Getting ready for my first NY style pizza..

[rym]

I want to bake my first NY style pizza this saturday on my new 15.7 x 15.7 x 2 in stone (grog/firesand) this weekend!

Using Pete-zza's roadmap and the dough calculator (I needed grams this will most likely be my recipe:)

Flour (100%): Water (63%): IDY (0.25%): Salt (1.75%): Oil (1%): Total (166%): Single Ball:

405.62 g  |  14.31 oz | 0.89 lbs 255.54 g  |  9.01 oz | 0.56 lbs 1.01 g | 0.04 oz | 0 lbs | 0.34 tsp | 0.11 tbsp 7.1 g | 0.25 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.27 tsp | 0.42 tbsp 4.06 g | 0.14 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.9 tsp | 0.3 tbsp 673.32 g | 23.75 oz | 1.48 lbs | TF = 0.105 336.66 g | 11.88 oz | 0.74 lbs

Furthermore, I live in Europe so 99% of the american brands are unavailable for me, and therefore I will be using a German Type 812 flour milled by a local mill. I have never used this flour before but they seemed quite professional and the quality high. Furthermore I will follow Pete-zza's directions for kneading the dough in my mixer as directed in his Lehman NY style pizza topic.

Then, do I divide and shape my dough into two separate balls immediately (and should I weigh these?) or do i put the whole dough ball in the refrigerator and shape them the next day? Does the order matter?

A question on shaping the dough:

Is it possible to shape the dough without tossing? As I have found little direction on this, I will most likely follow Bubba's direction on this (with stretching the dough out, etc) Though I do not feel comfortable yet in tossing the dough, or maybe even draping it over my arms. Is there an alternative to this? Also when do you 'know' you're done? I figure it's just down to experience and getting the feel for the dough but I like to be able to actually eat some pizza this saturday!

Finally on dressing the pizza:

Is there a recommended sauce mixture? Again 6-in-1 is unavailable to me so I will try to find peeled tomatoes and crush these myself (by hand). I will be following the recipe as stated in Reinhart's book (American Pie). The taste was excellent last time I made it but my girlfriend thought it was a bit watery. Is there anything I can do to fix this? Cook it maybe? Also, by crushed should i try to get the peeled tomatoes as small as possible? or just..in a non-tomato form? I understand a food-processor is a no-no here, why?

I don't have my pepperoni as of yet (it's quite a chore to obtain this here in the netherlands) and I'm still not sure whether the block of mozz I'm going to buy is actually low-moist, so I'm looking at alternatives to the pepperoni pizza. What are some popular NY style pizza's I could reproduce? Any ideas? Also any tips on the amount of cheese to use, types of cheese (what mix) etc. etc. Anything is welcome!!

Oh and also, I could not manage to get a pizza screen, though I do have a peel now (one which i'll probably be replacing soon as it's quite heavy). Does the screen make a big difference?

[pythonic]

How did this pizza turn out?  Still have questions?

[rym]

Haha I was just reading some other topics, getting ready to post how it went!

In essence.. Okayish. When making my dough balls I noticed that I do not have the best mixer in the world, I have a Kenwood Patissier MX270 mixer, and whilst the dough looked to have the perfect consistency, it ended up just spinning around on the dough hook (c-hook). It didn't pass the windowpane test though I'm not sure why i didn't just knead it further by hand. I oiled up some 5-cup plastic boxes, placed the four dough-balls in them and refrigerated for ~27 hours. Here I noticed that my dough balls had barely expanded. They seemed a big bigger, but almost not at all. Though by this time I had 5 people who were hungry and wanted pizza, there was no going back! I made four pizzas (destroyed one whilst trying to get it off my peel and on the stone immediately) and whilst they all tasted good. The crust was really bad and even though some of the pizzas were in the oven for ~10 minutes, the dough seemed almost uncooked. So the toppings were good, cheese was good ( I found dry mozz!), sauce was good only the most important part was quite bad.

There are three thing I want to know / need to learn. First of all as my machine isn't going to cut it, I'm going to need to learn to knead my own dough properly. Secondly how to shape a good pizza. I tried getting them round but this was quite difficult, also, I have no idea how you people know you have the perfect size! ( looking at bubba's video's on this one).

Thirdly, I think I've figured out what was wrong. The IDY I was using was opened at least 1 year ago, maybe more. The expiry date is set in 5 days, but it was opened and never refrigerated and/or frozen: Could it be that the yeast has just gone bad and isn't working anymore? Let me know

Oh and also, I have a new stone. It's quite huge and luckily fits my oven quite snugly ( at least 1 inch room on the sides, but front and back there isnt a LOT of space). I don't have a digital thermometer so I can't check what temperature it's getting, though it seemed to be quite hot. I guess I'll know when I'll at least have a dough that's able to rise at all.

A screen also seems like a good idea, less destroyed pizza's and less hassle getting it in/out of the oven!

Next time with pictures!

[pythonic]

Haha I was just reading some other topics, getting ready to post how it went!

In essence.. Okayish. When making my dough balls I noticed that I do not have the best mixer in the world, I have a Kenwood Patissier MX270 mixer, and whilst the dough looked to have the perfect consistency, it ended up just spinning around on the dough hook (c-hook). It didn't pass the windowpane test though I'm not sure why i didn't just knead it further by hand. I oiled up some 5-cup plastic boxes, placed the four dough-balls in them and refrigerated for ~27 hours. Here I noticed that my dough balls had barely expanded. They seemed a big bigger, but almost not at all. Though by this time I had 5 people who were hungry and wanted pizza, there was no going back! I made four pizzas (destroyed one whilst trying to get it off my peel and on the stone immediately) and whilst they all tasted good. The crust was really bad and even though some of the pizzas were in the oven for ~10 minutes, the dough seemed almost uncooked. So the toppings were good, cheese was good ( I found dry mozz!), sauce was good only the most important part was quite bad.

There are three thing I want to know / need to learn. First of all as my machine isn't going to cut it, I'm going to need to learn to knead my own dough properly. Secondly how to shape a good pizza. I tried getting them round but this was quite difficult, also, I have no idea how you people know you have the perfect size! ( looking at bubba's video's on this one).

Thirdly, I think I've figured out what was wrong. The IDY I was using was opened at least 1 year ago, maybe more. The expiry date is set in 5 days, but it was opened and never refrigerated and/or frozen: Could it be that the yeast has just gone bad and isn't working anymore? Let me know

Oh and also, I have a new stone. It's quite huge and luckily fits my oven quite snugly ( at least 1 inch room on the sides, but front and back there isnt a LOT of space). I don't have a digital thermometer so I can't check what temperature it's getting, though it seemed to be quite hot. I guess I'll know when I'll at least have a dough that's able to rise at all.

A screen also seems like a good idea, less destroyed pizza's and less hassle getting it in/out of the oven!

Next time with pictures!

I have the same issue with my kitchen aid mixer.  That will happen with higher hydration doughs.  What I do it mix for about 2 minutes then I remove dough and hand knead for roughly 2 more minutes.

48hr hour cold ferment is best.  The flavor difference is night and day.  Your dough should almost double in size.

You mentioned you had problems stretching it out?  Did u let the dough warm up 1st before stretching it out?  What I do is take dough out of fridge and let sit in container for 1 hr.  Then I take dough out carefully and put on a lightly oiled plate and cover with plastic wrap for another hour.  Then I dip doughball onto plate with flour until its coated completely and then it is ready to shape.  

When i first started making pizzas i used the press out the end crust method.....followed by the putting the dough on my knuckles and letting gravity do the work to shape it.  Shaping takes practice but u will get it eventually.

Skip to 5 mins

<a href="http://youtu.be/NVBUeOkhhmc" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://youtu.be/NVBUeOkhhmc</a>

Did u cook these pizzas on a preheated stone?   What bake temp?   We're u able to stretch the dough thin?  For ny style beginners you want to be around 6-7 min bake time.

Good luck,
Nate

[rym]

I'm getting new yeast tomorrow (as i still honestly think this is a big culprit) and I'm going to try it again tomorrow. I'll most likely be doing a 48 hr ferment as I Don't have the time to cook on tuesday, so that will be fine as well.

I didn't have a lot of problems stretching it out in the end, more that I'm not able to stretch it into a round shape at all. While i understand a pizza does not NEED to be round, I'd like it to be The move did help quite a bit though, and I'm going to try to do it over my knuckles!

Also,  the dough had at LEAST 3 hrs to get to room temperature so I doubt this was a big part of the problem. Again, don't you think the yeast might have gone bad?

Thanks for your reply!

[pythonic]

Could be the yeast or you may need to add sugar to your dough for your yeast to eat.  I do 2% sugar, 2% salt and 2% oil.

[mkevenson]

Rym, although you do not need to proof IDY you can test it's activity by proofing in 100F water for a few minutes. It should foam and look active.

When I started to form my dough balls I used a ruler, even marking four spots on my prep table, N,S,E,W and stretching the dough to fit the circle. After a while this will not be necessary but is a good tool to learn how to make your pizza round.

I cold ferment 48-72 hrs in a fridge at approx 40F, using .4%or less IDY. I do not get 2x rise in fridge, but after 2 hrs room temp the dough stretches easily and is coming along.
The fridge ferment is meant to retard the rising process of the yeast whilst adding flavor .

Learning is fun and eating is better.

Mark

[rym]

Well after my 24hr cold ferment and 3hr to room temp the dough did stretch quite easily, no tearing at all. I think I made it bigger than I wanted though, meaning I had a thinner base than I originally wanted. Furthermore I made the crust completely wrong, it was way too thin. Looking at some other videos I now know I need to make the rim much wider than I was doing. I'm going to buy new yeast today. I proofed it yesterday and though there was some foaming, i would not call it active at all, i really hope this was a big part of my problem, if not, it means I'm having issues with stone temperatures and those are more difficult to fix

As I said i had no oven rise/spring whatsoever, could this be caused by underkneading (thus not developing glutens?) or should the yeast have ensured this in any situation. Also our house is quite cold, it could be that it didn't really get up to room temp. I have no idea!

[rym]

I'm going to try Bubba's recipe today and only kneading by hand!

Flour (100%):    489.72 g  |  17.27 oz | 1.08 lbs
Water (53.333%):    261.18 g  |  9.21 oz | 0.58 lbs
IDY (1.6667%):    8.16 g | 0.29 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2.71 tsp | 0.9 tbsp
Salt (1.6667%):    8.16 g | 0.29 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.46 tsp | 0.49 tbsp
Olive Oil (6.348%):    31.09 g | 1.1 oz | 0.07 lbs | 6.91 tsp | 2.3 tbsp
Sugar (1.667%):    8.16 g | 0.29 oz | 0.02 lbs | 2.05 tsp | 0.68 tbsp
Total (164.6814%):   806.49 g | 28.45 oz | 1.78 lbs | TF = 0.107161
Single Ball:   403.24 g | 14.22 oz | 0.89 lbs

the idea is two 13 inch pizza's, 1% bowl residue (as I always seem to lose something). I'll post some pictures later today (or just in the afternoon for you guys )

[henkverhaar]

Then, do I divide and shape my dough into two separate balls immediately (and should I weigh these?) or do i put the whole dough ball in the refrigerator and shape them the next day? Does the order matter?

Either way would work - for a two-pizza 'bulk' there's not much difference in fermentation performance between bulk and separate.

A question on shaping the dough:

Is it possible to shape the dough without tossing?

As far as I'm concerned, and as far as I've read, tossing is not necessary, it's primarily for show, and requires a certain type of dough anyway (lower hydration, higher gluten) to make sure that the dough disk will hold up.
Just learn to shape the pie by rotating on the prep table and/or by draping it over your fists and extending it by stretching and 'drooping'.

Finally on dressing the pizza:

Is there a recommended sauce mixture? Again 6-in-1 is unavailable to me so I will try to find peeled tomatoes and crush these myself (by hand). I will be following the recipe as stated in Reinhart's book (American Pie). The taste was excellent last time I made it but my girlfriend thought it was a bit watery. Is there anything I can do to fix this? Cook it maybe? Also, by crushed should i try to get the peeled tomatoes as small as possible? or just..in a non-tomato form? I understand a food-processor is a no-no here, why?

I won't comment on sauce, as I am a believer in using tomato passata... But AFAIK the recommendation against the food processor is primarily because a FP crushes the seeds, which apparently imparts some interesting properties to the sauce - if you make sauce from deseeded tomatoes, I don't see why you couldn't use a FP.

I don't have my pepperoni as of yet (it's quite a chore to obtain this here in the netherlands)

I can believe that sourcing real pepperoni is difficult, but I find that Stegeman 'premium' cervelaat (I get it at Albert Heijn) provides a decent pizza sausage. For mozzarella, I have only one piece of advice: make your own.

Oh and also, I could not manage to get a pizza screen, though I do have a peel now (one which i'll probably be replacing soon as it's quite heavy). Does the screen make a big difference?

Dunno about the screens, don't use them, I use peels I make myself. Get a thinnish board of bass wood (lindenhout), cut out a suitable shape, and thin it to a razor edge with a hand plane...

Where do you live? There are numerous good small scale flour mills (wind mills) that sell decent to excellent bread flour in NL. I get mine in Weesp.

[rym]

Dag Henk

I've bought my flour from De Zuidmolen in Groesbeek. While I do not know a lot about flour, the quality seems good to me. Personally I live in 's-Hertogenbosch, if i'm not mistaken there should be mills closer as well, but as this was a web-shop, ordering was quite easy!

I'm fine with not-tossing my dough. I am not that dexterous and I think that shaping it on a prep table is just fine for me. I've now seen a few videos of having the skin over your fists and stretching and I might try this tomorrow, I figure I just need to get a feel for the dough.

Furthermore I was quite happy with the sauce I made this weekend, in the end I used peeled tomatoes from a brand called 'Mutti' which I got from Makro. Do you buy the passata as-is in the AH? Have you tried both (peeled vs passata) and do you  add anything to it? Until now I've been using Peter Reinharts recipe for the sauce (Crushed tomatoes / Dried basil / Dried Oregano / salt / red wine vinegar) which I fancy quite a bit, though i think I'm going to use less vinegar in upcoming recipes.

Finally, on the pepperoni. I've actually been able to find a supplier of pepperoni in the netherlands (Hoek Horeca te Voorhout) but they only sell to Businesses. I convinced the owner to add a box of pepperoni on his next shipment to Den Bosch, and this way I'll actually have som pepperoni here! Last saturday I used ordinary C1000 Salami which tasted great! But I agree that the quality of Stegemans is generally better, So I'm going for this the next time. Have you tried chorizo?

I've bought a Peel from Sligro, and whilst making your own sounds great, and I'm sure it's better than what I have (the peel I have now is quite bulky and heavy, also it has a short handle) but i'm not sure if I am able to make my own Do you have pictures of yours? Thanks for your reply!

[rym]

Made my two doughballs! Target weight was 403 gr for both and i got 401 and 400 so for me that's close enough. New yeast (froze the rest!). It's in a container in my fridge now. 48hr ferment, let's see Also kneaded by hand and it's the first time it's passed the windowpane test! Though if i kept on stretching it would tear, though this would be long after forming a proper windowpane/membrane. I'll keep you posted!

[henkverhaar]

Yes, i've tried the chorizo, and its good but i find it too dominant for pizza. As far as tomatoes: I find the whole or diced tomatoes too wet, so that you need to boil it; the passata doesn't suffer from that. Sauce basically is passata with oregano (dried and fresh from the garden), thyme (from the garden), salt, pepper, oil, worcestershire sauce, and basil, usually in the form of pesto...

[rym]

Success! Everything went way better than the first time , I'll first post the link to my album as getting my pics down to 128kb is a hassle.

http://imgur.com/a/fZwaX

I thought hte dough had over-risen right away but in the end everything went quite well. I think the bake was somehwere between 8 and 9 minutes, using a 50/50 mozz/provolone cheese blend and salami as i don't have pepperoni yet I'm going to try to use less bench flour the next time!