STIR THE POTS

Attempting Bonci

Instructed about Gabriele Bonci through videos on Elizabeth Minchelli's website, I finally achieved some success attempting to bake his pane casareccio. Recently I decided to return to his pizza. It's not a puffy brusciato Napoletano style pie. Rather  it's more a foccacia sort of pizza - or "taglio," and sold by the slice or rolled, fried.

Bonci is a serious wizard with dough, and until I visit Roma, my mothers ancestral paternal city, I'll be making it here in Ameriga! This is my adaption roughly of il maestro Bonci's pizza, very rustic and my first baby steps in learning this style of pizza. One important message, don't be violent with the dough!

 

My adaption of Bonci's pizza a Taglio

483g flour

309 Water

198 Starter

40g olive oil

10 salt

Mix ingredients and rise overnight in fridge. Next day bring to temperature, about two hours. Spread in an oiled sheet pan delicately, trying to press lightly without knocking out all the bubbles from the fermentation. Allow to rise,(since using levain rather then straight yeast), about 1-2 hours, till noticeably airy and you can notice bubbles.

Bake at around 400 for about 20 minutes. You can cover with tomatoes, peeled, seed and crushed. Or there are variations you can see here.

Original Bonci formula (straight dough)

1 kilo flour

700g water

40g olive oil

20 salt

7 yeast

 

 

Multigrain Pizza

More and more people are boycotting carbs for dietary reasons. I'm boycotting stupidity for carbs, as I believe multi-grain doughs - full of carbs - are good for your brain.

My latest pizza adventure, hails the virtue of carbs, with a nod to healthy toppings, as well as a multigrain levain based dough. It's adapted from River Cafe Cookbook, by way of Chez Panisse. One of the pizzas was a simple mix of raw mushrooms, olive oil, parmesan cheese, oregano, sage and a drip or three of truffle oil...perfect for a late summer lunch on a windy weekend day.

 

The toppings, a mixed vegetable meledy of, eggplant, onions, cauliflower, shaved artichoke,garlic, jalapeno, tomato sauce, mozzarella, parmesan and drizzle of oil.

Though I am a bit of purist in terms of dough, I didn't mind the wheaty, slighty hippy healthfood aesthetic of this pizza dough. It's kind of a rustic sort of pizza. In the cook book, they roll it out very thin like cracker style. I much prefer some edge on my dough so I can fold and eat with my fingers.

 

Pizza meets my kitchen meets pizza playground

I've been doing test runs, baking pizza at home with new dough and flour, wanting to mimic the kind of pizza we create at work. I used a cast-iron pan, heating it on the stove to start it because my Cuisinart oven doesn't go to 800 F degree.  compensated by putting the broiling element as close to the stone and firing it simultaneously.

 Once I got the puffy look and set the bottom of the pizza with some upskirt char, I broiled the pizza till it was perfectly cooked. Bravo, it works and it's great pizza with capoccola,arugula and Romano cheese!

Forno bravo

Below are shots of my latest pizza cooked at home using sourdough levain with about 65 percent hydration - give or take a few extra mililiters - along with a tad bit of olive oil. This dough was made with something known as "double 00 flour" that I got at at International grocery on 9th ave.

 

It's a relatively wet dough that gave me problems before. But now, even though I'm still working out the numbers, it's pretty spot on pizza!

Pizza with morels

Yes, another pizza. Sure, it's tedious and always a struggle to whip up some inovative topping, but someone has got to do it. Let it be me!

I've been working out how to mix, retard and work out a hybrid pizza dough with various hydrations. The pizzas below were my best so far, leaving and airy dough, crisp and chewy.

100% AP flour

65% Water

21% levain

2% salt

Trace amount of yeast is ok, if your levain or old dough is a bit weak and needs a boost!

Bulk ferment 4 hours, ball to size you like your pizza, mine 200-250g. Retard overnight, here I sometimes remove my dough and let sit 30 minutes to warm up, then form, top and bake.

 

It's closest to a Napoletano style, which I like best. I am a crust man, but not a fat dough. I like edges puffy, slightly brusciato,(burnt or charred), with a thin dough between that holds all the topping. Not to heavy either, just enough to cover but not weigh down either.

 

 

Sure a margherita with basil, pommodori, and mozz is king...but use your imagination.

 

 

Pizza: With an egg and "rustica" taglio

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

Voglio mangiare pizza!

Okay, yet another post on pizza. Okay I like pizza. Oh, sorry, you know that. Anyway, today's pizzas are so much more sophisticated (complicated?) than the pies that typified "a slice" back when I was a kid. Don't ask my age, but while I can't say me and John Travolta shared clothing taste (in Saturday Night Fever) we did probably wolf down the same type of Brooklyn pizza. Heavy, doughy, and pretty damn addictive. 

 
 

Given Travolta's Tony Monero  liked to keep up with fashion (from polyster to hair gel), I actually think he'd have been pleased with all these new pizza aficianado terminology; Upskirt, Napoletana, and VPN. Whatever, pizza - like bread only with cheese - is basically water, salt flour and sometimes a bit of yeast, pre-ferment and maybe oil.

Most people would say it's the toppings where the innovations shine (or bubble). But like bread, much of the real genius in the pie lives in the making and the baking. My favorite place for tips is www.pizzamaking.com,  a data base of pizza aficionados lending their own experiences and calculators to make the pies. 

Here's my latest efforts, based on old dough and an old broiler oven, sheet pans, and cardboard peel, rustic!

 

 

 

 

Paulie Gee's

Pizza is as New York as it is Italian. Even within those geographies, it comes in all sizes, shapes, doughs, sauces. But there is one Big Apple pizzaria that struck me as particularly interesting... Paulie Gee's.

Since first hearing about it on SkeeterNYC's Vimeo on Food Curated, I've been hankering to try Paulie Gee's. It's located in Brooklyn's Greenpoint section, which is a short subway ride from Manhattan's Union Square. On a recent sunny Friday evening (luxurious with spring blossoms and soft warmth) I ended up venturing out that way. Greenpoint has been a Polish neighborhood for the last 100 years. Today the area breaths Kielbasa-plus-yeasty wafty old world air, and the emerging scent of new restaurants that sing bohemian chic.

 

 

Walking in to Paulie Gee's, the first thing I noticed was the deliciously dim-lit bar, wooden planked bar, tables and antique bar chairs. And it has a great array of shuffled music, played just at the right decibles, loud enough to hear but never blaring, great soundtracks for great pizza. 

The menu seems chock full of pun-intended pizza names, with a nod to salads and soup and even one pie giving hommage to an off-premise partner, Sea bean goods. My eyes made quick friends with something called "Red,White and Greenberg." 

 

Red, White and Greenberg, cheesy but really packed with flavor and the dough, that's the key. A pie with guanciale and pickled onions, meeting of all good old school with light crisp dough.

 

 

Paulie Gee's doesn't feature the classic Neopolitano pizza with puffy fat edges, but a thinner, less doughy creature characterized  by charred flatbreads, with a tender but still slighty thin, puffy crust. It lends itself to sharing the toppings. It's also less filling (in a good way). You'd almost think, wow, one more please!  So charmed, it begged to be savored and simultaneously demolished, washed down with a really satisfying crafted beer. And besides great beers, it offers wines and sodas, including Mexican Coca-Cola.

In the main dining area, you could see the wood burning stove with the distinct Napoli tiled oven and the pizzaiolas working each pie with care and precision.

 

 


What's nice too, I met Paulie as I snapped photos. He's a charmer, likes to chat pizza, and a real host. I'll definitely be back...

 

 

Breads from Turkey - in honor of the Arab Spring

In Egypt today most people are concerned with getting bread to eat. Only some of the educated understand how democracy works -Naguib Mahfou, Egyptian novelist

 (Thanks to Jean-Philippe de Tonnac for posting these timely words by Naguib Mahfouz!) 

 Watching the Arab Spring Revolution, it makes me wonder about the impact of food on politics, especially bread. It made me think of their classic breads, basic sustenance that suggests cultures that are enduring, imaginative, and rich.

My closest experience to Egypt comes from visiting Istanbul, where I quickly grew to admire the local pide or pizza vendors. Working with just a stove and small island to prep, along with a long peel to feed the dough into the ovens, I remember wanting to ask them if they would teach me. Their output was consistently delicious. 

Thinking about their baking this weekend, I decided to see if I could replicate some of them. Below are shots of some of the creations. They turned out well. It's worth a try on your own. 

What intriguing about pide and lahmacun ( a spiced meat paste on pide dough), are the flavorful toppings and the oddly attractive shapes. The pizzas are not your usual rounds. Rather they are oblong, shaped like a canoe with folded edges holding the filling.

Lahmacun, on the other hand, is a round meat pie that is covered and baked. The various toppings can be whatever you like, but traditionally it's sumac-smothered onion slices. Or sometimes it is topped with coriander and parsley.

 

 

Finally there is the versatile and wonderful "khubz Za'atar," a flat bread from the Levantine. A variation of pide, it's a close cousin to pizza, and a great wrap or dipping bread.

 Brushed with oil and scattered with the heady zataar spice, it's either baked on a stone or a pan.

 

It's also a great foil for my favorite lamb and beef kofte.

 

Pizza of the week

One of my job perks is working on an old-school broiler oven. It burns as hot as a wood burning stove. Very hot! That oven is used for most anything cooking on our line. One of my favorite uses is making a seriously singed and crusty pizza, the type you'd find at a great pizzeria. The intense heat leads to a uniform and rapid cooking of the pies, far more satisfying to bake and eat than anything made on a typical home oven.

Last Friday, having some dough already made, I set out to bake a pizza for that evening's staff dinner.  While trying to decided what type of pie to make, I got a tweet from Montreal chef Marc-Andre Royal, a pizza suggestion with potato and truffles. And so I took it as inspiration, guilding it a bit with duck confit, some ramp puree, upland cress and, finally, a bit of shaved parmigiano cheese.