 PART 7 IN A 7-PART SERIES “Professional sports meets homemade pizza? Ridiculous!” I understand. But you’re going to have to trust me on this: It works and it’s all going to make sense. In fact, there’s an entire industry around the process that we’re about to discuss. People make good money and athletes win trophies because of something that can sound like hogwash on a platter.
And a warning: A lot of this is not obviously about pizza. It’s about things affecting pizza. It’s about a holistic approach to life, the universe and pizza. Life is a circle. So is pizza. Is this getting ridiculous enough yet?
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 The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 7, "Pizza Dough Recipes" Modernist Pizza Written by Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya Published by The Cooking Lab; First edition, October 19, 2021 Hardcover: 1708 pages, 32.7 pounds, 13.78 x 10.24 x 15.94 inches List Price: $425.00 Amazon discount price as of 03/08/23: $294.99 Is Cross-Crusting a deviant pizza behavior? What would happen if you used the “wrong” dough for the type of pizza you wanted? Would you be ostracized? Hell no! This is science!
Welcome to the review of Chapter 7, “Pizza Dough Recipes,” in Volume 2 of Modernist Pizza. This is the one you've been waiting for. Or not. Depends on who you are and how much you care. Some folks will lose their minds. It's DOUGH!  PART 6 IN A 7-PART SERIES “Getting that pizza off the peel freaks me out!” I have never heard anyone utter that sentence—but I have felt it from every new pizza maker I meet. Even some who’ve never yet made a pizza harbor anxiety about getting that pizza from peel to steel or stone.
Gluten and gravity, baby! It can be hard to feel that biology and physics are on our side. The pizza is not going anywhere besides where you put that peel. The gluten network holds that pizza together. Physics removes it from the peel. It's that simple. Yes, in the moment, there could be something really wrong with the pizza/peel relationship. But that’s rare. In my 20 years of making pizza, an occasional snag has lead to pizza unfortunate. A round pie turns amoebic. So it goes.  The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 6, "Making Pizza Dough" (Part II)Modernist Pizza Written by Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya Published by The Cooking Lab; First edition, October 19, 2021 Hardcover: 1708 pages, 32.7 pounds, 13.78 x 10.24 x 15.94 inches List Price: $425.00 Amazon discount price as of 03/08/23: $294.99 Ever wondered why some pizza doughs call for a bulk fermentation and others don’t? Strap in and hang on! It’s another wild ride inside Modernist Pizza.
The Modernistas recommend bulk fermentation for their bread-like pizza doughs. They also have an outlier Neapolitan recipe that includes bulk fermentation, which is not a traditional approach. I use and recommend a bulk fermentation for my own pizza dough. It was inspired by Peter Reinhart’s Neapolitan dough recipe in American Pie. So, maybe outliers abound—but it seems you’re really only going to get full scoop on the science from Modernist Cuisine. That’s probably because, well, lots of people just don’t want lots of science. But you and I do, right?  PART 5 IN A 7-PART SERIES “I can’t make it round!” This is one of the biggest complaints I hear from pizza newbies. They want that pizza round!
And who can blame them? It’s just another part of pursuing that unattainable pizza perfection. Not that round doesn’t happen. It does. But not perfectly round, though pizzamakers get close all the time.  The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 6, "Making Pizza Dough" (Part I)Modernist Pizza Written by Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya Published by The Cooking Lab; First edition, October 19, 2021 Hardcover: 1708 pages, 32.7 pounds, 13.78 x 10.24 x 15.94 inches List Price: $425.00 Amazon discount price as of 03/08/23: $294.99 After reviewing all of Modernist Pizza Volume 1, History and Fundamentals, Chapters 1-5, we continue the review with Volume 2, Techniques and Ingredients, Chapter 6: “Making Pizza Dough.”
This is going to interest a gaggle of pizza geeks. The keyword phrase “pizza dough recipes” has a monthly Google search volume of almost 246,000. And it’s interesting that there’s such a quest for pizza dough recipes when you consider the following observation from Modernist Pizza: “Most pizza doughs are made more or less the same way but pizza’s diversity shines in the final outcomes, ranging from ultrathin, crisp and cracker-like to something that is almost as thick as a piece of bread.” It’s one of the things I find fascinating about pizza dough: so little difference between recipes. So much difference between resulting pizzas. And there’s a reason for that…  PART 4 OF A 7-PART SERIES Focus, focus, focus. Such a dirty word. So laden and loaded. So much unwillingness to play the game with focus. Check out the following comments from a reader of Free The Pizza…
“There are so many good things you pointed out that I have talked myself out of doing, and the book is the inspiration to not cut those corners. I did one pizza…in the 900-degree oven with your guidelines of being intentional and it came out immaculate.” That message came from a guy who had read the book, and was looking at my website, trying to find instructions for using a 900-degree outdoor pizza oven. I told him there weren’t any and gave him some basic encouragement. He went ahead and used his oven and the guidelines of focus. Seems it worked out really well.  The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 1, Chapter 5, "Pizza Ovens" (Part II)Modernist Pizza Written by Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya Published by The Cooking Lab; First edition, October 19, 2021 Hardcover: 1708 pages, 32.7 pounds, 13.78 x 10.24 x 15.94 inches List Price: $425.00 Amazon discount price as of 03/08/23: $294.99 Modernist Pizza gives a comprehensive and scientific look at oven behavior in Chapter 5. What’s interesting is the recommendations for ovens, which are all about the type of oven relative to the style of pizza. And the things they don't say seem equally as telling as the things they do say. (If you missed that earlier part of the review, you can find it here.)
But once you’ve got a pizza oven hot and you put a raw pizza inside, what actually goes on in there? This is where the Modernistas offer one of the more enlightening explanations of pizza physics for the layman |
AuthorBlaine Parker is the award-winning author of the bestselling, unusual and amusing how-to pizza book, Free The Pizza. Also known as The Pizza Geek and "Hey, Pizza Man!", Blaine is fanatical about the idea that true, pro-quality pizza can be made at home. His home. Your home. Anyone's home. After 20 years of honing his craft and making pizza in standard consumer ovens across the nation, he's sharing what he's learned with home cooks like you. Are you ready to pizza? Archives
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