Varasanos recipe
There are a lot of variables for such a simple food. But these 3 FAR outweigh the others:
- High Heat
- Kneading Technique
- The kind of yeast culture or "starter" used along with proper fermentation technique
If you use Caputo or any 00 flour, you may find that it takes a lot more flour for the given amount of water. Probably a baker's % of 60% or so. One reason I like to feel the dough rather than strictly measure the percent hydration is that with feel you don't have to worry about the type of flour so much.
Salt only the final dough, never your permanent sourdough culture. For that matter, your culture is fed only water (filtered or Dasani) and flour. Never add any other kind of yeast, salt, sugar or anything else to your permanent culture.
All flavor really comes from the lactobacilli, all the puff from yeast. The yeast operate well at high temp. The lactobacilli at any temp. Therefore, to develop highly flavored dough put it in the fridge. The yeast will be mostly dormant, giving time for the lactobacilli to produce flavor. The flavor takes a day or more. So you have to keep the yeast on ice that long. Then you take it out of the fridge and let the yeast take over and produce gas. The yeast only needs an hour or two to do this part.
There are 2 ways to ferment the dough: you can use a 'warm rise' or a 'cold rise'. The warm rise is harder. You simply leave it out at room temp and wait for it to rise. This is hard to control because it could take 10 hours or 24 hours. Tiny, tiny variations in room temp and the amount of yeast you started with will make all the difference.
Bread flour from the supermarket is just fine for making pizza. It has certainly been proven that you don't need high gluten flour to make highly structured bread.
Wetter dough stretches easier with less pull back. It seems to develop faster in the fridge. And it provides more steam for more puff in the final baked crust. The higher the temperature of the oven, the wetter the dough should be.
Autolyse is a fancy word that just means one simple thing. The flour and water should sit together for at least 20 minutes before kneading begins. It's a CRITICAL step.
- Pour all the ingredients into the mixer, except just use 75% of the flour for now. So all of the water, salt, poolish, Instant dry Yeast (if used) and 75% of the flour are put into the mixer. Everything should be room temperature or a bit cooler.
- Mix on lowest speed for 1-2 minutes or until completely blended. At this stage you should have a mix that is drier than a batter, but wetter than a dough. Closer to batter probably.
- Cover and Let it rest for 20 minutes
Wet Kneading
- Start Mixing on Low speed for 8 minutes. 5 minutes into it start adding flour gradually.
- If you are using a KA, and you lift the hook, the dough should fall off by itself. The hook should look like its going through the dough, and not pushing the dough around. It should be that wet until nearly the end.
- After the first 6-8 minutes increase the speed of the mixer slightly. I never go higher than 1/3 of the dial on my mixer. You should add most of the remaining flour. But you still want a very wet dough, so don't go crazy.
- At some point during this process the dough should be getting much firmer and should form more of a ball. Mix another minute or so a this stage. Once the dough is at this point, it is done.
- In the end you need a wet dough. In fact, even the dough has formed more of ball, if you let it sit, it should spread out a little and look a little limp. This is what you want, not a tight ball, but a slack, wet soft dough.
Let it rest for 15-20 minutes.
If you find that your dough is not extensible enough or rips when you stretch it, odds are HIGH that it has not been autolysed long enough, not kneaded well enough and/or it's too dry.
If you are using a Kitchen Aid Mixer you may notice that the ball sticks to the hook and kind of just spins around and doesn't seem to be really working. Mixing an extra 20 minutes seems to do nothing because it's just spinning helplessly on the hook. Ugh. Mix at a wetter more pliable stage and you can fix this problem.
Pour out onto a floured surface and portion into balls with a scrapper. I use 310g per 13" pie. The more elastic the dough, the less you need.
I let them rest another 10 minutes, then put them in the Fridge for 1-6 days.
The yeast starts the bubbles, but it's really steam that blows the bubbles up. If the yeast creates bubbles that are too big, they become weak and simply pop when the steam comes resulting in a flat dense, less springy crust
I look at my dough a few hours before bake time and I make an assessment. If the dough has not risen much in the fridge I will take it out earlier than 80 minutes. If it's risen too much, I leave it in the fridge till a few minutes before bake.
Lay fresh basil right on the dry cheese or sauce. It's important that the leaves get a bit wet or they'll just burn. Just tap the tops with the bottom of the sauce spoon to moisten. Basil is great fresh out of an herb garden. I will post more on this someday. Don't wash your basil. It just kills it.
Sauce
Always buy Whole Peeled Plum Tomatoes and crush them yourself.
Refrigerate the tomatoes if you are not using them, but let them come to room temp when put on the pie. If the sauce is cold, the top of the dough is much colder than then bottom and you can end up with a thin layer of dough near the sauce that is gummier and less cooked than the rest of the dough.
When you spread the sauce on the pie, put a little less in the center because the liquid tends to pool there.
If you are using a very hot oven like I am, don't go too close to the edge. Too much sauce near the edge will keep the cornice from developing well.
Use about half of the sauce that you think you need. Trust me. Experiment with less and less ingredients on the pizza and you will see a surprising improvement in overall balance.
9- Grate some Locatelli Romano and/or parmessian cheese right on top of the tomatoes & basil (do this whether you put some romano into the tomatoes or not). But don't over do it. Just a TINY little bit. But don't skip this step. It's really key to the sauce. Balance, balance, balance.
10- Sprinkle kosher or sea salt
11- Fresh Mozzarella. In NYC all the mozzarella is packed in water, but it is still firm. If the cheese is too wet, it will break down on the pizza and even disintegrate into ricotta.
Put only about 8-10 small pieces of cheese on the pie. Better to have a few dollops than an even mix.
Dry the cheese extremely well by wrapping in a paper towel for 1-3 hours. You'd think the wetter it is the better it would hold up to the heat, but its not so. The water inside boils and degrades the cheese. Sometimes the cheese is so wet I have to change the wrapping several times. This might be avoided by simply draining for a long long time. I think Marco says he drains for 8 hours.
| Starter Separate | Including Starter | Actual | |||||||
| Ingredient | Grams | Bakers % | Total % | Grams | Bakers % | Total % | Grams Used | W/Starter | Bakers % |
| Flour | 589.88 | 100.00% | 52.20% | 674.63 | 100.00% | 59.70% | 1,040.00 | 1,124.75 | 100.00% |
| Water | 353.76 | 59.97% | 31.31% | 438.51 | 65.00% | 38.81% | 353.76 | 438.51 | 38.99% |
| Starter | 169.50 | 28.73% | 15.00% | 169.50 | |||||
| IDY | 1.69 | 0.29% | 0.15% | 1.69 | 0.25% | 0.15% | 1.69 | 1.69 | 0.15% |
| Salt | 15.18 | 2.57% | 1.34% | 15.18 | 2.25% | 1.34% | 15.18 | 15.18 | 1.35% |
| 1,130.00 | 100.00% | 1,130.0 | 100.00% | 1,580.12 | 100.00% | ||||
| Mixer Residue | 50 | Set this number once | |||||||
| Grams / 13" Pie | 270 | ||||||||
| Number of Pies | 4 |