New York Times Pizza
So, I have been following the formula for Roberta's Pizza Dough [1], as reported in the New York Times. However, after spending a fortune on a flour mill, I could not bring myself to purchase the '00' flour (nor did I find any whenever I was looking for it in the supermarkets).
I finally broke down and ordered 22 pounds [2] of the stuff on Amazon, figuring 10 bags of 2.2 pounds of flour was manageable.
Roberta recommends 50% AP and 50% 00 flour. The dough I made was really quite silky smooth. More so than when I used only AP flour.
I bake on a Lodge cast iron pizza pan. [3] I preheat it on the top rack of my oven to 525, take it out, pour some olive oil on, put the dough on and then back in the oven for 4 minutes, then broil for 2-3 minutes on low.
Usually I pre-bake the crust and freeze some of them. After thawing, or having one pre-baked, I top it with sauce and cheese. For this one, I did not par-bake. Instead, I took a few tablespoons of home-made sauce, spread it on very thin and then topped with shredded cheeses. Fresh Mozzarella, Provolone, and Parmigiano Reggiano.
Why grate the mozzarella? Well, you wind up using a lot less cheese that way. From a calorie stand point that is a bonus. But is also weighs less therefore is more likely to allow the pizza "hold up" once it is sliced.
By the way, the olive oil on the pan makes it so the crust browns nicely. This time around it was really a light brown without charring. I suspect that may have been because I used the "00" flour.
As you can see from top shot, the crust did not char at all. I suspect this was because of the "00" flour as well, since I read that it won't brown well in a home oven. However, I only recently started using my broiler on low instead of high. So, I don't know whether a high setting would have changed things. Fortunately, I have a lot of "00" flour with which to experiment.
The crumb on the crust was very nice. The pizza held up well for the overnighted dough, but on the two day old dough the dough stretched out very fast very quickly, and was too thin. Still delicious, but not entirely intact.
I also had added thinly sliced tomatoes before the cheese. The crust held up well making the pizza a joy to eat. I did not think the flavor of the crust was particularly special.