Americas favorite fast food is...
Wait for it...
No, it's not Pizza, it's french fries. In fact according to some sources, at least half , and perhaps as much as 3/4 of all potatoes grown the world over are used for french fries (and 1/2 to 3/4 of those are used specifically for McDonalds french fries).
Given the popularity of fries you'd think our favorite fast food entree would be a burger, but actually, it's pizza.
See, I WAS going somewhere with this, I wasn't just trying to be clever.
Oh, and I'll be posting my french fry techniques at some point in the future.
Anyway, pizza is an interesting food. It came to America as a popular lunch snack of Neapolitan (as in from Naples) factory and construction workers, and meat packers; first in New York, then rapidly spreading to the rest of the country as italian and greek immigrants spread out.
NOTE: Greeks didnt make pizza, but they made something similar to stromboli and calzone, so when they came to America pizza was a natural food for them to get into.
Even with the wider spread of pizza however, it wasnt a universally popular food, mostly limited to Boston, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and oddly enough St. Louis.
Pizza didnt REALLY take off until after WW2, when the burgenoning car culture made it easy for teens to socialize in pizzerias, and for families to take the pizza home with them.
My favorite bit of pizza trivia? The world pizza is derived from an old italian word meaning "a point," which became the Italian word pizzicare, "to pinch", and is also related to a Neopolitan Italian dialects word for "It's burned".
There are a few different common styles of pizza, including sicilian, neapolitan, greek, pan, and deep dish. There are also some pizza LIKE dishes such as stromboli, and calzone.
Oh, something important to mention here, calzone is NOT folded pizza, or a pizza sandwhich, as is sometimes sold as calzone around america. Calzone is a rolled and baked pastry dish, using a pizza like dough, and meat, cheese, and vegetable fillings without sauce.
To make a calzone, you lay the fillings out along the length of the dough, taking up 1/3 the width, then fold the sides over, pinching them together to make a tight seal. Pinch the ends together tightley, and fole over, flattening them against the top of the rol. Finally roll the entire assemblage over so that the smoothe side will be baked, make some small slits, or punctures in it to let some of the steam out, and brush it with an egg and butter wash.
Stromboli is CLOSE to the folded pizza that some sell under that name, but it too is a pastry dish using a pizza like dough. Stromboli however includes sauce inside it. Basically to make a stromboli you sauce the whole crust, then put toppings on one half, and fold over; pinching and rolling the edge tightly to seal. Egg and butter wash as with calzone, but bruch both sides, and do not puncture it. A stromboli should inflate as it is cooking, and presuming you made your dough properly, the steam won't explode the stromboli.
Importantly, stromboli and calzone dough should contain eggs, and should be brushed with an egg and butter wash to produce a hard, crusty and shiny shell.
I personally like two styles of pizza, pan (not deep dish), and sicilian style.
Pan pizza is probably most familiar to you as the style of pizza that Pizza hut is famous for(only whe I make it it doesnt suck); and it is NOT deep dish, which isn't actually a pizza at all, but more of a meat pie. Pan pizza crust should be thick and doughy; the toppings are spread out most of the way to the edge, and it's baked until the edges are crispy
Sicilian pizza is very thin, with a decent sized crust edge to hold on to; and it should be flexible but lightly crispy with a savory sauce.
The great part about making pizza, is how simple it is once you know how. Other than the dough, pizza is assembled more than anything else. Oh, and leftovers make great Pizza toppings
Now the dough.....
I hate to admit this, but I'm a not a very good baker. I used to make a lot of bread, but I was never very good at it. I'd rather stick all the fixings in a bread machine and let it do the work.
That said, my favorite pizza crust looks like this:
1 1/2 cups of sourdough starter
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup strong bread flour (high gluten flour)
1/2 cup fine cornmeal
1/4 cup of finely greated parmaggiano
black pepper, oregano, and basil to taste
Depending on your starter, you may need to add 1/2 cup of warm water. If the dough gets too dry, add a little more starter, or a bit of water. If too wet, add a bit more cornmeal. If you are going to let the dough rise a bit (for a pan pizza), add a bit more starter; and if you want a very crusty dough, or if you are making a stromboli or calzone you can add an egg and some butter.
Mix into a thick dough, (as with a soft french bread) and let rest for 15 minutes or so, then knead. Once you've kneaded the dough, cover it and let rest for 1/2 hour covered on a countertop.
This rest lets the glutens form some structure in the dough, and lets the dough relax; so forming the pizza without tearing is easier.
Remember, the sourdough here is primarily for flavor, not neccesarily just as a leavening agent (though if you are making thick pan pizza, letting it rise works well).
If you are going to make a thick pan pizza, you want to let the volume expand 30% or so. Too much though, and the dough will be too airy.
Once the dough has been prepped, you can refrigerate or freeze it; and it will stay good for a few days, though it won't rise any further.
I have two different "favorite" assemblies, one for pan pizza, and one for sicilian.
Ultimate pan pizza:
Toppings
Pepperoni
Italian sausage
Linguica sausage
Meatball
Bacon (American style)
Boneless Chicken Chunks (grilled or sauteed and sliced)
Feta cheese
Seasonings
Basil
Garlic
Oregano
Black pepper
Cheese
Mozzarella
White Cheddar
Parmaggiano
Sauce
Savory black pepper basil and oregano tomato sauce. I like to use my 2 pound Meat Sauce , though it needs to be thinned out a bit (as is noted in the recipe).
Prep
Bake the pizza in a thick straight walled pizza pie pan, at least 1" high. Wipe the pan down on the inside with olive oil, and dust with medium cracked cornmeal before laying the dough.
Don't toss or roll the pizza, stretch and fold it a few times on a cold stone, or on the bottom of a cookie sheet, griddle, or heavy skillet that you've stuck in the freezer.
Once the dough has been worked, ball it up, then jsut stretch it out to a large button shape, and press it out to the edges of the pan, pushing the edges of the dough up the side of the pan, and let it sti. covered. for about 10 minutes.
Lightly brush the crust with olive oil, or garlic butter before laying out the sauce and toppings.
Spread the sauce out fairly thickly, not quite out to the edge (about 1/2" in is fine), and then put a light sprinkling of cheese on, along with your first layer of toppings.
Drizzle some sauce on top of this layer, and then add a thick layer of cheese.
Spread the rest of your toppings out, and sprinkle the crumbled feta cheese over the top.
It takes between 15 and 30 minutes to bake it in a pan at 450-550 degrees (depending on your oven, the pan, and whether you put on a heated stone first). The crust should be crispy, shiny, and browned at the riges; also the top layer of cheese should be moderately browned.
1-2 slices of this thing (assuming a 16" pie sliced 8 ways) is enough to fill ME up.
Ultimate Sicilian Pizza:
Toppings
Extra Pepperoni
Extra Italian Sausage
Extra Bacon
Seasonings
Basil
Garlic
Oregano
Cheese
Mozzarella
Cheddar
Parmaggiano
Sauce
Savory black pepper basil and oregano tomato sauce
Prep
This pizza should be tossed quite thin, and baked directly on a pizza stone.
If you buy a pizza stone they are usually a very dense sandstone, or a high grade terracotta.
If you don't have a pizza stone you can go buy a 1-2" x 2 foot square (i.e. 4 square feet) slab of various stones from a countertop fabricator, or a stone yard (a quarries retail shop) for a lot less than they charge for high end pizza stones.
Not quite as good, but even cheaper (about $20) is a large thick terracotta saucer that they put big flower pots on.
Terracotta and sandstone are porous, which allows the hot expanding air up through the crust, and the hot expanding steam out of it; and the mass of the stone absorbs the heat, and bakes the crust evenly and directly.
Oh and for making dough you can't get better than a marble slab, though granite works well too (and it's cheaper); and again buy them from the stonemason, not from the kitchen store.
No matter what you use as a pizza stone, you should season it with olive oil, by heating it to as hot as your oven can get (leave it under the broiler for 30 minutes or so) then letting it cool until you can jsut touch it, pour a little oil in the pan, and spread it around with paper towels. Then heat it up again, and wipe out the seepage.
When you go to cook the pizza, again preheat the oven for at least 15 minutes using the broiler at its hottest setting, WITH THE STONE IN THE OVEN.
The idea is to heat the stone up so that the pizza is cooking from the second it touches the stone. If you don't heat the stone first, the top will burn and dry out before the bottom is properly cooked.
Five minutes before you are ready to cook the pizza, switch the oven to bake, on the highest temperature it can bake with (some ovens allow you to bake at the same temp as high broil, some will shut the heat off entirely if you try that. Know your oven.)
Toss the crust out 'til it's jsut thick enough to hold together in the middle. It will be slightly thicker at the edges.
Dust the surface you are assembling the pizza on with medium crack corn meal. This will add texture, and keep the pizza from sticking.
If you have a pizza peel, it's easiest just to assemble the pizza on the peel; otherwise use a large cutting board covered with parchment paper.
Lightly brush the crust with olive oil, or garlic butter, crack some black pepper over it, and dust lightly with finely grated parmaggiano. Sauce the pizza lightly leaving about an inch of clear space all around the edges, and lightly sprinkle part of the toppings over the sauced crust.
Cover throughly with the cheese, then distribute the rest of the toppings, then lightly dust with parmaggiano.
Transfer the assembled pizza to the stone as fast as possible, and DON'T OPEN THE OVEN FOR AT LEAST 8 MINUTES if you oven is at 450, or 6 minutes at 550.
After 6-8 minutes check your pizzas crust by lifting up on the corner. The top should be golden and browning, with mostly melted cheese; and the bottom should be almost fully cooked. If not, your oven isn't hot enough; but theres nothing you can do about that except leave the pizza in for 2-5 more minutes.
A volcanic pizza oven can cook a pizza in 3 minutes; but it cooks at 800 degrees or thereabouts; unfortunately most of us don't have volcanic pizza ovens.
Once the bottom is almost fully cooked, turn the broiler on, and finish the pizza under the broiler, until the cheese has lightly browned around the edges of the pizza.
Be sure to check out:
Recipes for REAL men, Volume 4 Two Pound Meat Sauce
Recipes for REAL men, Volume 3 Highbrow Hash
Recipes for REAL men, Volume 2 MuscleCarbonara
Recipes for REAL men, Volume 1 More Beef than Stew
Posted by cbyrne at April 24, 2005 12:01 AM | TrackBack