Reverse Engineering Patsy's Pizza

[varasano]

On my page I actually have a 10 second video of what it looks like just before it goes in (my web host is down tonight though, try tomorrow).  Get Ed Wood's book along with the starter.  It's worth it.

jeff

[scott r]

I had a little mishap with one of my starters.  Maybe I thought these thigs were a little more robust than they are.  Here is what happened.

I started the Ischia culture just as the directions say.  89 degree proofing container, everything looked great.  When I got to my third feeding I thought I saw some action in there but VERY minimal, and was off to work.  I got home from work after an exhausting 16 hour day, and fell asleep on the sofa by accident.  I woke up 8 hours later, jumped up off the sofa, and fed the critters, so 24 hours had elapsed since the last feeding.  I noticed a pretty thick layer of light brown liquid on top, and evidence of some major frothing above that level.  I must have missed the activity, but I know it happened.  Now the culture is just sitting there.  I have been feeding it every 10-12 hours for a day and a half, but there is pretty much no activity at all, and it smells pretty gross.  My wife says that the during the day when the activity was happening the kitchen smelled like fresh bread.  Now it smells like sour milk, mixed with some dirty socks, mixed with a damp locker room.  Well, maybe not that bad, but it is a little stinky.  Did I kill them?

[pizzanapoletana]

Scott

Do not panic. You did not kill them. What has probably happen is that the over fermentation has produced too much acid and feeding the same amount of flour and water doesn't work, because the amount of culture to feed is bigger then the amount of feeding. What you need to do now is to do some refreshment. There are instructions in the booklet about it, however what I do is the following:

Take 1/2 cup of the compost, and remove all the rest from the container (put it aside in the fridge for the moment, while you work on the 1/2 cup). You need to mix everything before taking the 1/2 cup: mix the brown liquid back into the compost.

Now to the starting 1/2 cup, add 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water and leave it for 6 hours. After that time, take only 1/2 cup of the compost and repeat the above (put aside the rest). After the second cycle you compost should be back fermenting at the right acidity.

Once you are sure about having recovered the compost, you can discard the rest.


Take care

[varasano]

scott, stay with it, it takes practice.  These types of things happened all the time when I first started.

Marco, listening to scott it reminded me of the 2 cultures I bought from sourdo.com years ago.  My current culture is so mild compared to those. It NEVER produces those kinds of strong aromas that can be smelled around the room, even if you left it out for a week.  The San Fran and I think the Yukon that I had were much, much stronger.  I remember now. I had the Patsy's for a few months and it seemed like it never really added much, so I bought from Ed Wood and after 12 hours I looked at Ed's and said, "So THAT'S what these are supposed to do". It was so different that I thought my culture was actually dead. Anyway, then I managed to cross contaminate everything and had to start over 5 months later with a new culture from Patsy's.  Anyway, I think this is why I get good results after many days in the fridge. It is the nature of the culture. The culture itself does not have enough boost to rise the dough and make it springy. So I have to add some IDY. But even a tiny amount of IDY will rise the dough in a day if I leave it at room temp. Therefore a very long cold rise is what works best. 

pft, if you get another culture from sourdo.com there are about a million experiments that I can think of.

jeff

[snowdy]

whatsup guys

I thought i'd give a try on getting in on trying to replicate a patsy's pie. This was my very first attempt.

i know there are a lot of different recipes in this thread but i was starving and couldnt read through them all so i went with Reply #211 of the thread:

3 cups KASL
1 1/8 cups Water
1/8 TSP + 1/4 TSP IDY (since i had no varasano preferment)
2 1/4 TSP Sicilian Sea Salt
1 TSP Olive Oil

When i was mixing everything was too dry and didnt seem to want to form into a cohesive dough ball so i poured in a bit more water.. but not that much. I know i need to get a scale asap and stop using my measuring cups....

First thing i noticed when i was done was how "tough" the dough ball was.. it felt a lot harder and firmer than i usually get with my normal recipe.

my normal recipe is:
3 cups KASL
1 1/4 cups water
1 TSP IDY
1 1/4 TSP salt
2 TSP Oil

anyways... this was my frist try with this recipe so i split into 2 balls and put them into big zip lock storage bags (not bowls).

about 15 hours later i pulled the first ball out and just took it out of the bag to see what the dough felt and smelled like.. it was a lot different than my usual dough.. i like this stuff a lot.. it felt like a big piece of rubber and seemed easy to work with. So i punched it back into a bowl and put it back into the fridge... then ended up taking both balls out and letting them sit out at room temperature for about 5 hours.

First i made a cheese pizza.. this dough stretched out easier than ive ever had any dough stretch out, it was great.. not sure why the big difference compared to my usual dough? less yeast, more salt? not sure.. anyways....

i got it out so big it was falling off the stone a bit so i had to push in the sides some... got it out to about 16 inches.

Topped with sliced whole milk mozzarella (boar's head - i was out of grande)...
then put some sauce on top of the sliced cheese.. then chunks of fresh mozz on top of that.

i used a normal type of sauce (crushed escalon 6-1 with penzey's and other spices) rather than marzano tomatoes or whatever.

The pizza came out great.

I had a problem with the 2nd dough ball however.. no matter how hard i tried it just took forever to stretch out.. i dont know if its because i took this ball out of the fridge and punched it down then put it back or what.. but i just couldnt get it thin. I have this same problem with my normal dough recipe.. it just doesnt want to stretch out no matter how long i leave it out to warm up.. ive even tried only giving it 1 hour to roll out cooler, etc.. maybe i just suck at stretching hehe.

I got it this one out to only about 13-14 inches probably and topped the same way and with a bunch of EZZO pepperoni.

Both pizzas were so damn good.. the best ive ever made to date.

so crispy on the outside and nice and moist and doughy on the inside the way i like it. I got some decent char on the pies as well.

i look forward to following this thread and perfecting this... gotta learn how to get some starters going too! 

Here's the pics of the cheese patsy style first.......

[snowdy]

more...

[snowdy]

the pepperoni pie:

[snowdy]

more...

[MTPIZZA]

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..

[snowdy]

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 MTPIZZA

here at my house my oven SUCKS and i cant even get the crust to hardly brown.. but at my parents place they have a 15 year old standard oven that goes to 550.. but i think for whatever reason it must go a lot higher than that (maybe up to 700 like pftaylor sugggested).. but for whatever reason it chars everything up nice.

actually i went to another friend's house with a 550 oven (mine only goes to 500) and got similar results.. i wonder if 50 degrees makes that much difference but i have no clue.

whatever it is ill keep going to my parents place to bake as much as i can 

[varasano]

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

[Pete-zza]

Snowdy,

Nice job with the pies.

I assume you used the variation of autolyse recommended by pftaylor, which differs somewhat from the rest periods used by Jeff. I recently made the Raquel dough using the more formal autolyse technique described by DINKS. What I found interesting is that all three approaches seem to work well, and I suspect that there are many more variations that will also work well.

I agree with Jeff that you shouldn't rework the dough, as by punching it down and reballing it. That rejumbles the gluten strands and makes the dough hard to work with thereafter. I think also that using a scale to weigh things is a good idea, if only to achieve a greater degree of consistency. Even that isn't perfect, and you have to fine tune things, but it seems to keep the fine tuning down to a minimum.

Peter

[snowdy]

thanks for the tips guys i'll post my results as i come accross trying new methods.. im making another few pizzas this thursday for family.

varasano what is the link to your site?

thanks 

[scott r]

snowdy, click on the globe under varasano's awesome looking pie on the left side of any of his posts.  That should take you right to his website.

pizzanapoletana, thanks you saved my culture.  I was actually thinking about throwing it out and getting new ones.  Today it started smelling REALLY good again, and now I am seeing some signs of activity. 

[varasano]

The globe will link to my site, but my site is down. Should be back up later in the day. I"m going to freakin KILL bellsouth. Last week I spent $40,000 going to a trade show and sent everyone there to my website to sign up for an event surrounding my new product. Contacts were coming in steadily. Then Bellsouth turned off our IP connection because they thought we were moving our offices this week instead of next.  MotherF.......


Jeff

[Artale]

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

Varasano,

Sorry about your phone problem!

If have been to your web site. (great site!)
I was wondering if you add all your water up front?

thanks,
Artale
 

[varasano]

My site is back up after 40 hours of downtime.  Ugh!!!

All the ingredients are added up front except that 1/3 of the flour is held back and added gradually as the mixing proceeds

[Artale]

I have used your receipe and my results are improving
each time.  With the help of you, pizza neapolitana, pete-zza,
PFtaylor, Dinks and others I know in time I will be making
a great product.

thanks again

Artale

[varasano]

I've posted up some new sauce instructions on my site. These changes are subtle, but have REALLY changed the taste of the sauce for the better. It is now REALLY close to Patsy's and so much better than ever before. Check it out.

I made a few pies yesterday. I ate almost 2 whole pies myself... (300g dough each)

[duckjob]

I don't have pictures, but I thought I would throw some observations out there. I made about 3 pounds of dough last week. I made a couple pies after 24 hours in the fridge , a couple after 3 days and one at 6 days. Overall they all handled well, flavor wise I would say the 3 day dough tasted the best, but even at 6 days it tasted fine and handled just as well as the other dough balls. I also made a small batch with a 65% hydration percentage, following the pizza raquel recipe/handling instructions. It handled great, but not quite as robust as the 60%  hydration dough, but with the limitaitions of my oven, it did result in a more airy crispy crust, which I liked.

Brian