Pizza

(quick notes, mostly jotted down to remember what worked well) My third try in three years, and the most successful (I got the grill up to 700 degrees, which I’m sure helped): Grill setup: plenty of charcoal below, all air passages cleared of ash, and a pizza stone (porous side up for my glazed/porous stone) raised on two bricks to bring the pizza close to the hot lid of the ceramic grill. I let the charcoal burn for 90 minutes with the lid closed to get the entire grill up to 650-700 degrees (when I tried making a pizza earlier, it burned on the bottom before it fully cooked on the top– I think because the ceramic grill lid wasn’t hot enough– I could also try further raising the stone next time). ...

Still working on getting a pizza stone hot enough and where exactly in the grill it and the fire should go, but these were good… Using my father’s some-whole-wheat-flour high-moisture-content long-rising dough recipe: Butternut squash, red onion, buffalo mozzarella, gremolata: Tomato sauce, anchovies, bitter greens, salted olives, chili flakes: Pesto, ricotta, asparagus:

Apizza Scholls: still one of my very favorite pizzas in the US (New Haven style), up there with DiFara’s in Brooklyn and Pizzaiolo in Oakland. Amazing crust texture (thin, pliant, slight crunch), balanced tomato sauce… yes.

Unfortunately, a friend I was planning dinner with caught sick, so I had spare pizza dough I’d made yesterday, rising overnight in the fridge… Rather than toss it (but also not motivated to make sauce), I made a quick pizza bianca (olive oil, garlic, rosemary, mozzarella) as the first lunch of the new year: I tried a new cooking method in my somewhat limited electric oven, and it worked reasonably well: Preheating the oven to 500F with pizza stone on the top rack, sliding the pizza onto the stone, then switching the oven to broil and cooking for 10 minutes– letting the preheated stone cook the bottom of the pie while the broiler element cooks from above at the same time. ...

I hadn’t made pizza in many years. But now that I have a pizza stone and a peel, I have no excuse. I made a basic dough (flour, olive oil, water, yeast), with 3/4 king arthur all-purpose white flour and just 1/4 hard winter whole wheat to be on the safe side… but it rose and kneaded fine so I’d try 1/2 whole wheat next time. I made it in the morning, kneaded it for 10 minutes, let it rise all day, punched it down, and patted it out by hand into a round (I may try rolling it next time). ...

Fantastic thin-crust pizza. The toppings and flavor on the Bianca (“onion crema, shaved garlic, preserved lemon, aged provolone & wild arugula”) get an A+, probably the best Bianca I’ve ever had. I went into an almost “truffle-style coma” from the flavor combination of cheese, olive oil, and preserved lemon. The Amatriciana (“tomato, pancetta, chilies, pecorino, oregano & an egg”) was also quite good, though not as amazing. The crusts were thin, floppy, a bit less char and crunch than I like but still excellent. Ragazza has climbed into my pantheon of good pizza with good ingredients, along with Pizzaiolo, Boot & Shoe Service, and Una Pizza Napoletana. ...

After a few disappointing restaurants in the past two months, I’m on a roll: the pizzas at Una Pizza Napoletana were the most delicious I’ve had in the bay area. A bold statement, but I stand by it. My eyes might have rolled back into my head. The crust was very good (slightly charred, and a bit chewier than the crispy sharded style I think of myself preferring– but it challenged my preconceived notions and won me over). But the real revelation was the outstanding flavor, from just the simple Neapolitan combination of buffalo mozzarella, olive oil, garlic, basil, and sea salt (in the case of the Bianca– the Margherita that added San Marzano tomato sauce was also fantastic). How was it so good? ...