Pizza dough schadenfreude: are you ready for maybe the dumbest experiment ever? Then again...2/5/2022  GET READY TO TAKE DELIGHT IN MY FAILURE! Who knows how it'll go? Nobody! But, after whipping up a giant batch of standard Neapolitan-style dough yesterday, this happened: your procacious Pizza Geek wondered what would the result be if he mashed up a standard no-knead dough recipe with the sugar and oil from a typical recipe for neo-Neapolitan dough.
If you're new to all this, Neopolitan is the traditional pizza of Naples. Flour, salt, water, yeast. That's it. Neo-Neapolitan is the evolutionary style that made New Haven pizza famous. It contains all the components of Neapolitan-style dough, along with oil and sugar, which is verboten in Naples. Yes, there are even laws about this stuff. No-knead dough is easy. Pizza failure is hard. You end up scraping glop off of hot steel and calling your local 30-minutes-or-less outlet. Anyway, this is all a big mystery. Maybe it'll become a PLO. (Pizza-Like Object.) Maybe it'll be amazing and easier than ever. We don't know what's going to happen, but stay tuned...
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 Why is pizza so confusing? Simple. Pizza is not one thing. In Italy, it's all pretty close to the same thing. Naples has Neapolitan pizza. Elsewhere in Italy, the pizza is a little more American-esque. But when you come to the US, no two pizzas are alike. Case in point: no two Neo-Neapolitan style pizzas are ever alike. And in this article from trade magazine Pizza Today, Scott Wiener explains why.
 Neapolitan pizza matters. Really. Were it not for the Neapolitani, there's a good chance we wouldn't have the various American-style pizzas we love and adore. And the story of the invention of pizza Margherita is iconic. It is lore among pizza geeks. But ultimately, I find it difficult to care about the pizza itself. Yes, I've been to Naples and eaten pizza where it has the home-turf advantage. It was easily the best Neapolitan pie ever. Interestingly, the next best Neapolitan pizza I've had (after that of my own making) is in Salt Lake City. There's a restaurant in downtown Salt Lake called Settebello, started by a young Mormon gent who served his mission in Naples and apparently had a pizza epiphany. Since he hails from a regional, US-pizza culture where it seems pizza is largely made for feeding big families with dense slabs of dough hosting lots of cheese and toppings, some locals probably perceive Settebello as heresy. But if you're in SLC (or near one of its seven locations now operating in the west) and are a fan of Neapolitan-style pizza, it's a win. Ironically, in perpetually alcohol-challenged SLC at least, Settebello also has a good, affordable wine list. I respect and appreciate what Naples has wrought. Ironically, perhaps, the city of Naples I visited a few years ago has the feel of early 1970's Manhattan. Much of it is rough, gritty, and covered in graffiti. But for my own palate, the evolution of pizza into neo-Neapolitan and New York-style is really where the humble pie wins me over. A more structured crust (made in defiance of the laws of the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana) gives it more bite, more crunch. A blend of cheeses beyond mere fresh mozzarella gives it more flavor. The American upgrades to the stock pizza are small, but their contributions are significant. Maybe it's all about first love. Maybe the kind of pie that we first learn to enjoy becomes imprinted into our genetic material. I respect the pizza of Naples. But I love the pizza of New Haven and New York. For more about VPN, check out this post from Serious Eats. |
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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