~Defining Neapolitan, New York & Sicilian-Style Pizza~
I never met a pizza I didn't like, and, pizza is one of my favorite subjects. That said, a great pizza starts with a great crust, but, finding a pizza dough recipe to suit your requirements is not as easy as the ingredients list indicates: flour, water, salt, yeast, and sometimes sugar and/or olive oil. Cooks who take pizza making seriously have more than one pizza dough recipe in their repertoire because certain pizzas require a certain type of crust -- there's no getting around it. Beyond that, within each type, everyone who takes pizza making seriously, professionally or at home, makes their dough a bit differently -- there's no getting around that. Pizza dough and pizza is personal -- there's no getting around that either. That said, if you are new to pizza dough, sans a lot of the chemistry and science behind pizza dough, here's a bit of helpful background:
The three best-known Italian-style pizzas are: 1) Neapolitan Pizza: A simple dough containing high-gluten flour, water, salt and yeast that gets a long 2-3 day rise in the refrigerator. Baked hot and fast, in 1-2 minutes, it's got a thin crispy bottom and a super-airy, chewy center. 2) New York-Style Pizza: A more complex dough containing all-purpose or bread flour, water, olive oil, salt, sugar and yeast that gets a shorter 8-12 hour rise in the refrigerator. Baked in a slightly more moderate oven for a longer period of time, 12-15 minutes, while crisp, it's tender, slightly-chewy center makes it pliable enough to fold in half. While still a thin crust pizza, it is slightly thicker than its Neapolitan cousin. 3) Sicilian-Style Pizza: Containing the same ingredients as New York-Style pizza, this distinctively thick-crust, square-shaped pizza gets baked with little or no rising time and is the easiest of the three to duplicate in the home kitchen. It gets patted out into a rectangular pan or sheet tray that has been slathered with olive oil, which when baked in a moderate-for-pizza oven (350-375 degrees) for 12-15 minutes literally fries the bottom of the crust to a crispy state. With a golden, crisp-fried bottom and a thick, soft, chewy center, this one is, perhaps, my favorite.
Try my favorite Sicilian-Style Semolina Pizza dough recipe:
Try my A-1 All-Purpose Bread-Machine Pizza Dough Recipe:
"We are all in this food world together." ~ Melanie Preschutti
(Recipe, Commentary and Photos courtesy of Melanie's Kitchen/Copyright 2022
Comments