NY Style/Regular Pizza

I'm on the hunt for some NY Style/Regular pizza. I'm not flaming Chicago style or anything else - I'm only asking pretty please for some help finding the normal wedge cut, pick up with your hands, easy to eat, great pizza. Any help appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Hello, everyone. I've been checking in on this site for a while now, and finally felt compelled to join in. You guys are a buncha lunatics, and I love you all.

As to Spa Girl's query, I'd recommend - -

Cafe Luigi, 2548 N Clark

About 80% of the way to an east-coast style slice, plus broccoli/sausage rolls, rice balls, and the tiny bottles of aranciata or limonata. A decent replica of a NYC style pizzeria.

I've also heard good things from my Bostonian friends about Gigio's Pizza, on Broadway just north of Wilson. I'll get over there to try it soon (maybe today, and if it's no good I'll go the extra 5 blocks north for some Pho or BBQ pork on Argyle). Santullo's tastes ok, but the crust is not there. Way too tough (too much gluten?) and too thin. The best pizza by the slice options might be at the Italian bakeries - D'Amato's, or, even better, Sicilia. Inexpensive, unique, and really delicious. Give em a shot.

Rebbe

Wasn't aware of Luigi's, must give it a try. Thanks Rebbe.

I used to enjoy the slices from LoGalbo's, the take out counter attached to Red Tomato on Southport,. It's been a while, but they used to be greasy, foldable but with a nice crunch, and good.

This is based on hear-say (I haven't yet tried the place), but Got Pizza, a new place on State just south of Balbo in the South Loop, advertises NY pizza (whole pies and by the slice), and transplanted New-Yorkers I know seem satisfied and happy.

FYI, A Slice of Italy in the basement of the Fox and Obel building often is brought up in these conversations, sometimes by me, but alas they're no more. It was a decent and enjoyable slice, but the whole midsection of that building is being re-made as part of the continuing project called the River East Arts Center. Among the tenants-to-be, according to a sign out front: Kensington Fine and Rare Wines. I've also been told that an upscale Italian place will be on the end opposite Fox and Obel, and perhaps a handful of other restaurants. The whole project is kind of interesting to watch progress and represents a welcome change for one who calls the building home for 8 hours a day.

Here's a bit more on the River East Arts Center: http://www.reac.vflex.com/index.php

Cheers,

Aaron

stay far far away from Got Pizza. an all around horrible experience . a "margaherita" pizza arrived with a rather biscuit like crust and topped with four slices of low fat slicing mozz which was both unmelted and covered a scant 15% of the pie. something like $20 dollars.

Cafe Luigi does a much more servicable pie.

i'm going to have to get all steingarten and build a coal oven in my backyard.

Terrence,

Thanks for the tip and heads-up. Hey! My summer project is a coal-fired brick oven in my backyard.

There is a NY Pizza place in a newly constructed (go figure) strip mall on the corner of Division and Halsted. I'm only in that area after working out the Y on North/Clybourn so pizza never figures into my plans.

It does not look promising so I haven't felt compelled to make a special trip to try the pizza. Has anybody tried this place?

I really like Robey Pizza on Roscoe at the corner of Damen. They have a wood fired oven and the pizza I ordered last Saturday for lunch was quite tasty.

MAG wrote:I really like Robey Pizza on Roscoe at the corner of Damen. They have a wood fired oven and the pizza I ordered last Saturday for lunch was quite tasty.

Thanks for this comment...I've repeatedly thought that place looks worth a try, but repeatedly forgotten about it as well. I believe Restaurant.com sells coupons for that place.

stay far far away from Got Pizza. an all around horrible experience . a "margaherita" pizza arrived with a rather biscuit like crust and topped with four slices of low fat slicing mozz which was both unmelted and covered a scant 15% of the pie. something like $20 dollars.

Cafe Luigi does a much more servicable pie.

Agree with Terrence on both accounts. Not sure what it is, but the crust at Got Pizza is not what it should be...

Not sure if you're looking for just a slice or a whole pie and if you want to avoid deep dish pizza or the square cut thin crust found in Chicago. I assume the first, not sure about the latter. I ask because I like Chicago thin crust pizza, but I'm really not a fan of the square cut. If you ask though, most places will do a pie cut for you.

Yeah, what's with the square cut? It's no good.

ParkerS wrote:Yeah, what's with the square cut? It's no good.

We've always assumed that "flat pizza" is cut in squares in Chicago because it's not real food, just a snack, and so should be served like a snack.

But I don't know. I had "pizza" cut in squares in Germany, many years ago.... but it seems unlikely that Chicago got it from there.

Can't say how well it compares to NYC-style pizza, having never been to NYC, but Lina's at 3132 S. Morgan in the city has pretty good thin-crust pizza, both as slices and (though I haven't had one) whole pies. The slices are big and pie-shaped.

Pizza Quadrata, Pizza Truncata*

RheS wrote:We've always assumed that "flat pizza" is cut in squares in Chicago because it's not real food, just a snack, and so should be served like a snack.
But I don't know. I had "pizza" cut in squares in Germany, many years ago.... but it seems unlikely that Chicago got it from there.

I agree that it is extremely unlikely that German pizzaiuoli (Pfitzenmacher?) exercised much influence here (or elsewhere)... The 'snack' theory proposed above is not wholly unreasonable and so not to be dismissed out of hand... Another theory, the theory which is mine, that is, my own theory, is not necessarily or wholly incompatible with the 'snack' theory. This is the theory which is mine and which I thought up on my own...

I suggest that the practice is a transfer of the style of cutting the dominant form of pizza in the original Italian ghettos of Chicago, namely, the thick pan pizzas of the Italian bread bakeries (e.g., D'Amato's, Ferrara's), on to a kind of pie that originally wasn't present or common in this city, namely the Neapolitan style pizza or pizza alla Napolitana.

In this regard, one notes that the Italian immigrant population was more strongly Sicilian and concomitantly less strongly Neapolitan (broader sense) in character than in New York. Further support for this theory that pizza alla Napolitana was not widely known or firmly entrenched in the local Italian population can be seen too in the fact that the dough universally used in Chicago is --by Neapolitan and New York standards -- a completely unacceptable short, pastry dough. It is part of the basic definition of pizza alla Napolitana that the dough contain NO FAT WHATSOEVER. Such divergence bespeaks a tradition that secondarily absorbed certain superficial or obvious elements of pizza alla Napolitana and/or pizza alla Novajorcë e Nugersi** and adapted it to local tastes and practices with regard to the extremely fundamental matter of the nature of the dough. A change of this sort is to my mind unimaginable in a milieu in which Neapolitan tastes and practices were widespread.

Let us try to render the discourse on pizza more scientific and accurate for all. With regard to differences of crust type, one hears a variety of adjectives used (crispy, crunchy, flakey, floppy, etc.), each of which has some degree of validity. But the basic difference is simple: pizza crust in Chicago is made with short dough, one can perhaps even rightly say with pastry dough, while Neapolitan and New York style pizza is made with the simplest bread dough which properly contains no fat (just flour, water, yeast, salt). Therein lies the essential and unbridgeable difference. In some real sense, Chicago style thin-crust pizza is, as a German Pftzenmacher might say, ein kulinarisches Unding.

Antonius
amicus traditionis bonæ pizzæ Napolitanæ

* Literally: "Pizza squared, pizza mutilated"; more poetic rendering: "Pizza squared, Pizza merde!"
**It seems unimaginable that the Chicago style thin-crust pizza developed free of influence from elsewhere and I would further suggest that it would be impossible (and perhaps pointless) to try and argue that influence directly from Naples was more or less important than indirect influence via New York. Surely, Neapolitans who settled in Chicago brought knowledge of la vera pizza alla Napolitana but precisely how and when the bizarre -- from a Neapolitan stand-point -- pastry dough version of Chicago became established needs to be studied in detail. This important work will be funded by the Academia Novi Belgii and conducted by the staff of its Institute of European Victology, North American Section ( http://www.namnam-ieu.edu ).

Growing up in Wichita, I dreamed of living in New York, working at 535 N. Madison Ave* and basically living the life of Eloise at the Plaza.

When I actually got to see New York and Chicago I quickly adjusted my dream to a little more midwestern and easygoing version of The Big City. And while I enjoy going to New York on occasion, and had a sweet deal in the early 90s where I used to go shoot promos at NBC with Willard Scott for Hallmark, then have the whole day to play before returning to Chicago with a tape under my arm (ah, those days when one could waltz into LaGuardia at 6:42 for a 7 pm flight and make it), I have to say that I have become, as a proud transplated Chicagoan, highly resistant to the charms of the kind of food board thread that seeks to measure everything in Chicago by New York. To me, it's much like the argument, much made in the last year or two, that "world opinion" is whichever side France is on. There is nothing so provincial as someone that cosmopolitan.

So, measuring Chicago pizza by New York pizza in the abstract is, to my mind, a fool's errand. I say this with some experience because I have tried many, many of the vaunted New York pizzas. Some were very good, some startlingly mediocre. But what it convinced me is that there is no school of New York pizza which makes Chicago's school, as a form in itself, inferior.

But have you tried DiFara's? the question comes. No, I haven't. I'm prepared to believe that it's the best pizza on earth-- but it is not a school. It is one restaurant. And if we're down to claiming superiority for New York pizza based on one restaurant, then how (in our cosmopolitan provincialism) can we be sure that a better single restaurant does not exist in New Haven, Providence RI, Baltimore, or some other place with enough of an immigrant Italian base to have coughed up onto our shores one extraordinary pizza maker?

Antonius seeks to suggest some degree of stylistic unity between New York pizza and European pizza, but having eaten a fair amount of both I begin to incline toward thinking that the similarity is more superficial than it seems at first glance. I'm not sure I've ever eaten anything in the US that faked a European pizza as well as Pizza DOC in its prime a few years ago. The thin in New York seems to have evolved into a different form, chewier, more Americanized in ingredients and in, simply, how they much stuff they spread around on it. Now, I am willing to grant that if I poked around more I could probably find much more authentically Neapolitan pizzas in New York. And yet the moment we find something that's that different and identifiably "Neapolitan," haven't we drawn a distinction that says New York pizza is something else, that stuff that serve at slice places called "Ray's" which isn't a bit Neapolitan except that it, as much as a Giordano's thick, includes tomato sauce, crust and cheese?

So, in short, I love European pizza, and the best fake of it I ever had was in Chicago. Otherwise, all pizza in America is to some degree Americanized, a regional style, and where New York pizza is fairly minimalist, perhaps even timid, in its experimentation, Chicago pizza is flamboyant, approaching the idea of "pizza" as a canvas for bold experimentation and self-expression the way a televangelist approaches his hairdo. Be proud of it, revel in it, order one today!

* Mad magazine.



(Edited to add image. Left to right: Art of Pizza, Porter Wagoner.)

Mike G wrote:I have to say that I have become, as a proud transplated Chicagoan, highly resistant to the charms of the kind of food board thread that seeks to measure everything in Chicago by New York. To me, it's much like the argument, much made in the last year or two, that "world opinion" is whichever side France is on. There is nothing so provincial as someone that cosmopolitan.

I wish we could take the New York out of New York pizza and the Chicago out of Chicago pizza for purposes of discussing the pizza. The issue has a lot of emotional baggage. I don't want to be an imperialist, marching into a foreign land and demanding pizza change, imagining if we could change the pizza eaten in Chicago, then it would spread to other states in the region until everyone is eating my kind of pizza. No, I just want a place to go where I can enjoy pizza in a style that I like.

I like dough. The bread-kind, not the pie-kind, and not too much of it. The crust should be browned/black on one side, and thin enough to just about support the thin layers of sauce and cheese on the other. There should not be bread in between the crust on the bottom and basted sauce on dough layer above it. It has to be cooked quickly at a very high temperature to brown the dough while not drying it out. This makes the dough turn into a crusty bread rather than a brittle cracker. The cheese should be used relatively sparingly to allow the sauce to bubble through the cheese while baking, but still enough so you get a nice, uneven layer of browned cheese on top. I'm not one for toppings as they usually disrupt the browning of the cheese or the pairing of the cheese with the sauce and dough. If you've read through this I hope you've gotten the impression of a very thin pizza, like 1/2 in or less thick. You can call this a 30's style pizza if we can make an analogy to burgers. The flavors come out in the quick, very hot cooking which browns surfaces of the dough and cheese as well as concentrates the sauce all at once. An amazing improvement to each ingredient that complements each other nicely in one single dish.

Rich4,have you tried Barnaby's and if so what did you think?And Mike G,no Dolly Parton pix?

hattyn wrote:Rich4,have you tried Barnaby's and if so what did you think?

No I haven't. Could you tell us where it is and what their pizza is like?

Sadly,the Chicago location is no longer.But there are locations in Niles,Arlington Heights and I believe in Des Plaines,Schaumburg and Northbrook.Yeasty dough with a hint of the taste of beer.Crispy edge and grainy,maybe corn meal?, on the bottom.

Mike G wrote: I have to say that I have become, as a proud transplated Chicagoan, highly resistant to the charms of the kind of food board thread that seeks to measure everything in Chicago by New York. To me, it's much like the argument, much made in the last year or two, that "world opinion" is whichever side France is on. There is nothing so provincial as someone that cosmopolitan.

The true provincial is marked by ignorance of the broader world, an ignorance that is perhaps accompanied by hostility or fear of the unknown or incomprehensible that is then in some social circles further masked by a sort of brutish arrogance. There certainly are New-York boosters that fit this description and I find them no less tedious than most other sorts of provincials, including the Chicagoans, who fit the bill. If I, for what I wrote above, am being accused of being a provincial, then I am more amused than irritated because the accusation is based upon a misreading of the 'serious' point, as it were, I was making in a fairly tongue-in-cheek way.

So, measuring Chicago pizza by New York pizza in the abstract is, to my mind, a fool's errand... [W]hat it convinced me is that there is no school of New York pizza which makes Chicago's school, as a form in itself, inferior...
... And if we're down to claiming superiority for New York pizza based on one restaurant, then how (in our cosmopolitan provincialism) can we be sure that a better single restaurant does not exist in New Haven, Providence RI, Baltimore, or some other place with enough of an immigrant Italian base to have coughed up onto our shores one extraordinary pizza maker?

If this argument is in response to what I wrote, it is very much off the mark. In my piece, I use the term 'New York' literally but also as a kind of short-hand for a style of pizza that is indeed made in a number of places on the east coast with strong Italian immigrant populations.

Antonius seeks to suggest some degree of stylistic unity between New York pizza and European pizza, but having eaten a fair amount of both I begin to incline toward thinking that the similarity is more superficial than it seems at first glance.

I do not "seek to suggest"; I have observed a fact and stated the observation clearly:

Antonius wrote:...[T]he basic difference is simple: pizza crust in Chicago is made with short dough, one can perhaps even rightly say with pastry dough, while Neapolitan and [good, real] 'New York' style pizza is made with the simplest bread dough which properly contains no fat (just flour, water, yeast, salt). Therein lies the essential and unbridgeable difference.

It is legitimate to compare different versions of dishes but then all the while with the understanding that everyone has the right to eat what pleases them most but not the right to claim that what they prefer is 'better' or 'the best' merely on the basis of their preference. One's arguments should rather involve issues such as the quality of ingredients, general and well-known aesthetic principles and the historical development of the dish in question. At the interesting level too, all chest-beating assertions of superiority are undignified; the point is made by the cogency of the argument, not by the loudness of the bark.

In discussing pizza in anything above the provincial -- or is it barbarian --level of "Ours is da best!", one must take as the starting point Neapolitan pizza, pizza alla Napolitana, which is a very specific dish. It is simple bread, which contains no fat, dressed soberly with various combinations of ingredients, the list of which is largely canonical but to a degree open to personal fantasia. Given that the dish is based on bread, a change to that basic ingredient fundamentally changes the dish. Many people seem to suffer from rather sad misconceptions and fail to recognise that basic fact and focus instead on the tomatoes and cheese and other toppings: the toppings do not make pizza; the bread, rolled out thin and cooked at very high temperature is what constitutes pizza. A perfectly acceptable pizza can have absolutely no trace of tomato or cheese, much less pepperoni or pineapple, on it and still be a pizza.

The thin in New York seems to have evolved into a different form, chewier, more Americanized in ingredients and in, simply, how they much stuff they spread around on it... And yet the moment we find something that's that different and identifiably "Neapolitan," haven't we drawn a distinction that says New York pizza is something else, that stuff that serve at slice places called "Ray's" which isn't a bit Neapolitan except that it, as much as a Giordano's thick, includes tomato sauce, crust and cheese?

There is much bad pizza which is made and consumed in metro-New York. But focussing on the good pizza, I would say that there is a continuum of real pizza, that is, the stuff that features a crust of simple bread dough, that extends from what is thought of as typical New York pizza to what is thought of as typical Neapolitan pizza. In slice joints and the majority of local pizza parlours, the pizza is clearly on the New York side of things, which to my mind implies a number of factors, not all of which appeal to me that much personally: in short, the crust is not as artfully made and baked as in Naples and the toppings, though not reaching the cheesy or meaty proportions of what most of this country seems to want to wallow in, are in quality and quantity on the American side of an American/Neapolitan divide. While 'New York' and Neapolitan pizza can be said to differ in cetain ways, they also agree in the basic philosophical and practical point of being based on bread; "pizza" with pastry dough, as is the norm in Chicago, is to my mind something essentially different and, if one insists upon calling it "pizza", disappointingly off the mark. I eat the stuff occasionally, sometimes heartily enjoy it, but always feel strongly that the misplaced pastry crust better suits apples than anchovies.


Having grown up in northeast Jersey and Manhattan, I know that there used to be a lot of (and I believe there still are some) small mom-and-pop pizzerias that, while having to turn out basic pizzas of the American sort with regard to toppings, remember well and to a degree offer pizzas that are in all basic philosophical ways completely aligned with Neapolitan and southern Italian notions of what a pizza is. What I'm talking about here are pizzas where the bread is more clearly featured and with luck the optional toppings are, from a middle American standpoint, bizarre or objectionable or insufficiently bad for one's health, such as escarole pizzas, white pizzas, onion pizzas, pizzas with tomato and anchovies (no cheese), etc. I ate this stuff growing up, not from fancy restaurants with wood burning ovens and espresso makers but little places with five to ten tables, an old fashioned coke dispenser and a delivery car in front. Some of them, aside from the oven, were not that unlike some of the little pizzerias one sees in the poor sections of Naples or in the smaller cities and towns across Campania. Alas, many of these places are gone, but the population has also changed drastically across most of the metropolitan area, and the immigrants from India and Indiana, from Wallachia and Wichita, seem to prefer in lamentable numbers the convenience, cheapness and reliable 'quality' of the chains.

Chicago pizza is flamboyant, approaching the idea of "pizza" as a canvas for bold experimentation and self-expression the way a televangelist approaches his hairdo.

Odi profanum vulgus et arceo. Favete linguis. (Horace, Odes III.i)

If that is a vision of life, let me not be born again.*


Antonius

* I write at length out of fellowship. not animosity.

Antonius sez (sic):

But the basic difference is simple: pizza crust in Chicago is made with short dough, one can perhaps even rightly say with pastry dough, while Neapolitan and New York style pizza is made with the simplest bread dough which properly contains no fat (just flour, water, yeast, salt). Therein lies the essential and unbridgeable difference.

Huh?

Short dough is similar to pie crust, where you cut in a fat or shortening. I have never seen such a dough for a pizza in Chicago or anywhere else (yet). I have always seen the simple bread dough and have made the same for my home consumption.

In quick and cheap box pizza mixes, I have seen quick doughs leavened with baking powder or baking soda. Once on the Western-athon, we stopped for pizza near Rosehill cemetary, where I swear the pizza dough tasted like Bisquick and very likely it was.

I cannot accept your essential and unbridgeable difference because I have never witnessed a pizza dough made in the style you suggest in Chicago. Now I am sure you will provide an example, but you really cannot expect an anomaly to be the Chicago gold standard, can you? (Or I have missed something obvious ... but really I have never seen this short dough crust)

I once found myself in a debate with Harry V.-- always a bracing experience, because if there was any sloppiness, any imprecision in your argument, he would find it and spring it on you like a trap. The subject was authenticity, and he took the position that searching for authenticity was a way of patting yourself on the back for your Chow-superiority that had nothing to do with whether the food in question was actually good. Which is surely true, sometimes. And the one bit of solid ground I found to argue back from was this: there are some things you just can't have, like a handmade corn masa tortilla in a burrito place, until you achieve some level of authenticity (and get out of Lincoln Park flour tortilla-land). The ingredient isn't even used until you find the authentic joint; authenticity is the price of admission to being able to then have the more relevant debate about whether El Gallo Bravo #2 is any good or not.

That kind of suggests how I feel about all this talk about Neapolitan pizza-- you're giving a lot of bad pizza credit just for following the style in one particular way (composition of crust) and not taking enough points off for all the other ways they go wrong.

Now, I agree with Cathy that you overstate the 'pastriness' of Chicago crust-- I think there's simply a dash of oil in the making of many of these crusts, and the use of baking powder or something in a good number of them. The number that really suggest piemaking techniques is very small, not least because let's face it, piemaking is extremely labor intensive. But let's set that aside for a moment. The real dichotomy between good and pizza is not the addition of a few extra things, violations of some pizzaheitsgebot, but the whole system of foodservice practices and shortcuts which they either accept as commercial 'necessities' or proudly abjur.

The Original 42nd Street Ray's Di Napoli Tourists Welcome may keep their list of crust ingredients to the canonical standard. But then they roll it out through some machine instead of tossing it, they pour mediocre tomato sauce from a giant can onto it, they put nothing but the American standards (pepperoni, canned mushrooms, etc.) on it, and last but far from least, they bake it on a rotating metal shelf in an oven where it never gets that hot.

The result is what I've called the 'breadstick crust' because it reminds me of the hard exterior concealing a powdery-dry white bread interior of packaged breadsticks. In any case, it may be technically authentic, but just the oven temperature alone robs it of that close a resemblance to any pizza I've eaten in Europe, and in any case, it's hard to see much reason for rejoicing in the results. (Even moreso the second day; surely one of the reasons for the oil in a Chicago crust comes from the expectation that it needs to have a little bounce in its step the next day, and not be even more dried-out and unappealing than it was the first night.)

Now, having like Harry V made a prosecutorial summation of the case against, what am I for, precisely? I guess what I'm for is the idea that when pizza hit American shores, it evolved into a lot of things. Many of which are undoubtedly crappy and even pernicious-- one of the saddest things I've seen is how, for instance, a pizza place in East Lansing, MI, which proudly proclaims that it's been around since 1958 or something, seems to have met the expectations of its college freshman market by turning what was once probably a pretty good thin crust into a lame Domino's imitation (sorry, I know 'lame' and 'Domino's' are redundant).

But in Chicago a variety of styles have grown up which take that minimalist Neapolitan ur-pizza and dude it up like a red '59 Caddy with fins and white sidewalls. Yes, 9 out of 10 are lame, prefab, unworthy-- Sturgeon's Law applies to pizza as well as science fiction. But 1 in 10 is gorgeous in its excess, and deserves to be treasured not for how it diverges from the ideal but for how it improves upon it.

Cathy2 wrote:Antonius sez (sic):

But the basic difference is simple: pizza crust in Chicago is made with short dough, one can perhaps even rightly say with pastry dough, while Neapolitan and New York style pizza is made with the simplest bread dough which properly contains no fat (just flour, water, yeast, salt). Therein lies the essential and unbridgeable difference.

Huh?

Short dough is similar to pie crust, where you cut in a fat or shortening. I have never seen such a dough for a pizza in Chicago or anywhere else (yet). I have always seen the simple bread dough and have made the same for my home consumption.

In quick and cheap box pizza mixes, I have seen quick doughs leavened with baking powder or baking soda. Once on the Western-athon, we stopped for pizza near Rosehill cemetary, where I swear the pizza dough tasted like Bisquick and very likely it was.

I cannot accept your essential and unbridgeable difference because I have never witnessed a pizza dough made in the style you suggest in Chicago. Now I am sure you will provide an example, but you really cannot expect an anomaly to be the Chicago gold standard, can you? (Or I have missed something obvious ... but really I have never seen this short dough crust)

Cathy,
What I think my countryman is referring to is the crust used in Chicago deep dish pizza, like the one pictured in Mike G's post. The shortening makes it more like pie-crust, and gives it the needed structural characteristics to support such a pool of melted cheese, toppings, and sauce. Of course not all pizza in Chicago is made this way; many are made with dough-only ingredients. My beef is that these are usually cooked at a lower temperature for a longer period of time (often in the same oven as the deep dish pizzas), having the net effect of drying out the crust and making it into one large cracker with melted cheese on top. Of course you can avoid the drying out of the crust by using shortening, but then you wouldn't have only dough in the crust.

By the way, if you want a pizza that tastes a lot to me like the better ones I've had in New York, Caponie's on Harlem (3350 N) has a brick oven and a pretty good thin crust.

What is the groups opinion of Fox's Pizza at 99th and Western in Beverly?

Paul Concialdi wrote:What is the groups opinion of Fox's Pizza at 99th and Western in Beverly?

Paul,

I've only had Fox's once, on the Westernathon, but was favorably impressed. Thin, crisp crust, light touch on the cheese and sauce and, if memory serves, flavorful sausage.


My thin crust preference favorite is Vito and Nick's, but I wouldn't kick Marie's on W Lawrence out of bed for spilling the oregano.

Another favorite in the thin crust department is Zaffiro's in Milwaukee. The crust is even thinner/crisper than Fox or Vito and Nick's, with the same light touch with cheese and sauce.

If you are interested in trying Zaffiro's or, for that matter, Solly's for butter burgers, Speed Queen for BBQ, their outside shoulder and mustard based BBQ sauce rocks, Jake's for corned beef, Kopps for custard, and one or two other places, check out the Mike G sponsored Milwaukee (Wisconsin) tour in the LTHForum Events section.

Enjoy,
Gary

Zaffiro's Pizza & Bar
1724 N Farwell Ave
Milwaukee, WI 53202
414-289-8776

Kinds of Pizza Dough: Some Basic Facts

Cathy2 wrote:Antonius sez (sic)

Huh?

Cathy2 wrote:Short dough is similar to pie crust, where you cut in a fat or shortening. I have never seen such a dough for a pizza in Chicago or anywhere else (yet). I have always seen the simple bread dough and have made the same for my home consumption.

Cathy2 wrote:I cannot accept your essential and unbridgeable difference because I have never witnessed a pizza dough made in the style you suggest in Chicago. Now I am sure you will provide an example, but you really cannot expect an anomaly to be the Chicago gold standard, can you? (Or I have missed something obvious ... but really I have never seen this short dough crust)

Antonius wrote:...[T]he basic difference is simple: pizza crust in Chicago is made with short dough, one can perhaps even rightly say with pastry dough, while Neapolitan and [good, real] 'New York' style pizza is made with the simplest bread dough which properly contains no fat (just flour, water, yeast, salt). Therein lies the essential and unbridgeable difference.

There is a terminological problem involved in this discussion which must be addressed before all else. At issue here is what is a proper way to label the noteworthy differences in the dough used to make pizza in (a) Naples; (b) New York (and elsewhere in the Northeast); (c) Chicago.

(a) The starting point is easy: In Naples, by tradition and for DOC requirements by law, the dough for pizza alla napolitana contains no fat whatsoever. Like most basic Italian and French breads, it is made from flour, water, yeast and salt.

(b) In New York and elsewhere in the Northeast, many (not all) pizzaiuoli add a small amount of olive oil to the dough, in effect making the pizza on the sort of dough used for the kind of bread known here as "pugliese". To my mind this addition of olive oil is unnecessary and unwelcome, but the overall character of the crust is not massively changed by the addition of the oil and, of course, the olive oil flavour will not be out of place in the finished product.

(c) In Chicago, the dough typically contains a very large amount of shortening, that is to say, some kind or combination of kinds of fat. The effects of this large addition of fat are several and involve both the flavour and the texture. With regard to texture, the fat breaks up the gluten masses and gives a crumbly and flakey texture to the crust.

I have seen various recipes for Chicago style thin crust pizza and though they may differ on the point of which fat(s) they use in the dough (olive oil, butter, lard, margarine), they all agree in using a considerable (up to and beyond 10% of precooked weight) amount of shortening.* To me that is short dough. Perhaps, from a technical standpoint, one ought not to say it is "pastry dough", for it does of course also have yeast in it. But then it is a sort of cross-breed, partly pastry-like and partly bread-like (in a sense, quite analogous to a croissant). In the current context, where the crucial issue is the texture of the crust, using the term "pastry" to invoke the flakey crumbly texture of Chicago-style pizza crust, a texture which Chicagoans appreciate and expect, is appropriate.

A further, not-inconsequential matter is the addition of sugar to the dough, a vulgar practice that is employed by many (e.g. Edwardo's) but mercifully not all Chicago pizza-makers. Then there's also the issue of cornmeal...

When I referred to Chicago style pizza as "ein kulinarisches Unding", this was rather apt. The dough used here for pizza includes yeast and can therefore be formally categorised as a bread dough, but it is also so heavily shortened that it takes on textural properties of pastry. For me, it remains an Unding.

On the other hand, to all the many people who like or love Chicago style pizza, I wish you good appetite.

Antonius

* For example:
a) A recipe I have beside me for Chicago style pizza, which suggests using the same dough for both thin crust and thick crust (deep dish) pies, calls for 1/2 cup olive oil per 3 cups of flour.
b) Edwardo's lists its ingredients for the dough in order of quantity as "flour, water, margarine, sugar, yeast, salt." Let's have some trans fats with our overdose of cheese and sausage!
c) A commercial recipe found on the web uses a massive dose of olive oil for thin crust (8%) and an additional massive dose of butter for the more substantial pies, that dough with a whopping 12% of fat. Pizza Marketing Quarterly
d) A more sober -- at least with regard to fat in the dough -- recipe is from the Malnati's (note that it is not specifically for thin crust pizza); even so, this recipe calls for a quarter cup of olive oil.
Lou Malnati's

Antonius wrote: For example:
a) A recipe I have beside me for Chicago style pizza, which suggests using the same dough for both thin crust and thick crust (deep dish) pies, calls for 1/2 cup olive oil per 3 cups of flour.

I can generally taste the olive oil or other fat cut into a thin crust pizza. I tend to prefer pizzas made without the oil for a very thin crust, but made with it for thicker crusts and chicago-style pizzas. However, I really don't like the taste or mouthfeel of malnati's butter crust. It doesn't work for me..

For what it's worth, the pizza I grew up on at home (made by my dad) was a 'short' dough. and was fairly thin.