer, more even crumbs are usually a sign of some sort of dough manipulation- like extra kneading or a punch down with a second rise. It's also most likely a lower hydration as well. At least, that's how I understand it. It's kind of like the opposite of no knead approaches- which minimize kneading, maximize hydration and have very open crumbs.

If I had to take a guess, I'd say

Bleached bromated flour (obviously)
Overnight fermentation (there's two many blisters for it not to be)
3-4 minute bake (which I've confirmed elsewhere)
A little more sugar than most NY style pizzas (2%? For that amount of browning in 3 minutes, a good dose of sugar is necessary)
Some Oil... not sure how much
Lower hydration

I can't say for certain which hydration, because I'm not 100% on the flour. If the finer crumb did come from additional kneading at the onset, and most likely not a second rise, then a 14% flour would produce a tough crust, which is not the case here. I'm leaning towards 13% protein flour. If it is 13% flour, then I'd go with somewhere around 58% hydration.

A lot of this is a bit outside the norm, but considering they're using 600ish ovens, it makes sense that they might be thinking outside of the box in other areas as well.

pcampbell · « **Reply #9 on:** February 26, 2011, 02:23:29 PM »

are those gas deck ovens?

scott123 · « **Reply #10 on:** February 26, 2011, 02:32:50 PM »

Yes, they're gas. According to Tommy's review here:

http://www.tommyeats.com/tommyeats/2009/09/pizza-town-elmwood-park-nj.html

Mad_Ernie · « **Reply #11 on:** February 26, 2011, 09:30:20 PM »

Also a recent review on Slice.com

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2011/01/pizza-town-usa-elmwood-park-nj.html

PapaJon · « **Reply #12 on:** February 27, 2011, 02:32:01 AM »

Dang drat drum, ok. For the second time I have written half a review and accidentally hit the "back" button on the browser (or backspace button when outside the text box is highlighted) and lost what I've typed. Going to write it up in word next attempt then copy past it in

Anyways, a quick comment FWIW, the pie I timed when I was there was in for 4.5ish min range. Also if nobody has caught onto why all the pictures don't seem to be of the same slices... well I admit to going twice

I went the evening I arrived as well as the following afternoon when I swung by Lodi's. I couldn't resist. My key concern though is that I only had slices here and not a whole pie. I'm wonder how much effect the "re-heat" of the slice has and how it would compare to a whole pie. In general I am a huge fan of reheated pies and the nice crispness it adds to the bottom. This is one of the anomalies to me about the whole pie I had at Johnny's in Mt. Vernon. It was not a reheat, but the bottom crispiness was still incredible. Until I have a whole pie here at Pizza Town it will be hard for me to compare the two as I know it would be apples to oranges, but my hunch is that regardless Johnny's is in a slightly different league.

JConk007 · « **Reply #13 on:** February 27, 2011, 07:27:12 AM »

They sell so many slices there so fast The girls there throw in a whole pie to reheat sometimes even a second time, and you will always you always get some char on the bottom I have had a fresh pie slice straight from the oven and yes it was just as good but i must say I prefer the reheat for the crispiness many others reheat but do not get the crispiness. It's the combo of cornmeal mixed with the bench flour and high heat? Do love it!
John

scott123 · « **Reply #14 on:** February 27, 2011, 08:22:46 AM »

Jon, I use Firefox with the add on Lazarus: Form Recovery. It's saved my butt countless times.

Regarding re-heats... I treat re-heating like toasting. Great bread shouldn't need to be toasted. If I'm hungry, there's no slice pies on the horizon and the slices are room temp, I might have them re-heat it for a few seconds to take the chill off, otherwise, I prefer my pizza one of two ways.

1. 10 to 15 minutes after being removed from the oven (with 12 being close to ideal).
2. Refrigerated, the next morning. Refrigeration accelerates staling, so it has to be the next morning. Past that and the quality drops.

As far as slices versus whole pies are concerned... in my experience, I'm not sure why this is, but it seems like slice pies tend to get a little more attention to detail than whole pies. The reasoning might be along the lines of "this slice is going to be seen by customers, so it has to look good, while this pie is going straight into a box, so I don't need to be quite so meticulous" Slice pies, at some places, also have a tendency to be larger. The place from my youth used to do a 21" pie. For NY, larger, if stretched adeptly, is always better.

scott r · « **Reply #15 on:** February 27, 2011, 10:19:34 AM »

aah, the hackensack flour. Sounds like it could be the same stuff grimaldes was using for years until they switched to roma distribution for the additional locations. It was a bromated high gluten flour. I got a bag of it once and it was really great flour. Blooming best from oliveri and sons?

scott r · « **Reply #16 on:** February 27, 2011, 10:26:07 AM »

Quote from: scott123 on February 26, 2011, 02:15:26 PM

Peter, finer, more even crumbs are usually a sign of some sort of dough manipulation- like extra kneading or a punch down with a second rise.

Not sure why I have come up with a different conclusion, but for me the type of crumb shown in the picture would come from a cold fermented dough that wasn't allowed to do too much expansion prior to baking. If I do a punch down with a second rise I definitely get much larger voids and bubbles, rather than this type of crumb. This just shows how every pizza maker is different and depending on how we do things we can see different results than someone else using similar methods. I am definitely with you on the bromated flour, long mixing time, and lower hydration being a big part of this.

PapaJon · « **Reply #17 on:** February 27, 2011, 01:32:37 PM »

I wish I could attempt a reverse engineering thread for either Pizza Town or Johnny's but that's kind of hard to do with only having them once(or twice).
Maybe someone else could....?

scott123 · « **Reply #18 on:** February 27, 2011, 01:40:24 PM »

Quote from: scott r on February 27, 2011, 10:26:07 AM

If I do a punch down with a second rise I definitely get much larger voids and bubbles, rather than this type of crumb.

Well, I probably should have qualified my earlier statement by saying that punch downs create finer crumbs, but not nearly as fine a crumb as lower hydration and a longer initial knead. Basically you have no knead, elevated hydration dough on one extreme of the open crumb spectrum, extended knead, lower hydration dough on the other, fine crumb side and punch downs are closer to the middle, although, in all fairness, punch downs redistribute nutrients and greatly accelerate yeast activity, which, in turn creates bigger voids, so they definitely lean toward the open-ish side of things.

In other words, the results we're seeing are probably not that different.

scott123 · « **Reply #19 on:** February 27, 2011, 01:43:44 PM »

Quote from: PapaJon on February 27, 2011, 01:32:37 PM

I wish I could attempt a reverse engineering thread for either Pizza Town or Johnny's but that's kind of hard to do with only having them once(or twice).
Maybe someone else could....?

Cumulatively speaking, I think this thread has everything you need to reverse engineer this pizza. I think the only real wrench in the works is consistently re-creating the microblisters. There's lots of theories as to how those are created, but, so far, nobody can come up with a method to re-create them every time.

I seem to be seeing them a lot lately (with overnight ferments), but really can't recreate them on command.