Thought I'd post an uipdate on my pizza making, moving back to NYC has been a little of a best of times, worst of times for my relationship with pizza. Like many of us, I started home baking because the pizza in our suburb 20 miles north of nyc wasn't very good. Now that we live in NYC, the imperative to make my own NY pizza has lessened and it turns out the racks in our NYC oven cuts off about three inches of usable space on my pizza steel so the largest pie I can make is ~12 inches. Since it's so easy to find NYC slices, most of my home bakes have been ssbp, detroit and deep dish. While these are great eating pies, they don't take any real skill to assemble and I miss opening dough balls, knuckle stretching and using a peel.
when winter comes, maybe I have to jayrig (we had a contractor named jay who "jay rigged" solutions which worked for a period of time but eventually broke and then we had to pay another contractor to remove the jayrig) the racks in our oven allow me to use the entire areas of the steel. It may be as easy as turning them upside down or purchasing alternate racks. I've also been following the pizza oven forum, thinking about an electric oven for our apt or maybe a gas oven for our bungalow.
Unfortunately, I haven't been thrilled with the pizza choices around our apartment on the UES, nothing rises to the level of say sal and carmines on the UWS. otoh, commercial rents are lower here resulting in a denser population of pizza, I still have a crazy number of places to try and new shops seem to be opening every day. I will say, it is amazing to talk to New Yorkers about their favorite pizza places and find something akin to crisped up cardboard topped with cheap mozz. Still, I had a good first slice at a branch of williamsburgh pizza and a Village pizza recently opened nearby and seems to have a following.
best,
