It was bound to happen... during our Covid-19 Shelter-In-Place Springtime, out of the kitchen deep, emerged the Great Pizza-Pie Dough Battle of 2020. The adults going head-to-head, dough-to-dough, would make their pizzas, with only our pre-K son and each other to judge the outcome.
As the gold standard, we had agreed that the best pizza we have ever had in North America is just down the street at the amazing and always crowded
Inferno Pizzeria Napoletana. (Also up-there is a memorable Pizzeria Napoletana in Pescadero, Baja California Sur...maybe it was the romance, the tequila, or just extreme ex-pat hunger for a pizza done
right.)
Adult A and Adult B
both got the dough quite terribly wrong in the first round:
Mine was a recipe based on a New York Style from a once-trusted cookbook; the outcome was a dough that was sadly left in the fridge for too long as other dinners took preference; it emerged, far-too-sticky (and to the tune of some harsh trash-talking by the opposing team).
Cosmic retribution, perhaps, caused Adult #2's dough to subsequently blow up more than a zillion times the size it should have been, sitting overnight on the countertop, while the evening's thunderous downpour was the soundtrack to a dough mutating into an uncontrolled monster blimp, enough to feed or feed on a small metropolis - and too sticky to approach (ha!). After calling in Ghostbusters, an exorcism-purification ritual for the kitchen, a planned search for flour (that seemed scarce when we needed it in our Covid-19 infested region) and several support-group zoom meetings, we were ready for another try - first, I reviewed everything that could possibly go wrong with my
6 Errori Dilittante.
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| Pizza was better on a pizza stone |
My delivery of currently precious Caputo 00 flour did not arrive in time for pizza making; therefore, us pizza dough warriors were forced to use King Arthur All-Purpose Flour (the best brand we could find) for the Battle Part One. Already, this would be an 'errori' but at least we had a level playing field for the competition.
After my disappointment with the New York style recipe I had tried previously from my
Pizza Cookbook, I used the recipe offered on the King Arthur website, used my
not-so-Dilittante stand-up mixer and just added a bit more flour to counteract our humid climate, you can read it here:
King Arthur Flour Pizza Dough
I made two thin crust pizzas:
#1 was
not 'pre-cooked' as the recipe instructed, because I was distracted by my son and husband coming in
just at the moment that I was preparing the dough to go in ("Mommy, can we have a
snack?"..."NO!!! I'm-making-THE PIZZA !!!"
I absent-mindedly put the toppings on without pre-baking, and just slid it and the parchment paper onto a hot pizza stone. Actually, this turned out quite well. The crust slid off the stone hot and golden, crispy and got even my opponent to give it a '7' (perhaps to ward off any bad juju or witchcraft I might bestow in return towards his dough - after all the trash-talk!)
I liked this crust a lot and so did our son.
#2 was in on a flat pan, pre-cooked and then toppings put on before going back into the oven. after 8 minutes it came out clearly not as nice on the bottom.
In desperation I ditched the pan, slid it on the pizza stone for 5 minutes more and then it was
almost perfect!
My opponent quite stubbornly remained loyal to his new-found YouTube Maestro's Neopolitan Recipe (but using the all-purpose flour!) that had produced the scary monster dough; he opted to reduce all ingredients by half and hand-knead the dough. (Certainly a fun video, but be warned if you try this in your own town-home kitchen):
Vito Iacopelli Pizza Dough
The judge then came to a decision. "Daddy's was more better-er." (*sigh*)
And it's now in the books, or at least this blog.
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My opponent's pizza smelled amazing, but by then the kitchen was about 500 degrees,
everyone had to take a cool bath before the taste test |
