900? degrees Manchester NH

[widespreadpizza]

Well, I went. Sat Right in front of the oven for an hour  chatted it up with the cooks,  not the owner, but he was on the dining floor. 14" pizzas , marg started at 13- 

Here are the positives.

1 Caputo room temp
2 Lavalle San Marzanos
3 All Grande Including riccotta and f.mozz
4 Decent beer and wine + full bar
5 Clean new place in old mill building
6 Plenty of Parking
7 Open daily
8 Pretty limited menu, focus on the pizza,  so it would seem.
9 If I play nice, I know where to get my next bag of Caputo
10 Pizza Geek took a picture.
11 pizza tasted ok due to san marzanos and mozz

The Other Side

1 Earthstone Oven must be the model 160 64" is round Running at 700(supposeddly higher on busy nights) fire in back
2 Caputo dough very low hyd. 57-60% speculation, salt not sure
3 Emphasis on ingredients, A little bit of education towards customers, though they could still use some
4 Dry Crackery Crust,  with no character, easily picked up by cornice with NO droop  IE caputo with not enough heat,  posibly better of with an american flour going for the new havenish pie
5 My marg.  took 3.5-4 mins
6 No lepoarding to speak of
7 While having my first beer, and watching the oven I had the urge to leave, because I can do this better at my house.
8 Wouldn't go back for anything but a beer at the bar and a little oven watch, to see if they are improving.
9 Edit,  my wife thinks that 7 and 8 were maybe too harsh so I smoothed them over a bit,  but,  the point of my review is to tell you what I think.   


Heres the pic.   

[pcampbell]

It sounds like too hot of an oven for too low hydration?

[scottfsmith]

I had thought 57-60% was pretty high for authentic Neapolitan style - ??  For example if you read the offical standard at

http://www.fornobravo.com/vera_pizza_napoletana/VPN_spec.html

you will see they mention 50-55%.  But the oven is clearly too cold.  905F is what they mention in the official standard above, with a surface and dome at 800F.

Scott

[Pete-zza]

Scott,

What you say about the standards seems to be correct but if you look at the pizza dough recipe at http://www.fornobravo.com/pizza/pizza_dough.html, you will see a hydration of 65%. And that is using the Caputo Extra Blu 00 flour that has a lower protein content than the Caputo 00 Pizzeria flour. BTW, that recipe has caused problems for some people who are not used to working with such high hydrations.

Peter