Kosher Food and Drink

One of my more recent lines of experimentation has been with pizza. On a lark, I bought a copy of Modernist Pizza from Amazon. This is a monumental set of books: three volumes, a spiral-bound chef’s manual, and an aluminum case. It’s as much a piece of art for your cookbook bookshelf as cookbook, but make no mistake, it is a stunningly comprehensive look at the history of pizza, the science of how to make it, and practical recipes for both the amateur and commercial chef. The willingness to slaughter sacred cows, not bow to nostalgia, and show their work makes it essential if you care about the subject.

I have to admit that reading Modernist Pizza ruined local pizza for me. I don’t think it’s bad or anything. But the first time I ordered a calzone and realized this is all uncooked dough on the inside, or ordered a pizza to discover a shocking amount of gel line under the sauce… well, “why am I paying twenty five bucks a pie for this?” certainly was a thought that ran through my head.

I’ve tried making pizza before, but to be totally honest, it wasn’t great. Super thick crusts, too much sauce, too much cheese, etc. What I liked about Modernist Pizza was the precise weights of ingredients given in the recipes. I sometimes found that my technique wasn’t up to the Modernist crew’s skills, but at least now I knew that if something went wrong, it was probably on me.

What I really want to stress is that things didn’t always go well. I was learning as I went, but at least when things went wrong, I generally knew how to fix them, because the Modernist Pizza books run through pretty much every problem you could have. I don’t have a pizza oven (yet?), so I was forced to use my oven on broil with a pizza steel. Not optimal, but workable.

One thing that immediately got better was my crusts. Modernist Pizza is big into using poolishes (pre-ferments), and my experience is that they make a pretty substantial difference to the flavor of the crusts. I went from a bready, somewhat undistinguished crust to a crispy (on the outside, anyways), flavorful spotted crust. Poolishes do require some lead time, but I found that a little pre-planning wasn’t too hard.

Another thing that improved was the sauce. I used a canned sauce, and while it wasn’t a bad sauce, it turned out that some hand-crushed San Marzanos, oregano, and salt produced something at least as good. (I found that the Modernist Pizza recipe was too oregano forward for my taste; I wound up using about 2/3 of their recommended weight.)

One really serious trouble spot for me was shaping and handling dough. I’m not a patient guy, which may seem surprising given how much smoking I do. Dough, unfortunately, is a game of patience if you want it in any sort of condition to make a shape out of. You’ve got to let it rise! You’ve got to let it rest! My lack of experience as a baker definitely shows.

One tool that really helped with the shaping was the OXO Good Grips Silicone Dough Rolling Bag. It’s hardly a necessity, but for me, it made it very easy contain the mess and roll the dough consistently. It never wound up being a perfect circle, but it came out thinner and closer to what I wanted.

Getting the launch (peel to steel) right really also taxed me at first. I solved that by using cornmeal much more aggressively on the peel. That’s not a perfect solution, but it definitely solved the problem.

None of this is news to anyone; they’re the same problems anyone learning to make good pizza is going to have. But the reason I bring them up is that what I want to really share with my readers is that failure is normal. We are so inundated with perfect photos in Instagram and magazines that it’s easy to forget that developing real skills isn’t about getting it right every time; it’s about slowly getting closer and closer to the ideal while truly understanding what you’re doing. The path to success and perfection is paved with failures that no one likes to show.

Do I want to get that beautiful circle with the perfect crust, wonderful sauce, and just-right cheese? Of course. But I’ve learned that the failures are often still quite tasty, and they get me closer and closer to the perfection. You’ve seen a few of my less-than-perfect pies, and I’d encourage you to share your experiments – failed or even successful – freely.