Why then do we Americans have dough recipes with all kinds of unnecessary ingredients?
Regarding the starter: If all they use is baker's yeast than how can it continue on year after year? Baker's yeast just doesn't do that. Steve is using the culture, so he should weigh in on this. He said in recent post that it's taste is way different than the IDY he compared it to. He may not have the flavor to match Patsy's yet, as the same culture will yield very different flavors depending on the other factors. That takes a lot of practice. But he should confirm that the culture is highly active. It came straight from their dough.
Hey Marco,
Grimaldi's is not that great. If you look at Zagat and other surverys a lot of places beat Patsy's. But it's not because of the pizza. Patsy's is in a horrible dangerous neighborhood and no one goes there. I've been the only customer in there at times. It's a throwback to the old days. My fear is that in the last year Patsy's has a new guy cooking and the pies have gone way down hill. The Patsy's up until last year was incredible, way better than Grimaldi or Lombardi's or John's, etc.
It possible that Steve's yeast is already contaminated with some of Sourdo.com's cultures. From his description, I think it's 50/50 that it's no good. Send me your address. You are the new post office for the project.
Regarding high hydration. My best pies are high hydration. But Patsy's doughs are not. So I'm close, but that's an important area of difference.
Marco uses 1-5% starter, I'm at 40%. Another huge, huge difference to work on.
Jeff
With a little trial and error baking in the coming days, we will return a recipe that can be used faithfully by all.
pftaylor; pasty's don't cook thier sauce.
Sicily is a big Island and a Political region of Italy. Tapani is a city in Sicily by the sea side. That is the geography sorted.
I use the same salt from Antica Salina, but the no-iodized one. I found that it work better then the iodized one.
Other Italian Sea Salt, that do not specify "Sicilia", they are most probably from Apulia.
..., you can send someone by there but not before Thursday as he is out of sauce.
Sounds good, but $16.00 ?
I would rather run around with a net catching wild yeasts before I paid $16.00
I would rather run around with a net chasing wild yeasts before I paid $16.00
Snowdy I'd take a bite out of that pie...looks great..your baking technique, how do you get your nice bottom char?? I bet this tasted great like you said..
Hey Snowdy,
The pies look really good. A few things I could suggest: Take note of the autolyse and gradual adding of flour techniques that I talk about extensively on my site. You will never have a tough ball that won't stretch out again. Working with a recipe is fine, but as you are adding the flour, you must learn to feel the dough. If it feels right, it's done. No need to add the last bit of flour (which will make it tough) just to satisfy a number on a recipe. You must learn to do it by feel ultimately because humidity and other factors come into play. Also, we have not discussed punching down the dough much on this thread. Neither I nor pft do it. I've really had no luck with that at all. It makes it tough and is just unnecessary. But the most important thing you will do is add the rest periods: mix 1 minute, rest 20, knead 10, rest 5, knead 5, rest 15, make balls. 2/3 of the flour goes in at the beginning, the rest gradually. This will radically transform your dough.
As the dough becomes easier to extend, you should make the ball a little lighter for the same pie size.
Unfortunately, my website is down tonight.
Jeff
I'm not using a starter at this time. I will be purchasing the italian starters from sourdo.com pretty soon I think. I'm debating on whether I should buy his book first so I don't mess the starts up, or if the info the starter comes with would be good enough. For now I'm using IDY.
Marco,
do you use a rest period in between kneading?
also from your response you indicate that maybe
too much mixing is the problem creating a denser dough.
What approximate total mixing time do you use?
thanks,
Artale
My family roots are located near tapani just east of that city in a town
called Castellammare Del Golfo. Me and my wife at such a point would like to take
a trip to Italy and Castellammare will be on the list of places to see.
Beautiful landscape!
Chow!!
duckjob, you may actually be mixing too little. 6 minutes total kneading seems light to me. I don't know what kind of machine you are using, but for a home machine especially, that seems low. I have best result with 10-15 total time, depending on the hydration and a few other factors. But most of this time is with less than all the flour
I do use a rest period, which in Naples we call "riposo", but is done once the dough has reached the right consistency (but not texture). We have been doing so for centuries, and it will be described in full details in my forthcoming book. I let the dough rest for 15-20 and then I turn on the mixer again for a full rotation, one only. The dough change aspect immediately.
I just put up 3 new photos of a caputo pie at the very bottom of my site:
http://www.think2020.com/jv/recipe.htm
Good pies, but nothing that would make me travel the planet looking for a Caputo distributor. Read my comments with the photos.
Jeff
Good pies, but nothing that would make me travel the planet looking for a Caputo distributor.
Can someone point me to the Patsy's sauce recipe that Bill and others are praising? I'll probably be starting with 6-in-1 tomatoes
One minor thing. I know I've said this before, but my latest experiments really confirm that a light springy dough comes from high hydration (probably 62-65) and a very small amount of rise. Don't let the dough overrise. Marco said 25%. No doubling. I agree. It might be a bit more that 25% but not much.
He owns nearly the entire block lest the convenience store (which is owned by a Chinese family who got their first break in America by getting a job with Patsy Lancieri many years ago). So he has gobs and gobs of historical artifacts from which to pay tribute to the history of the place. You could sum up his approach as not wanting to change a thing for fear of screwing something up. He wants it to be an original.
My sense is you are now trapped. Yep, you are caught in a vicious cycle where the pie you are making today is a better pie than the one before it.
Kindly share photographs of your journey...
When I go there the oven was up to 1000F, but the wood embers were spread all over the baking surface. As soon as they were swept to one side the temp began to drop. The first pie went it at 800F but by the time it came out about 3 min later, the underlying brick was just 650F. The stone continued to fall in temp all the way down to 400F and after hours of stoking we never got it much above 600. All but the first pie were 6-8 minutes.In my experience, which is limited solely to my own oven, a live fire is important to keep the deck up to temp. With lots of practice, I've become better at maintaining a fairly even deck temp between pies. I toss in small pieces of wood to keep the fire just right, not too big, not too small. The deck under the pizza is somewhat cooler immediately after removing a pie, but recovers fairly quickly. I've never seen such a sharp drop as you've observed. Perhaps your friend's oven has a much smaller thermal mass or doesn't have as much insulation.
all of the commercially available US made ovens had too high a dome to cook a pizza properly in one minuteis pretty sweeping. I think there are 2 considerations:
After getting threatened with legal action on a bread board because of the cleaning cycle thing, someone on that board suggested pizzamaking.com as a place I might share ideas. I found this site and posted a link to my page with the above formula. Two months later, this thread began.
On trips to NY I got samples of Patsy’s dough twice and Johnny’s dough once and started to culture them.
I enjoyed your post Jeff and your openness,but fully respect it when the likes of Marco, Bianco etc. play their cards close to their chests.They have "Property to protect".I for one would choose a similar tight lipped path if I were in their position.I do obviously find it frustrating on an open forum when a knowlegable contributor decides to drop you a bone purely as a tease,but I guess that is partially a marketing ploy (and it works !) that I have to respect .
David
Peter,
Sorry but i don't recall and i don't have the time to go back and read the whole thread right now,but were comparison records kept of water , Flour , OTH , Room Temps kept by anyone?I think these are all variables that may well have as dramatic effect on the quality of the final dough characteristics in conjunction with the type of leavening agent?
Jeff,
I was wondering whether you have ever tried making your dough without using the rest periods. The reason I ask the question is because the best doughs I have ever made from the standpoint of handling and being essentially rip-free, almost without exception, used a natural preferment. In some cases, an autolyse or similar rest period was used, but in some cases it wasn’t. In some cases I used supplemental commercial yeast (IDY) but in other cases I did not. When I used rest periods, I didn’t detect a significant difference whether I used the classic Calvel autolyse or another form of rest period. What seemed to be the constant throughout the best results was the natural preferment. To be sure, I had some lesser handling doughs when I used a natural preferment but I think in most cases it was because I was new to using natural preferments (most of my early work was at room temperature) and I perhaps allowed the doughs to overferment and become too extensible. I haven’t tried your formulation as much as pftaylor’s original “Patsy’s” dough formulation and its successor Raquel formulation, but some of the best results I achieved with the dough was using those formulations. Interestingly, at pftaylor’s suggestion, when I tried using the Raquel dough management with the basic Lehmann dough formulation, but using commercial yeast only, I did not get particularly noteworthy results.
As you know, pftaylor started out his reverse engineering exercise using a basic dough formulation posted by ilpizzaiolo (Ron). With input from many of the forum’s members, including you, that formulation was greatly enhanced, especially in the use of a natural preferment, even though the premise—that Patsy’s was using a preferment—turned out to be faulty. That aside, I know that pft’s results improved when he started using your “Patsy’s” starter, as he noted himself at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1053.msg10278.html#msg10278. To be sure, there were differences from what you were doing at the time. As recorded in this thread, which I read in its entirety over the weekend, pftaylor used a different configuration of mix/rest periods than you were using at the time, a different flour (KASL), a different mixer (a basic KitchenAid mixer), a different baking system (a high-temperature grill), and he also incorporated dough handling procedures he got from Jose at Patsy’s. He was also using a different percent of preferment than you. I believe that, at the time, you were using 40-42% preferment whereas pftaylor was using 8%. I know you guys have debated the differences in your formulations and techniques but it seems the results achieved by both of you were, and continue to be, quite similar. And at the center of the good results, even with the differences, is the natural preferment. Which brings me full circle again on whether it is the natural preferment that is the most important part of your respective dough formulations from the perspective of creating anti-rip doughs, maybe even to the exclusion of the rest periods. I would also be interested in knowing whether you ever tried pftaylor’s “Patsy’s” or Raquel formulations and methods and, if so, what results you got.
Peter
David, thanks for mentioning this.
Let me clarify for all the forum something and why I adopted the approach used now:
You know that I started writing on the internet few years ago on pizza.it. Well, at the time, i was quite open on numerous subjetcs as I was to a lesser extent at the beginning on this forum for the same desire od promoting Pizza Napoletana and traditional breads. This was also the time that I started organising all my research to write a book Then I was left burnt:
A guy opened a pizzeria ans start promoting it as authentic out of knowledge acquired on that forum. The product is nowhere authentic, but he believe so as he had "studied" my posts.. tHIS FOR ME WHENT AGAINST WHAT i WAS trying to achieve as the wrong product was sold as Pizza Napoletana and what is more he is making money out of poor customers... Another guy started a bakery out of private messages he exchanged with me. Now his making loads of money... no credits nor retribuition was ever given to me.... Then I thought this is not working...
I do not really do it for marketing, trust me as I have very little time to spare for consultancy and have to refuse most. I recently had to put someone in the queue for September 2007 (I know there are sceptics out there, but when the time will come I am sure he will let this story go public as part of his opening campaign).
That is for now.
Ciao
PS to answer also another message, the book is on hold and being revised and only a smaller version with no cover of my personal method, will be published within the next 2 years
Cheesy,
I shrunk the skin back down to just under 16" or so. My grill will not accept a pie larger than 16". The reason why I wanted to stretch the skin so big was purely academic. I'm not sure I reached the upper limit. In fact, I wasn't close. I was too worried about being able to get it back down below 16" so my family could eat dinner. The lesson learned on being able to stretch the skin so easily was quite valuable. The dough demonstrated it's high-performance ability to stretch without tearing or even developing those nagging thin spots. Consequently, I very well may choose to reduce the ball size to 13oz or less for a 16" pizza as a result in the near future. The impact of that newfound ability affords the opportunity to reduce the amount of carbohydrates fairly significantly. Fewer carbs without sacrificing taste is a good thing in my opinion.
Here is the complete formulary:
Pizza Raquel - Everything You'd Want (TM Pending) - Based on input from ilpizzaiolo, Pete-zza, Varasano, pizzanapoletana, dinks, bakerboy, quidoPizza, Arthur, friz78 & countless others.
Weight Volume Description Bakers Percent
16 oz/ 456 Grams 3 cups KASL High Gluten Flour 100%
9.6 oz/ 273 Grams 1 1/8 cups or 9 fluid oz Water 60%
.01 oz/ .285 Grams 1/8 teaspoon (baker's pinch) Instant Dry Yeast .15%
.32 oz/ 9.1 Grams 2 1/4 teaspoon Sicilian Sea Salt (fine cut) 2%
.08 oz/ 2.3 Grams 1 teaspoon Olive oil .5%
1.3 oz/ 37 Grams 2 tablespoon Varasano Preferment 8%
Note: If producing recipe without preferment, boost the IDY to .055 oz, 1/4 teaspoon or .35% of flour
Produces two dough balls weighing 13 - 14oz (enough for two 15" - 16" pizzas)
Preparation Didactics
Stir water and salt with spoon until dissolved in stand mixer bowl. Add approximately half the flour. Add yeast and preferment (optional). Set stand mixer on stir for 1 minute with hook attachment. Allow it to rest for 20 minutes. Mix on stir speed for 5 minutes, adding in remaining flour gradually. Scrape dough off hook if riding high. Add oil and mix on 2 for 5 minutes. Get out thermometer, check dough temperature; it should be 80 degrees at the hook. If not, use warmer or colder water next time to adjust. Allow dough to rest for 15 minutes.
Remove dough from bowl and hand knead for 2 minutes on lightly floured prep area. Cut into 2 equal pieces, form into balls, drop dough into bowls, cover with shower caps or plastic wrap. I use no oil to coat the balls and have not noticed a problem removing balls from stainless steel bowl. Place dough in the refrigerator. Ferment for approximately 24 hours. On the following day, remove dough from refrigerator and bring to room temperature (approximately 60 - 120 minutes). To ensure light crust and proper cooking, dough must be at room temperature before cooking.
Stretching Didactics - Special thanks to DC PM & Jose of Patsy's Pizza
Step 1 - Place dough ball in flour bowl. Dust both sides well
Step 2 - Flatten ball into a thick pancake-like shape with palm of hand, ~ 2" thick. Dust well
Step 3 - Flatten pancake further by pressing 8 fingertips into center and working toward the rim until skin is 8 - 10 inches round. Keep dusted with flour
Step 4 - Place hands palm down inside rim (as if patting with open hand) and stretch outward while turning. Stretch to 12" round
Step 5 - Place skin over knuckles (1st time dough is lifted off bench) and stretch to 16"
Step 6 - Place on peel and dress with favorite toppings
Step 7 - Run a string underneath skin to prevent sticking (Patsy's uses baker's string)
Step 8 - Peel dressed skin into preheated oven (1 hr+) outfitted with a stone or tiles
Step 9 - Bake until lightly charred and golden brown at highest temperature possible
Varasano Preferment? Can someone point it out to me?
Dave,
It is a culture that Jeff Varasano developed from a dough that he obtained from one of the Patsy's pizzerias. It is discussed here: http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm.
Peter
I should probably try Totonno's next. I hear their pizza a little thicker, more crispy, and at least cooked right.
Don't hold your breath. I was there a couple months ago, and it wasn't very good. As one of the guys I was with put it, "It's hotter in the restaurant than the oven."
Craig, I know this is an old post but I want to reply. I never been there, I never been to NYC as far as that goes but that Barstool Pizza review guy who always says "you know the rules, one bite", tried it in his review and you can tell it was really floppy. He made comment on that too. I don't think it was one of his faves to say the least. I like seeing all the places he goes to but be aware he uses profane language, can be crude and rude and raunchy. Other than that cool reviews.
You talking Totonno’s or Patsy’s?