Okay, I am excited to share this here. Last night I managed to make my best batch of New England Greek pizza at home yet.
I've been deep down the south shore bar pie rabbit hole lately, and I applied my learnings from that to some info I synthesized from this thread as well as some other readings, and Kenji's recipe for dough and his thought process over at
serious eats.
Dough:
400g bread flour
4g (about 1 tsp) Fleischmann's active dry yeast
8g (about 1 tablespoon) fine sea salt
2 tablespoons corn oil
260g (about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons) warm water (about 110 degrees)
Mix until it forms a tacky dough, form a ball, put in a lightly oiled bowl, and let rise for at least 3 hours.
Sauce:
1 6oz can tomato paste
1 29oz can tomato puree
1-1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1/2 tsp white sugar
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
Mix and that's it.
Ground beef "hamburg" topping:
1 lb 80/20 ground beef
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
Mix thoroughly by hand to combine, like a meatball.
Brown in a skillet over medium heat, breaking up beef into a topping size you like. Remove from oil with a slotted spatula or spoon.
Cheese: 50/50 Cabot Vermont extra sharp white cheddar and Wegman's low moisture mozzarella.
Pans: Lloydans 10x1 round pizza pans
Pan oiled with crisco and then 1tbsp of extra virgin olive oil, swirled to coat entire pan and sides
Bake: 500 degrees until done in a gas oven, bake but no convection.
Overall thoughts:
Crust texture is spot on. it was great. I'm not convinced this is the be-all end-all for crust here, but I was able to skip a lot of what Kenji suggested and have it come out awesome anyway. Maybe I'll look at incorporating something with butter taste like whirl or flavacol as some have suggested.
Cheese, I like what went in but I would probably shift this more towards my south shore bar pie blend, which is 2:1 some kind of cheddar to mozzarella, plus oregano and romano tossed in until it looks right (like Papa Gino's cheese looked like). However, I liked the texture a lot. Maybe if I could get my hands on some better mozzarella that would be a step up.
Sauce, I feel like I nailed it. I took what Kenji was saying went into his sauce but wanted it to be no cook. I read something here about more tomato paste so I ran with that and used what I've learned for bar pies to make something really easy to replicate. Would do again, and will try this on bar pies next since there's a ton leftover.
I also have a few of the Bay State 10x1 pizza pans, so next time I may try them and see how it compares. Was extremely happy with the bake I got at home on these with the Lloydpans.
