This notion of following exact formulas is just that; a notion. But don't tell that to my friend Domenico, pizzaiolo and Italian food historian. So far I've made several good and bad efforts with Skura, the flour he had sent to me. I've tried to replicate the pizza glory of his mentor Antonino Esposito, whose hydration is similar to most Neopolitan pizzas. But then I wanted to push the envelope, drawing on James Lahey's no-knead technique.
While worried that I had done something heretical, it actually produced the best working piece of dough, extensible and the flavor improved by the 18 hours of ferment. Then I baked up a pie on my Baking Steel. Besides the dough getting a bit stuck, the pizza was amazing. It had great crunch and had a great smoky scent from the grano arso.
My good friend, Domenico…orthodoxy is for horses with blinders.
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