Scott, welcome to the forum.
As of this moment, for thin style pizza, there is no book you can buy. At least, not a good book. American Pie, authored by Peter Reinhart, has a few fans, but it's geared more toward non NYers who really aren't striving for anything authentic. Jeff Varasano's web page also has a following, and, although he understands pizza more than Reinhart, the recipe is dated and his obsession with sourdough makes things unnecessarily complicated for the beginning pizza baker.
I'm going to go under the assumption that you're striving for something authentically NY. I've been tweaking my recipe for ages, and, although I'll still probably play around with it, I'm using it frequently enough that I think it's a good time to post it.
For one 16" skin:
Spring King Flour (bromated 12.6% protein) 282g (100%)
Tap (hard) water room temp (68 deg.) 188g (66%)
IDY 1/2 t. (0.57%)
Salt 5g (1.77%)
Soybean oil 8g (2.83%)
Sugar 3/4 t. (3g) (1.06%)
Measure dry (no yeast). Measure wet (+ yeast). Dry into wet.
Knead until well mixed, but no further (2-4 minutes). Dough should be somewhere between cottage cheese-y and smooth. (Window paning is too far). Scale. Ball and place in lightly oiled containers/proofing boxes. Refrigerate 2 days. Remove from fridge 2 hours before baking (longer if containers are thick and insulating).
Bake on 1/2" x 16" x 16" steel plate (or larger if your oven can fit it). Pre-heat plate for 45 minutes at 500. Plate should be positioned on an oven shelf that's about 7" from the broiler. Before launching the pizza, crank the heat to the highest, turn on the broiler and wait 15 seconds. Launch, leaving broiler on for 2 minutes. Check after 3. Pizza should finish baking in 4 to 4.5 minutes.
On a 16" pie, I put 7 ounces of sauce and 11 ounces of whole milk low moisture brick mozzarella. If the sauce is the right consistency (on the thick side), the cheese won't slide too much, but if the sauce is thin, the cheese will have a tendency to migrate and boil over the rim. Even with relatively thick sauce, keep the cheese away from the outer 2" of the skin.
My tap water has a lot of chlorine, so I have to boil it and then let it cool first. I've tried bottled water, but I find tap gives me a little better oven spring.
The yeast quantity is going to be a rough ballpark. This dough is like clockwork for me and ferments in 2 days. With your yeast, fridge temp, flour age, water, etc., it could be 1 day or even 3. You're going to want to shoot for a doubling of the dough, but what's really critical is how the underside of the dough looks. Ideally, if you have a large wide round clear proofing container, you can take photos of the underside and post them here.
If you've never opened a pizza skin before, you'll have a really hard time stretching this to 16". Stretching skills are something that neither a book nor this forum can help you master. You just have to do it over and over again. Here's a video to get you started (ignore the rolling pin stuff and the tossing- this dough is too extensible to toss).
| <![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjYqw1CLZsA" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjYqw1CLZsA</a>]]> |
Launching skins off a peel is another area where practice is essential. The nice thing about launching, though, is that you can launch the undressed skin onto the counter, put it back on the peel and launch it again, repeating it over and over.
Spring King flour can be hard to find. If you have trouble, you can use bromated All Trumps and blend it with 33% all purpose. In order to make a 'true' NY slice, though, you're going to want to track down bromated flour.
As you can tell from the recipe, you'll need a digital scale.
As I said, everything I'm recommending is based on the assumption that you want something as authentic as possible. It takes some work, but, once you track down all the tools/ingredients, it's really pretty simple. If you want something easier and a bit better than what you can get locally (but not great), I'm sure your library will have American Pie.
