Not Sure This is Pizza

So much has happened in the last few days. With the sound judgment for which I am so widely known, I bought a pizza oven, and I also decided to take another shot at making a bread starter.

There are two kinds of pizza that really float my boat: New York Style and Sicilian. I make good New York pizza, and I make the best Sicilian imaginable. I make both in a plain old wall oven. So why mess with success?

Can’t really answer that.

For years, I’ve been reading people’s impassioned words about Neapolitan pizza, and I haven’t paid much attention. It’s made in special high-temperature ovens, a lot of people claim you have to use 00 flour, it sounds like a pain in the butt, and the only two allegedly Neapolitan pizzas I’ve had weren’t good.

I ate at a chain called Anthony’s Coal-Fired Pizza near Hollywood, Florida. The pizza had very little sauce. It had some kind of meat on it, and it seemed greasy to me. The crust was sort of flat and useless. It wasn’t mediocre. It was a step down from that.

I ate a weird pizza at Mozza in LA, and it was like a bowl-shaped cracker with arugula and a fried egg on it. Two things that shouldn’t be anywhere near pizza.

Neapolitan fans rave about the crust. They say it’s puffy and delicate and crispy and so on. I haven’t seen that yet. It all seemed like crackers to me.

Nonetheless, curiosity overwhelmed me, and I started looking at pizza ovens. I learned that Walmart had released a really cheap one that works very well. I don’t want to blow hundreds or more on a big oven when I don’t know if I like Neapolitan pizza, but I am willing to spend a little on a small trial oven, and that’s what I did. Yesterday.

The Walmart Expert Grill 15″ charcoal-fired oven costs $117, and it takes about 20 minutes to put together. Hard to beat that. People say it will do the same thing a $700 oven will do.

They call it a 15″ oven, but there is no way you can get a 15″ pie in there. I think 14″ might be managed, but I have doubts. This type of oven heats more from the side than the top, and you have to keep turning pizzas in order to get every side evenly done. The bigger a pie is, the closer the rim will be to the hottest part of the oven, so it seems to me a big pizza will burn at the edges before the middle gets cooked. But I don’t really know.

The flames you see in the photo are not from charcoal. I dropped a couple of pieces of oak on the charcoal to see what would happen. People say a little wood adds flavor and heat.

I’ve gotten expert help, and I’ve learned some stuff.

First, the dough can’t have any sugar or oil in it, and the flour can’t be malted. Sugar and oil will burn. I don’t know what malting does. One reason people use 00 is that it’s not malted. I am told that any unmalted white flour will work, though, so I’m trying to make my first pie with Gordon Food Service Primo Gusto high-gluten flour, which I already had here. The text on the bag doesn’t mention malt. If I can make it work, I can avoid expensive flour.

Second, you’re supposed to use whole milk mozzarella. The squishy stuff. This type of cheese is completely hopeless in other types of pizzas. When you make a New York pie with it, the cheese shrinks, and all the water squeezes out onto the pizza, along with a lot of grease. I’m told this is not a problem at Neapolitan temperatures. I am also told that Belgioiso cheese is excellent for Neapolitan pizza, and that’s great, because it’s available everywhere.

Third, you’re not supposed to use pizza sauce. You use mashed-up peeled San Marzano tomatoes. I had no luck with these in New York pizza, but everyone says they’re what you need in Neapolitan. You mash the tomatoes up and add salt if you want.

Fourth, you want to let the dough rise at least overnight, and you may want to get fancy and use a starter to add complexity or whatever. I have found that starters are of no use whatsoever for New York and Sicilian pies.

Fifth, you want 60% hydration in the dough, which is a low for other types of pizza.

I fired my oven up today to burn the Chinese industrial waste out of it. The highest temperature I measured on the stone was 588°, and that disappointed me. Maybe I can fiddle with it and do better. I found out my infrared thermometer only went up to 600°, so I can’t do much research until a better one arrives.

As for starters, I have made them before, but they always grew so fast they got away from me, and they turned black and so on. Reader LauraW mentioned starters in a comment, and I started reading about them, and I learned that it’s normal for starters to get disgusting when they run low on flour. I also learned that you don’t need to buy bacteria or strange flour to make a starter. Plain old all-purpose flour works.

I got my new starter going about three days back. I used 100 grams of flour and the same weight of purified water. I didn’t want my well’s bacteria in there. As of today, the starter really stinks. Sort of like cheese. Sort of like feet. The web says this is okay, because it’s going through a phase. I hope so.

The starter should be ready to use in about 4 days, so I’ll try it in a Neapolitan pie if I haven’t given up on the oven yet.

My plan is to use fresh mozzarella and San Marzanos, along with some fresh basil. That’s all. I have a feeling I’m going to be disgusted, since these ingredients sound bland. That won’t matter as long as the crust is good. If the crust is worth all this effort, I can put real pizza ingredients on top of it eventually.

I have no interest in becoming a purist. If I stick with this, I want to be a guy who makes phenomenal pizzas with real Neapolitan crusts, no matter how much I have to bastardize the cheese, sauce, and toppings. If I like the traditional stuff, whoopee, but if I don’t, I won’t let it stop me.

If I get heavily into this, I’ll spring for a real gas oven and add it to my patio arsenal. I don’t want to keep dealing with lump charcoal until I die.