Pizza Bible - New Yorker Pizza

Pizza Bible – New Yorker Pizza:

Anyone who has seen my pizza blog posts over the past year will know I am a massive fan of The Pizza Bible book by Tony Gemignani and most of my recent pizzas have used the same dough recipe from the front of the book every time. I took some time to read the book again recently and remembered there were loads of great recipes in there so thought I should start cooking some different dishes. Next up was Pizza Bible – New Yorker Pizza. In fact, this blog post has this recipe in twice because I wasn’t happy with it first time around!

The Book:

The dough and sauce recipe is from The Pizza Bible Book:

-36%

The Pizza Bible

Price: £14.38

Was: £22.50

Ooni Blog:

My Ooni Blog has loads of hints and tips to get the best out of your Ooni Pizza Oven:

Ooni Blog

THE INGREDIENTS:

Flour: Caputo Red Flour

Flour Caputo red "00" Pizza Chef kg 1 - Package 10 Pieces

Price: £15.00

Yeast: Saf-Levure Dry yeast

NIL Dcl Saf Levure Active Dried Yeast, 500g

Price: £6.32

Tomatoes: San Marzano Plum Tomatoes

Zia Rosa San Marzano Plum Tomatoes 400 g (Pack of 12)

Price: £16.70

THE KIT:

6 litre food grade container with lid: I use this to bulk ferment the dough once it’s mixed

Whitefurze Plastic Food Storage Canister with Handle 6.0L

Price: £5.20

Food grade pizza dough trays (x3): I use these to cold proof the dough balls

7 Litre Plastic Stacking Food Grade Domestic Commercial Pizza Dough Bakery Euro Trays - 400 x 300 x 75mm Stackable HDPE Dough Proofing Proof Containers (3)

Price: £22.95

Wooden Pizza Peel: Stops your pizza sticking when you launch it into the oven, needs minimal flour also. I wish I had bought one of these years ago as it’s a total game changer.

Argon Tableware 12 x 13" Traditional Wooden Pizza Peel - 56cm Professional Pizza Paddle

Price: £8.99

The Dough:

Page 21 onwards in the Pizza Bible, it’s my favourite dough at the moment. Made two days in advance and cold proved as a large ball for 24 hours then split, balled and cold proved for another 24 hours. As with the lat cook the dough came out the fridge when I lit the Ooni Pro so it only sat out for 30 minutes.

The Sauce:

New York – New Jersey Tomato Sauce from The Pizza Bible book. The San Marzano tomatoes, tomato puree, oregano, salt and oil blitzed with a hand blender then hand crushed tomatoes were also added.

The Fire:

Oxford Charcoal Beech Lumpwood, 2 flamers underneath, lit and left for 10 minutes. I take my dough out the fridge when I light my fire, not as long at room temperature as most people but I find the cooler dough easier to stretch and shape plus it helps with the leoparding.

Flamers Natural Firelighters For Woodburners, Stoves, Barbeques and Campfires (200 units)

Price: £18.50

Two beech chunks on top of the lit charcoal:

Smoking Wood Chunks Beech - Kiln Dried Wood in Small Chunks for Smoking Food on BBQ's. Large 9KG / 25 Litre Box - Fast Delivery (Beech)

Price: £19.95

The Prep:

I made the sweet fennel sausage mix from the book with fennel seeds, anise seeds (slowly broke these out of whole star anise!), sea salt, black pepper, water, honey and course ground pork shoulder from Turner and George. The recipe says to use medium grind pork mince and I think that might work better as you will see below.

The Cook:

Mozzarella first, sauce on top, pepperoni slices, pinches of sausage, garlic cloves and oil. Once cooked finish with ricotta, Parmesan and Oregano.

The book says to place the sausage meat on uncooked so that’s what I did, I have done this on a previous cook and it was fine so I wasn’t overly concerned!

Pizza one: No ricotta or garlic as it was for my youngest and she said she didn’t want them! Not a bad pizza, sausage meat looked like it needed a bit more. It was probing around 60c so it went under the grill for a bit to cook the sausage more but not burn the pizza!

Pizza two: This one looked really good, all toppings bar garlic (eldest). Crust looked good!

Pizza three: All toppings bar ricotta (wife). Good shape but a bit over in places.

Pizza four: My one so it had everything on! Probably too much sausage!

Pizza five: Last one and usually a spare. Another pretty good one.

Summary: Some really nice pizzas, tasted great and were very filling due to the number of toppings! I enjoyed it a lot and will be cooking it again for sure. The sausage meat hadn’t cooked enough from raw in the Ooni and I think it’s because the meat was course ground and had a fairly high fat content. Medium ground and maybe a bit less fat might have worked better but that’s good meat so I decided to try again the week after!

2nd Attempt: This time I decided to cook the sausage meat a bit before putting it on the pizza. I used a massive cast iron pan that Petromax sent me. It’s a 35cm diameter pan with two handles. Big enough to fit in the Ooni Pro but bigger than my other pans so a larger surface area. I put the pan into the Ooni whilst it was heating up. About 10 minutes was plenty of time, I flipped the meat a few times.

Pizza one: The kids wanted Chorizo this time as the pepperoni was too spicy for them! Sausage meat looks a lot better though.

Pizza two: More chorizo.

Pizza three: Pepperoni time, no ricotta though – think we had run out!

Pizza four: My one

Pizza five: The spare, loads of garlic oil on this one.

SUMMARY:

I really enjoyed the New Yorker Pizzas. Such a great tasting pizza and one I will be cooking more often! The dough and sauce were the usual ones I make from The Pizza Bible book and were as good as always. The 2nd run was better due to cooking the sausage meat up a bit first before putting it on the pizza. I will do the same in future for any fairly big bits of raw meat like this.

The week after I cooked this I happened to be in San Francisco, what restaurant was near my hotel?