Re: Evolution of the NY Style Pizza (Split Topic)

[norma427]

Norma,

Glad to have helped. It was fun trying to figure out how to convert the original recipe to baker's percent format.

For an all-purpose flour, the pizza looks very good and tasty. But all-purpose flour was what was commonly used in the 1940s.

Peter

Peter,

I am glad you thought it was fun trying to figure out how to convert the original recipe to baker's percent format.  I sure couldn't have done that.  I thought all-purpose flour was commonly used in the 1940's for pizzas.  I wonder what other flour options were available in the 1940's. 

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

According to Evelyne Slomon, at Reply 298 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=1258.msg37081;topicseen#msg37081 , during Workd War II, pizzerias apparently used whatever flours they could get their hands on. So, there must have been some kind of scarcity. But, in general, it looks like the flours at the time were relatively low or medium in protein, malted, bleached and bromated. However, I do not believe that the all-purpose flours at the time were bromated. That is still the case today.

Peter

[norma427]

Norma,

According to Evelyne Slomon, at Reply 298 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=1258.msg37081;topicseen#msg37081 , during World War II, pizzerias apparently used whatever flours they could get their hands on. So, there must have been some kind of scarcity. But, in general, it looks like the flours at the time were relatively low or medium in protein, malted, bleached and bromated. However, I do not believe that the all-purpose flours at the time were bromated. That is still the case today.

Peter

Peter,

Thanks for referencing Evelyne Slomon's post at Reply 298.  I might have to try Evelyne's Lombardi formula after I try a Lombardi pizza. 

When I was looking for old photos of pizzas I came across the photo posted below.  From what I read that was supposed to be Lombardi's years ago.  I think in a few days I will be able to taste a Grimaldi's pizza.

Norma

Edit:  I made a mistake in the photo I posted.  The photo shows what would have been where Grimaldi's pizzeria is now 185 years ago. https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2015/07/20/what-brooklyn-looked-like-in-summer-1820/ 

[Pete-zza]

Peter,

Thanks for referencing Evelyne Slomon's post at Reply 298.  I might have to try Evelyne's Lombardi formula after I try a Lombardi pizza. 

Norma

Norma,

If you search Evelyne's posts on the NY board using Lombardi as a search term, you should find other posts where she described the Lombardi dough formulations. I believe I included those posts in Reply 37 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=14920.msg148840#msg148840 but you might find what you are looking for quicker from an independent search.

Peter

[norma427]

Norma,

If you search Evelyne's posts on the NY board using Lombardi as a search term, you should find other posts where she described the Lombardi dough formulations. I believe I included those posts in Reply 37 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=14920.msg148840#msg148840 but you might find what you are looking for quicker from an independent search.

Peter

Peter,

Thanks again!  I forgot about all of the posts linked to Evelyne by you right here on this thread at Reply 37.  I will look through those posts.

I talked with Madeline this morning and it was interesting what she had to say about Louie (Gigi) Lamonica.  http://lamonicaspizzadough.com/www.lamonicaspizzadough.com/Home.html The connection with Louie and Frank Mastro is very interesting to me.  I told Madeline that Lamonica's now makes dough in CA and Italy and even has distributions to AU.  Of course Madeline talked about many other things I didn't know before.  I gave Madeline Lamonica's phone number in Brooklyn, NY.

Norma

[norma427]

This article from The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America was found from some searching.  The highlighted parts are what I copied about pizza.  It looks like recipes for pizza and other articles were written about pizzas awhile ago.

http://italianacademy.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/papers/paper_sp04_Cinotto.pdf

21 Rian James, Dining in New York, New York, John Day Company, 1930. 22 Jane Nickerson, “Hot, Hearty Pizza,” The New York Times Magazine, May 25, 1947, p. 42-43. 23 Herbert Mitgang, “For the Love of Pizza - An Old Italian Treat Is Sweeping the Nation – It’s a Meal-in-a-dish So Succulent, Composers Have Written Songs About It,” Collier’s, March 7, 1953, p. 67-70. 24 Richard Gehman, “Crazy About Pizza – Call It Tomato Pie, Pizza Pie or Just Plain Pizza, This Delectable, Pungent Italian Concoction Is Giving the Hot Dog a Run for the Money as the Favorite American Snack,” Saturday Evening Post, November 30, 1957, p. 32-60.
25 Herbert Mitgang, “Pizza a la Mode – In Many Variations Italy’s Famous Pie Now Rivals the Hot Dog In Popularity,” The New York Times Magazine, February 12, 1956, p. 64-66. 26 Herbert Mitgang, “For the Love of Pizza.” 27 Dorothy Kirk, “Pizza Pies… the American Way,” Woman’s Home Companion, September 1955, p. 42-43. 28 Good Housekeeping, October 1958, p. 149. 29 Hedda Poli, “Yankee Pizza – Pizza Pie Is an Italian Triumph That We’ve Imported With Joy – But There Are Americans Ways To Make It – Here They Are,” Good Housekeeping, August 1951, p. 152; “The Americanized Pizza… and How To Eat One – An Italian Dish Rivals the Hot Dog,” Look, November 1954, p. 114-115; Dorothy Kirk, “Pizza Pies.”


A good starting point to observe how popular magazines dealt with Italian Food in the 1950s is the case of pizza. Before the war, most non-Italian Americans were completely unfamiliar with it. A 1930 guide to dining out in New York defined it “a inch-thick, potato pan-cake, sprinkled with Parmesan cheese and stewed tomatoes.”21 In 1947, The New York Times Magazine introduced readers to a recipe for making pizza at home, claiming that the Italian specialty, a favorite in New York’s Little Italies, “could be as popular a snack as the hamburger, if only the Americans knew more about it.”22 The prescience is astonishing, as a national market for pizza was created overnight. The same process of appropriation, naturalization, and “mechanical reproduction” on a mass scale that had been applied to spaghetti was completed in a matter of months, in a much smoother way, and for a larger market. And certainly pizza owed its quick success to the technological advances of giant food processing and marketing – then in their heyday - as much as to its reliance on the same culinary triangle (dough, tomato sauce, melted cheese) popularized by its predecessor, or to the image of Italian eating places as informal and enjoyable. Popular magazines significantly contributed to the mass marketing of the new item. They gave accounts of the Neapolitan origins of Pizza. The most recurrent story (as told by Italian American pizza makers in Manhattan, who were interviewed en masse in those days) was that, around 1746, King Ferdinand of Bourbon casually noticed a baker making dough into flat, round pies. The king loved the pizzas and ordered the baker as the royal cook. Pizza - magazines were quick to recognize - had a long and glorious tradition in Naples. Nevertheless, the modernization that it was undergoing in America was just making it better. When President Eisenhower, by saying out of his heart that he had eaten better pizza in New York than in Naples, “caused an international incident” with touchy Italians, Collier’s readily, if implicitly, took side with the President. The best pizza was American-made.23 Magazines told about the ingenuity of independent Italian Americans who were raising big profits out of pizza in unlikely places like Odessa, Texas.24 But what they mostly focused on was the ability of the food industry to take an unknown foreign dish, rework it in spotlessly clean factories, and deliver it to Americans from coast to coast as a delicious, cheap, and uniformly produced snack food. The might of food processing companies was not to be concealed to the readers, but stressed. In 1956, The New York Times Magazine reported, “in New Jersey a belt-line assembles pizza as if they were General Motors tanks. Dough shell goes on line, plop goes cheese, squirt goes tomato sauce, shake goes oregano, plastic wrappers enfolds, label stamps, boxed, next.” The author of the article defined the mechanization of pizza production a progress to be accounted to “the American way of life, the free enterprise system and the capitalistic interplay of supply and demand.”25 No attempts were made, either, to hide the repetitive and demanding labor involved in the mechanized pizza production. A 1953 Collier’s article featured a picture showing working women assembling and wrapping pizzas on a fast assembly line, with a remarkable confidence in the aesthetics of Fordism, the magic of science and technology, and the consumer interest in convenience and uniform quality. Finally, the global provenience of ingredients, far from being the cause of concern it is nowadays, was underscored as a proof of capitalist inventiveness. The pizza that Nino Food Products, Inc. of Newark, New Jersey, flied in thousands a week to Ohio, Illinois and Michigan, was “a real international pie: plum tomatoes from California, olive oil from Castelvetrano in Sicily, and pure black pepper from the Pacific area.”26 In adherence to a consumer culture focused on family, home, and domesticity, magazines provided readers with much advice about making pizza at home. The target of articles, recipe columns, and ads were women imagined as constantly seeking out new, simple, but a little intriguing cooking ways to please their husbands and children. Mass-marketed products were there to satisfy feminine urges for self-gratification. In alternative to the frozen product, shoppers could buy in any supermarket a “packaged pizza-pie mix containing the flour mixture, yeast and the pizza sauce with cheese either in it or in another envelope.”27 In 1958, Fleischmann’s Yeast hired “Mrs. America” to advertise “Pizza Pronto,” a recipe for pizza from biscuit mix, from the pages of Good Housekeeping. 28 As Look wrote in a 1954 article, illustrated with pictures showing how to eat pizza correctly, “pizza pie has become an American citizen – here to stay.” Magazines made sure that the message was clear with headlines such as “Yankee Pizza” (Good Housekeeping), “The Americanized Pizza” (Look), and “Pizza Pies… the American Way” (Woman’s Home Companion).29 Arguably, pizza was a product intrinsically fit for mass consumption. However, other food biographies reveal that the process of selection and incorporation was a structured endeavor, whose politics of value was centered on the attenuation of difference through displacement and relocalization. American rationality and technology were bound to be the weapons that ensured a hegemonic position in conditions of intercultural exchange. A 1957 Look article noted that the annual American production of Italian-style cheese had surpassed ninety million pounds, five times the imports from Italy, and was of no inferior quality: “the cheese devotee has a wide choice – freshness and flavor guaranteed, thanks to vacuum-sealed transparent-plastic packaging.”30 American women were encouraged to make their own lasagna or veal parmigiana at home, as long as they used convenient canned and packaged products, mass-marketed by American industries. Middle-class American consumers were rapidly made acquainted with the idea of the convertibility of Italian Food into a product for mass consumption.

If anyone can find direct links to the articles listed above it could help with this thread, and would be appreciated. 

After some more searching I found an article in the Saturday Evening Post that is supposed to say this about Frank Mastro:

Frank Mastro, owner of a large restaurant supply shop on the Bowery, addressed this problem and enabled generations to bake pizza more easily.  He tinkered with ovens, converted them from coal to gas, and developed the prototypical gas deck oven.  The 1957 Saturday Evening Post article “Crazy About Pizza,” credited Mastro with “having done most to popularize pizza,” and described the “model pizzeria [he had] in his store to show prospective pizzeria owners how to run their operations” as integral to Mastro’s business strategy.  It was inexpensive to open a pizzeria and newcomers had a good chance for success — in the 1950s, ovens cost less than $200, the markup on a pie was nearly 300%, and to increase sales, Mastro himself financed many purchases.

I purchased that issue of the Saturday Evening Post last evening on ebay.  When I recieve it I will show what the article actually says.

Norma

[waltertore]

Norma:  I look forward to reading the article.  Madeline Mastro, Frank Mastro's daughter (89 years old) is such a treasure for the history of NY gas deck oven pizza and sets the record straight on how it started and evolved.  She began working with her father when she was 9 years old and  remembers most everything from the 30's-60's about it including bake temp (550).  That was the norm she said and her father outfittec every pizzeria that opened in the NYC/NJ area in the early days of pizzerias and even supplied my aunts husbands family bakery in Harrison NJ with equipment. My ovens were her fathers last design for blodgett and she commented that this pie photo looks exactly like what they were turning out in the late 50's-60's.  I feel so lucky to have learned from old school teachers and to be born at ground zero in the 50's. I know NY deck oven pizza has mutated over the years but I prefer to stick to what I grew up tasting.  Walter

[norma427]

Walter,

I agree that Madeline is such a treasure in the history of NY gas deck oven pizzas and everything else she recalls.  I didn't know Frank Mastro outfitted Your aunts husbands family bakery in Harrison, NJ with equipment.  I know you make great NY deck oven pizzas. 

Madeline emailed me this evening and said the one photo I copied off of the web was Madeline's nephew Vincent Mastro eating the slice of pizza at the World's Fair.  This is that photo.

Norma

[norma427]

I received The Saturday Evening Post today.  The article, “Crazy About Pizza” is an interesting read.  It was, and is raining heavily in our area so I couldn't take photos of the article outside.  Hopefully anyone that is interested can look at the photos and read what is in the article.  In photos 14 and 15 it tells how Frank Mastro invented the first gas pizza oven.  I talked to Madeline after the Saturday Evening Post arrived.  Madeline said that article was published about a year after her father died.  Madeline never saw or read the article, but did hear about it.  I purchased another Saturday Evening Post for Madeline.

Madeline told me she just recalled that a pizzeria in Puerto Rico might still be called Pizza Plaza, or Mastro Pizza.  Madeline said that the person in Puerto Rico purchased equipment from her father years ago.  I am not sure if this is the pizzeria Madeline told me about but I did write a post to them to find out. 

https://www.facebook.com/Mastro-Pizza-Restaurant-Cocktail-Lounge-139195846145281/timeline/ 

Madeline told me a funny story about one time when they were shipping Frank Mastro Ovens to Puerto Rico and somehow the one oven fell into the water when loading it onto the ship.  They did recover the oven, and then her son Frank worked on it at their business.  Frank did get the oven running right again after replacing burners and other things.  Madeline then sold that oven for $350.00.  When Vincent came back to the shop from the World's Fair he wondered who had sold that oven for that amount of money.  Madeline said she sold the oven for less than the original price of about $600.00.  Vincent was not impressed that Madeline sold the oven for $350.00.

If anyone wants me to take better photos (when it isn't raining) let me know what they want to see/read.

Norma

[norma427]

Norma

[norma427]

Norma

[CaptBob]

That's fascinating Norma! Thank you so much for taking the time to post!

[norma427]

That's fascinating Norma! Thank you so much for taking the time to post!

CaptBob,

Your welcome!  When I talked to Madeline today she told me where a lot of articles were printed about her dad, but I am having a hard time finding them.  One place was called Mr. Executive, but I can't find anything about what that was.  Another place was Collier's magazine.  I also can't find what articles were in Collier's.  Madeline is a very interesting lady and knows so much about pizza years ago.  She told me today that one of their relatives invented many things for the Nautilus, and invented many things for the government.   Madeline and I am searching for Frank Mastro's obituary but we haven't been able to find it yet.  There is so much more information Walter and I found out from Madeline about pizza years ago.  I hope somehow we can keep it all together for an article how their family made contributions to the pizza world.  It is a problem keeping everything in the proper sequences.

Norma

[waltertore]

CaptBob,

Your welcome!  When I talked to Madeline today she told me where a lot of articles were printed about her dad, but I am having a hard time finding them.  One place was called Mr. Executive, but I can't find anything about what that was.  Another place was Collier's magazine.  I also can't find what articles were in Collier's.  Madeline is a very interesting lady and knows so much about pizza years ago.  She told me today that one of their relatives invented many things for the Nautilus, and invented many things for the government.   Madeline and I am searching for Frank Mastro's obituary but we haven't been able to find it yet.  There is so much more information Walter and I found out from Madeline about pizza years ago.  I hope somehow we can keep it all together for an article how their family made contributions to the pizza world.  It is a problem keeping everything in the proper sequences.

Norma

Norma is the research expert!  Madeline is like Norma says, is a wealth of information.  In my last recorded conversation with her (we have several hours by now I think) she mentioned her father dealt with Joan Crawford the actress after her husband died and she took over his business.  Also a huge pizza that served 4-6 people was a quarter and a pitcher of beer a quarter.  She said only 2 pies would fit in the oven at a time (same oven I have) so they must have been 24" pies.  They cut the pies in 12 slices and used those big round metal serving trays wait people carry food to your table on to serve it and they came with china plates.  This was the late 30's/early 40's(if I remember right) in NYC at her fathers place.  We are working on putting an article together to present to PMQ and when done there will be a recording of our conversations archived forever.  The editor did a great story on my program  so I have a direct line to him.  The hope is the article will spur a full book and or film documentary.  It will have to happen soon because Madeline is pushing 90.  Walter

[Andrew Bellucci]

Sorry, too tired to go in depth on this subject, just opened our third store.  Read this slowly and carefully:  THERE IS NO COAL BAN IN NEW YORK CITY. PERIOD. Doesn't mean you'll get approved for one, nothing is sure with the NYC Health Dept. and Building Dept. Grandfathered in is a JOKE.  Do you think the new Grimaldi's, now located in a #*%$ FORMER BANK  had a coal burning oven grandfathered in?  Do you think the various Anthony's Coal Oven Pizzerias magically found locations that had coal ovens built in a previous existence?

I know it's a myth. I helped perpetuate it when I reopened Lombardi's. The New York Times bought it hook line and sinker but then again Eric Asimov is not the brightest guy in the world, nor is he big on doing, you know, journalistic research. Come to think about hasn't the Times gotten caught for out and out made up stories? Yes they have. It's a #*%$ rag like most things that pass for "news".

This myth is the same as New York City water being essential. Nice marketing trick but a total falsehood.

And anthracite coal, which everyone uses, BURNS CLEANER THAN WOOD.  Anyone hear of a NY City ban on wood? Didn't think so.

The new Grimaldi's had their coal oven disapproved because their contractor is a first class scumbag who failed to include it on the architectural plans. They got caught and wound up paying $50,000 to get it approved.

I've got a ton more stories like that, but it's late and I'm not in the mood for a trip down memory lane tonight.

[norma427]

It is taking longer than expected to get an article/story ready about the Mastro family and how they greatly contributed to NY style pizzas, and the birth of the first gas deck ovens for NY style pizzas. More information is found each week.  Madeline's memory is still sharp as a tack and she has, and is going to provide many articles, photos and receipts.  Peter has graciously said he would keep all of the information in one place, so if something happens to Walter's computer or mine, he will still have the information, voice recordings and videos.  Scott Wiener also is keeping everything we send him in a folder.  When Scott has time he will look at everything we found so far and the videos.  Scott said by mid November he might have time to start looking at everything.

Amber, from the Library of Congress has found many interesting articles.  These are 2 of them.  I am guessing they were on microfilm. They are difficult to read, unless a magnifying glass is used. 

What prompted me to make this post was the one article called NY style pizzas “Big Sloppy Round Ones”.  I had to chuckle about that phrase for NY style pizzas because I never heard it before.  I wonder what would happen now if we called our NY style pizzas “Big Sloppy Round Ones”. 

Norma

[norma427]

Madeline and I talked this morning and she said she wanted to make the videos public that I did on her, so maybe someone might be interested enough to do an article or story about the Mastro family. Madeline is the only person that knows so much what happened when her father and brother were going about trying to invent deck ovens for NY style pizzas.

Some of the videos aren't the best and some are long, but I find it interesting what happened so long ago with NY style pizza and Madeline's whole family.











Norma

[waltertore]

Here are my phone interviews with Madeline and Vincent Jr.  Hopefully a writer and or documentary film maker catches these and Norma collection of Mastro pizza history.  Walter


https://www.dropbox.com/s/tyd8owyyx0gw3py/madeline%204.mp3?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fmfe1qne82o7tqo/madeline%208-4-14.mp3?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w5sypo178ke4ajm/mafdeline%20interview%202%208-13-15.mp3?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9ilfxxs1z55biwr/mafdeline%20interview%203%208-13-01.mp3?dl=0

 https://www.dropbox.com/s/4n5xahw51yai96w/9-19-15%20vincent%20mastro%20interview.mp3?dl=0

[norma427]

This post was written by Madeline Mastro Ferrentino on facebook today. 

Can't believe what the pizza industry has become after my father started it in l935 with his gas fired portable pizza oven that he designed and had manufactured by G.S. Blodgett in Vermont. He spent the remainder of his life until his death in 1957 promoting it and designing and have manufacturers produce the ancillary products needed to operate a pizzeria. My brother picked up the mantle and continued with it until his death in 1965. He demonstrated what one person can do with perseverance, dedication, and belief in a cause to follow it thru. The impetus was the depression when his customers struggled to keep their businesses alive and the necessity to keep his own livelihood going. He started a restaurant and supply business in 1925, at the beginning handling mostly china as a distributor for the Scammell's china company out of Trenton who manufactured the china for the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Waldorf Astoria, Horn and Hardart's and others. As his business and customers continued to grow his inventory expanded to all equipment needed to run restaurants, hotels and institutions. Then came the DEPRESSION. With jobs in short supply people hardly were able to put food on their own tables, much less go to a restaurant. Pizza at that time was made in the Italian bakeries after the morning hours in huge coal fired brick wall ovens but mothers and grandmothers made them for their children after school in their own kitchen gas ovens. Ingredients to make pizza at that time were inexpensive and my father felt it would be a good addition to an Italian restaurant or bar's menu. He theorized that pizzas could be made in gas ovens in restaurants as well. He experimented with his design first putting a gas line in a commercial coal deck oven, then going to a design to a full gas oven and after several further designs ending up with a model that could put out one pizza a minute by maneuvering the pizzas on the decks in a certain way. Pizza was instantly popular, because of price and taste. The first huge pizzas were sold for 25 cents and I remember people standing around the block waiting for pizza at Greenpoint Pizzeria one of the first places my father set up (and my mother and Dad helped to run) for takeout as well as waiting for seating. And so the industry started. What has brought me back to remembering all of this is Norma Knepp contacting me and her curiosity about all things "pizza" including the history of the industry in the U.S. She has opened up this whole new world of pizza as it is today which I had not realized was going on since my brother's death....pizza forums, competitions, days long shows, pizza tours etc that is world wide. I was amazed to find that my father and brother were no longer known as the major participants in the industry , but thrilled to know that what started as my father's desire to see people employed during the depression has made such an impact on so many lives as he believed it would. Norma is an amazing woman in her own right. I hope my Mom and Dad can see her from Heaven. From operating this one little stand in a Pennsylvania farm market to almost world wide recognition.

Norma

[TXCraig1]

Norma is an amazing woman