According to statistics, the amount of amateur home chefs in the United States has skyrocketed since December 2019 for unknown causes. The only thing I can think of is that the price of flour has fallen, considering that everyone and their dog (or cat) has been making sourdough like there’s no tomorrow. At the current rate, sourdough will have evolved to be the dominant species in the world by 20312.

Alas, if you find that the photos you posted of your sourdough starter haven’t been getting as many likes on instagram as you had hoped, allow me to turn you to a more fascinating, albeit more difficult alternative - Pizza! Specifically, New York style pizza. More specifically, the best kind of pizza. This recipe is structured around two phases: the preparation of ingredients multiple days in advance, and a high-octane assembly process that resembles the assembly of pizza in actual New York restaurants.

I would like to state in advance that this recipe is a bit cumbersome, but don’t be weaned off too soon. This pizza is spectacular, and once you hone in on the process, it’s an awesome and easy meal. On top of that, it can be adapted to make other tasty foods such as garlic bread, breadsticks, calzones, you name it. If this DOES end up seeming way too complicated, allow me to direct you to another fantastic DIY pizza option. Anyways, let’s dive right in. This recipe makes four ~12 inch pizzas.

~ Martin P.

Ingredients & Supplies: (Four 12 inch Pizzas)

Dough

• 5 cups bread flour (plus more for kneading)

  • You can substitute all-purpose if needed (I know getting your hands on dough is not easy these days) but bread flour gives us the chew and s t r e t c h that we desire.

• 2 tbsp olive oil (plus ~1.5-2 more for storage)

  • This helps the crust brown. Remember, we’re cooking in ovens that are half as hot as the ones in actual pizza restaurants, so all thermal conductivity helps.

• 1 tsp active-dry yeast

• 1 tbsp sugar

  • Also helps the crust brown.

• 1 tbsp salt

• 2 ¼ cups warm water

• Four medium-sized bowls/containers

Sauce

• 28 oz can Pastene “Kitchen Ready” crushed tomatoes

  • These tomatoes are top notch. Strong, flavorful, and they’re very close to the sauce base used in most New York pizzeria joints by the name of Full Red.

• 2-4 tbsp olive oil

• ¼ tsp sugar

• 1 tbsp dried oregano

• ½ tsp onion powder

• ½ tsp garlic powder

• ¼ tsp thyme

• ¼ tsp marjoram

Cheese

• 6-8oz low moisture, whole milk full-fat mozzarella

  • It is CRUCIAL that this cheese be low moisture, and less crucial but still important for it to be whole milk. This type of cheese is tangy, delicious, browns well in the oven, and doesn’t give you a wet pizza like you would get from the extra whey in full-moisture fresh mozzarella. This cheese can be hard to find, but I’ve noticed it is most easily found at the deli counter;. Refer to the FAQ if you still can’t find any.

  • Do NOT use pre-shredded cheese. These packets include an anti-caking agent (often potato starch) that causes the cheese to not melt right.

• 1 tbsp parmesan

  • Not required, but the fancier New York places use it, so why not be fancy?

Misc. Supplies:

• Pizza Stone/Steel

  • A pizza stone/steel is just a giant slab of stone/steel that sits in your oven and retains heat. This is the key to a spectacular crust. By having a giant thermal mass that retains heat and can transfer a lot of this heat to the bottom of your pizza, you can create a nice brown crust without burning the top of your pizza. You can substitute with an upside-down baking pan if you don’t have one of these, but I highly recommend getting one.

  • A pizza stone is only around 10$-20$ which, yes, is money, but it’s well worth it. A pizza steel is even better, but those cost quite a bit more.

• Pizza Peel

  • Yes, you need one of these. However, the definition of a pizza peel is loose. All you need is a flat surface large enough to build a pizza on that also has a thin edge so the pizza can slide off onto the stone/steel easily. You can even use a piece of cardboard (single use, unfortunately).

  • I ended up making my own from a large, thin piece of plywood. Is it food safe? Well, I’ve cooked over a dozen pizzas on it and I haven’t died yet (for better or for worse), so the answer is whatever. If you’d like a proper one, here’s a cheap one I found on ebay. If you make your own, make sure it's around 12 inches in diameter. I advise against using a cutting board as you’ll end up with a pizza that just tastes like plastic (please refer back to my other DIY pizza recommendation above if plastic flavor is what you desire).

• Flour (for dusting)

• Cornmeal

  • Substitute any thick grain of your liking, the corn meal particulates just act as tiny ball bearings between the bottom of the pizza and the pizza peel. You could use extra flour instead, but the texture will be worse.

• Tongs

Preparation

Here, we prepare all the ingredients and components in advance, all at once, so that the ingredients have time to get tasty and so on the day of the pizza assembly, we can throw everything together and have a pizza ready in under 10 minutes. I advise against doing these steps on an empty stomach.

Dough

Mix all these ingredients in a nice big bowl and knead the dough until it can be stretched somewhat thin (If you want to make sure your yeast is alive, mix the water, sugar, and yeast first, and make sure the yeast foams after a few minutes. Then, add the rest of the ingredients). I typically spend around 20-40 minutes kneading. Be warned, this dough is VERY wet and sticky (nice) and, as such, if you’ve never kneaded dough before, it can be quite challenging to knead without having your hands become one with the dough. Just be patient, coat your hands in a fresh layer of flour every few kneads, and you’ll see that the dough becomes more workable as you go on. If your hands do get intensely covered, use a fork to scrape the dough off your hand (the pizza will not taste like hands, I promise) and continue kneading with freshly flour’d up hands. Knead until the dough can be stretched pretty thin without tearing. This requires some time, so be ready for quite the arm workout.

Next, bring out four bowls and pour a bit of olive oil in each, a little under half a tablespoon. Now, divide the dough into four equal parts, each for one pizza. You can rip the dough apart by hand and transfer dough by weight, but I prefer to just plop the dough onto the table and cut it with a big ol’ knife, measuring by eye. Coerce the portions into somewhat the shape of a ball, place each into a bowl, and use the dough as a brush to coat the walls with a layer of oil, covering the ball in oil in the process. This oil helps the crust get brown and crispy at the low temperatures of our home ovens because thermal conductivity and whatnot.

Cover all the bowls in a layer of plastic wrap (or with a lid, if you have a fancy container), toss them in the fridge, and let them rise there for at least 24 hours, or as long as a week. The longer you wait, the better.

Sauce

Pizza sauce is a very personal thing. You can omit or add ingredients as you please, especially the thyme and marjoram (I just personally enjoy those). The big controversial kicker with this sauce is to not cook it. Our canned tomatoes already received plenty of heat in the process of canning, and cooking it further will cause it to lose the bright tomato flavor that is characteristic of New York pizza. Plus, it’s just easier to not cook it. Win-win. Toss these ingredients in a bowl, mix them together (you could also use a blender, you sicko), cover it up, put it in the fridge and give the flavors some time to mingle and chat while your dough rises.

Cheese

Grate the cheese into your receptacle of choice, and place it in the fridge. On the day of assembly, we want the cheese to be cold so that it can get nice and brown in the oven without heating up to the point of releasing a thick layer of orange grease. A wet pizza is not fun.

Assembly

Step 1: Place your pizza stone/steel/whatever into the second highest rack position of your oven, and preheat as hot as your oven can go. Even after it has preheated, you want to leave it for half an hour to a full hour (the thicker the material, the more time needed). We want this thing VERY hot so that it can transfer plenty of heat to the bottom of our pizza and get us the c r i s p we desire.

Step 2: This is where things get real. The next 7 steps need to occur in a matter of ~2 minutes. We want to minimize the time the dough has to cool down so that it doesn't get stuck to the peel. Speaking of the peel, get your pizza peel out and pour a thin layer of cornmeal onto it.

Step 3: Pour some flour on your countertop, get out one of your dough bowls (see how they’re nicely pre-portioned?), remove the dough and place it onto the flour. We want a nice thin layer of flour on the dough. You should be able to touch any place on the dough without it feeling sticky. Our goal is for the pizza to slide off the peel easily, and this plays a big role. Try to handle this dough as little as possible - we want it to be nice and cold so it can stay somewhat stiff and not be sticky so that, again, it slides off the peel easily.

Step 4: Pick up the dough, and gripping the edges much like how you’d grip the handle of a bike, allow gravity to stretch the dough out while you shift the dough from one hand to another, forming the thick edge crust pieces (called the Cornicione). If my explanation was trash, refer to this video, except instead of using your knuckles to handle the dough, form the crust using the bike-handle grip. I found this to be the easiest way to get a proper cornicione. Do not use a rolling pin.

Step 5: After stretching, place the flattened dough on the pizza peel with the cornmeal, somewhat close to the edge farthest from you as possible. It may begin to shrink, but just stretch it out as needed, adding more cornmeal as the dough picks up the amount you placed earlier. Give the peel a little shake, and make sure the dough moves as one whole mass without being stuck in any area. If it is stuck, lift up the edge and place some more cornmeal. Repeat as needed. Once you can confirm the dough is not stuck to the peel, place your sauce, then your parmesan, then the cheese, and any other toppings you seem fit, giving the peel a shake periodically to make sure it isn’t getting stuck. Try not to press hard on the pizza while placing toppings, we seriously do NOT want this pizza to be stuck to the peel.

Step 6: Once your pizza is assembled, open the oven, position the far edge of the peel near the far edge of the pizza stone/steel, and pull back fast, allow the pizza to slide cleanly onto the stone/steel. This is akin to pulling the tablecloth out from underneath a dining table. Coefficient of kinetic friction is our friend here.

Step 7: This pizza only takes around 8 minutes to cook, but periodically check on it after around 5 minutes and remove it per your preference. I like dark, almost burnt cheese, but the choice is yours. Just don’t leave it in for so long that the cheese begins to squeeze out orange grease. Once it’s time to remove the pizza, bring a baking sheet, big plate, or other receptacle close to the stone/steel, grab the pizza with the tongs, and pull it on to the sheet. The pizza should not be stuck to the stone. If it is slightly, just coerce the underside with the tongs until it’s free. Congratulations, your pizza is done!

Step 8 (Optional): If you’re making multiple pizzas in one session, begin to repeat steps 2-7 at around the 5-minute mark of the previous pizza. This way, you’ll be ready to toss the next pizza in as soon as you remove the previous one. The crust on the next pizza won’t be quite as nice as the previous one, since some heat from the stone/steel was lost while cooking the previous pizza, but the crust will still be great. If this turns out to be a problem, just begin the next pizza a few minutes later.

Conclusion

Thank you for taking the time to read this recipe. I know it has been long and convoluted, but as a New-Yorkean, pizza is serious business. I hope you take the time to study and hone in on this pizza making procedure, as it is miles beyond any pizza you can make from the pre-made crust, sauce, and pre-shredded mozzarella you’d find in a store. The pizza made with this procedure is legitimate restaurant-quality, and that’s coming from someone who lives in New York.

FAQ:

1. Why should I trust your guide?

   1. Pizza is my favorite food. I don’t fuck around with pizza. I’m from New York. I watched YouTube videos. My dad likes the pizza. So does my brother. I’ve kneaded dough at 2am. What other qualifications do you need?

2. Why not just build the pizza on a baking sheet and toss it in the oven? The idea of using a pizza peel and stone seems very extra.

   1. When you place a pizza on a pan into an oven, the oven now has to spend time heating a giant slab of metal before it can finally cook the bottom side of your pizza. This means that by the time the top of your pizza is cooked, the bottom side is still soft and flaccid. And no one likes a flaccid pizza. By placing the pizza onto a thick, thermally conductive mass that is already hot, we get a nice crisp crust that is similar to what you get in the restaurants.

3. Can you actually use cardboard as a pizza peel?

   1. If the cardboard is thick enough, and it’s clean, yes. I have done it. Don’t be afraid to use it!

4. I can’t find low-moisture whole milk mozzarella in my store!

   1. If you can’t find blocks of this cheese in your store even at the deli counter, try finding it in the form of mozzarella sticks. This sounds ridiculous, but it’s the right type of cheese, and that’s what matters. If you cannot, for the LIFE of you, find this type of cheese, use the part-skim kind. As long as it’s low-moisture, it’s okay, but please get the full-fat kind if you can.

5. My dough didn’t rise!

   1. Your yeast was likely dead. However, there was a time where my dough didn’t rise much, but the pizza still cooked like normal. So, if your dough didn’t rise much, still try cooking the pizza. I am not responsible for wasted ingredients though.

6. Did you figure this all out on your own?

   1. Heck no. I shall list my sources on the next page, but some of this was also my own experimentation. You will also need to experiment to get the exact pizza that fits your liking.

7. I have other questions. Can I contact you for further explanation?

   1. Of course. Just hit me up on messenger or wherever, anything to spread the love of New York pizza.

8. Boat or chair?

   1. pizza

~ Martin P.