Playing With Pizza is all about enjoying the world's most favorite food and figuring out how to make the best pizza at home. Along the way, we'll also explore foods, desserts, sauces, and anything else that complements pizza.
Thanks for explaining your pre heating method and showing the pizza going in. It helped me make a fair comparison against what I am doing. That pizza looked delicious!
I am always trying to make a better pizza since 2011....I am using ALL Trump Flour and I have been using Grande WM Shredded(used to use the East coast blend}And use Tomato Magic.......I am using the Best but will think about buying a Steel pizza stone for the winter when my Outdoor Blackstone will wait till the Spring of 2025 to be used again lol....
So nice to see a real kitchen! Also nice to see a real person cooking. You did make kneading the dough look easy though, ha ha. I was struggling with that step. My arms were like noodles the last time. Thank you for the video.
Hi, I’m a home bread baker from NJ, Italian American and I make all my own breads, rolls and pizza dough. I started getting interested in baking breads about 16 yrs ago with the no knead method baked in the Dutch oven. I make my doughs unique to whatever I’m making. I found your channel searching for Scala recipes. I’ve baked 2 already which came out great. Unlike you using pizza dough…..lol, I used a Scala bread recipe. As far as pizza doughs go, some use lean doughs, and some use slightly enriched doughs adding sugar and oil. I use the latter. Now my typical no knead bread is 75% hydration, but focaccia and ciabatta breads are 80%. Pizza dough and baguettes are 65-68%. After seeing the Scala recipes, one from KAF, and saw yours, the dough isn’t the same, but still might work. I used a Poolish for Scala and also sometimes for baguettes, but I use a straight dough for pizza.
Love me some Katz Bagels!! My Dad first took me there in the 1970's and I've been hooked since! Whenever I come home for a visit, I always try to make a stop at Katz Bagels to pickup some bagels, as well as some Pizza Bagels and Hot Dog Bagels. Not only are they great!! They are also reasonably priced!!
If I heard him right 12 quarts of water to a 50lb bag of flour is 50% hydration. Didn’t look or act like a low hydration dough. Anyways, still cool to see a master at his work.
Pizza looked pretty good. You know he was being coy with you about his hydration level! Regarding cheese, the part-skim Grande is a much better product than anything we can get part-skim at the store. Part-skim mozzarella does not taste right on my pizza at home. I usually use whole milk. I do upside sown-style. I found that works best in a home oven.
@@playingwithpizza Yes, that works the best in the home oven...cheese never burns. I use deli slices of either whole milk mozzarella or Meunster cheese....check out videos of Johnny's pizza in Mt. Vernon NY....the best!
Hey Bobby, here's a tip you might already know about, put a light coating of oil on your spoon before you dip it into the malt and it won't stick, it will just slide off into your dough, with no mess. And you did the spritz with the water and the ice cubes too, you did well Grasshopper! 👍 LOL...
I use that oil tip however I actually dip a clean spoon to gather the malt and then pour it on another oiled spoon. I did not want to add oil to the malt directly. Not sure if that spoils the malt.....
You are too kind! Thank you. I appreciate it. I was getting hammered awhile back when I posted that video! Good to know there are people like you out there!
@rbiv5 Do you want a pizza with Five Roses, a steak and cheese sub with rolls from Five Roses flour, Chicago Deep Dish with Five Roses, or a Chicago Thin Crust pizza with Five Roses? Shot a lot of footage, just need to edit. Let me know which one you want and that will be the next one.
Welcome back, good to see you again. Great reaction video. I just watched Charlie’s new video a few days ago. Loved seeing this guys passion for pie, reminds me of myself. Looking forward to the next one, cheers.
Bread flours are known to be heartier flours. Stronger with great water absorbtion. Pizza flours can be that way as well in fact many "pizza" flours are also great bread flours. Weaker pizza flours are often used for shorter fermentations and provide a more gentle chew. It's really not about the label, its about the contents.
@@playingwithpizza First, I love using Caputo Flour only. I place all ingredients either into a food processor or food chopper. Once blended, I softly knead it for a few minutes. Let it proof. once it rises, weigh my dough and let it rise again. So soft, not tough
Grew up in Boston and spent many Saturdays with my Italian grand parents... Scali bread, salami and Mortadella always came home with us... damn I miss that
I’m also of Italian Descent and a home bread baker. I watched my Grandmother measure and mix flour etc. it was by eye and feel. I started baking no knead breads 14 years ago, and I went into sourdough also. I did measure by volume but gave in and now use a scale just for flour and water. I’d like to see your recipes in grams, but I guess it won’t happen……lol. I’m trying your all purpose dough and will convert to grams as I hate lbs and ozs. From my experience, in various bread groups, internal etc. most recipes are in metric, or grams……FYI.
I hear you, paesan. I will try to get metric measurements in the descriptions moving forward. Appreciate you saying something. I am too scared to try sourdough.
I’m also of Italian Descent and a home bread baker. I watched my Grandmother measure and mix flour etc. it was by eye and feel. I started baking no knead breads 14 years ago, and I went into sourdough also. I did measure by volume but gave in and now use a scale just for flour and water. I’d like to see your recipes in grams, but I guess it won’t happen……lol. I’m trying your all purpose dough and will convert to grams as I hate lbs and ozs. From my experience, in various bread groups, internal etc. most recipes are in metric, or grams……FYI.
Other recipes I’ve seen use a preferment (biga) for the dough. My all purpose doughs are no knead, which I would make at a lower hydration to shape. It still ferments overnight. I’ve used a Poolish for baguettes but biga is a stiff preferment. I saw your other video and you use a straight dough, No Preferment.
Okay so what do you have to do is add the sea salt to the water first, room temperature, then you add the flour, and then add the yeast sprinkled on top of the flour. Just toss with a wooden spoon to incorporate it, then put it in the stand mixer for about 3 minutes. Let it sit for 20 minutes, then give it a few more seconds in the stand mixer and you'll have the perfect high hydration New Haven style dough. Been making it for a while now
@@charleshart5563 I agree. Not my favorite style of pizza (love New York and New Haven pizza), but it is good. I typically like a cheese pizza, but The Vinnie is very good (four meats, I think sausage, meatballs, pepperoni, and ham).
I do the same with 60% hydration since i live in a very humid area and its some of the best pizza anyone around here ever eats. I stretch it thinner and cold ferment for a couple days.
@@haKe110 That is a good idea. I have thought about it, and the reason I have not done so is because I thought about something Mario Batali once said: French cooking is the cooking of scientists, and Italian cooking is the cooking of nonnies. My great-grandmother came to the United States from the Campagnia region of Italy. I cannot remember her, my grandmother, or my mother ever using a recipe. The only time I saw my mother using a recipe when she was baking Italian cookies. I tried to get my mother to teach me how to make Sunday gravy and meatballs, and she would never give me measurements. So, as I thought about my recipes, they reflect my heritage, which is why I don't care if I am exact or not. But, you do raise an excellent suggestion, and I appreciate that. Thank you! I will have to seriously consider it.
@@playingwithpizza but baking is science, accuracy is key if you wanna make the same pizza twice, because unless you treat dough and baking as science you will never get consistent, and you need to have a scientific approach to dough, how elese can you improve something you dont even understand or what affects what and how. toppings are italian cooking, go by feel, ill give you that, but baking and making dough is hard science and prescie work and thats the only way to imporve and get consistent results. lets say you made the best pizza you ever made and you have no notes and exact data to how much of which ingredient and what the process was like, how you gonna recreate it? you guessed it, probably never.
I live in Ft Collins, and so am well familiar. Beau Jo's arose probably 50 or 60 years ago in Idaho Springs CO, feeding skiers coming down from the slopes, and very filling was their very successful mantra. THICK, look at the baguette like crust frame on the Mountain. I grew up eating actual NY style in the city and the NJ side of the river and could never stand Beau Jo's, not real pizza to me. In all fairness though when they started up good pizza in Colorado was very unusual, so they were wandering in a wilderness without much to compare themselves to but their whole thing was making bread with stuff on it🙂
Charlie does have it right, details matter and your pies are better if you follow his suggestions, including things like rye or spelt flour, diastatic malt powder etc.. Obviously if you were commercial and doing a few hundred pies a day you'd be in a whole different world, but for pizza at home he is a great source. His spreadsheet really does help you get crust thickness right, which I think is the most common reason home baked is not so good 🙂
I don't want to add any rye or spelt. If you are a typical pizza shop and not an artisan one, you are going to dump one or two bags of flour in the mixer, not blending a variety of flours.
Your brutal honesty sold me on a subscription to your channel. I'm a pizza aficionado and am in pursuit of making the perfect NY -style pizza at home, and I'm real close! Charlie Anderson's series on NY -style pizza really helped me get to the next level of pizza making. I know you're from NE Ohio, but I'm in the thick of it here on Long Island, basically the home of NY -style pizza. It seems as though every street corner and shopping center has a great pizzeria, one better than the next. However, there is nothing quite like making your own. Great job, Bobby!
