Pizza al Taglio Class at Vetri

Chef Spence Serves up Pizza #1

Last Tuesday we SEPTA'd into town to attend a class on Pizza al Taglio presented by Amis chef Brad Spence. Chef Spence had returned from Rome and a week working Gabriele Bonci the previous Thursday so this was probably a non-professional's best chance to get some insight into the Bonci magic.

The Vetri demonstration kitchen occupies a former apartment directly above the restaurant with very tight seating for 10 lucky guests. The kitchen is toward the rear of the building and a large "all purpose" space overlooks Spruce St. There are evidently plans to use this space for private events, intimate concerts in conjunction with the Curtis Institute, and so forth.

The class began with frequently refilled glasses of Prosecco while Chef Spence talked about the differences between Roman pizza al taglio dough and other types of pizza. The recipe is pretty simple:

Flour: 1000 grams
Water: 800 grams
Salt: 30 grams
Olive Oil: 40 grams
Yeast: 50 grams fresh, 15 grams dry (use less if you have more time)

Weigh Everything

Chef Spence strongly suggested using a combination of flours. In class we used a dough made from 900 grams of regular '00' flour and 100 grams of spelt flour.

Mix - Don't Knead

After weighing the ingredients into a large bowl they were mixed until a rough dough formed and all the ingredients were well combined.

About 45 minutes after the previous picture

The dough is then allowed to rise for an hour, folding it over on itself every 15 minutes. After the initial rise it goes into the refrigerator for 24 hours.

With the dough explained it was time to try some pizza - that's the one Chef Spence is cutting up in the picture up top. It's just tomato sauce topped with a bunch of prosciutto, arugula, and a drizzle of olive oil.

At this point we shifted from Prosecco to a red wine and began to make our own pizzas. The ten of us divided into 5 teams to build personalized pizzas.

Some old guy came in to try some of Chef Spence's original pie while we worked.

As the pizza baked we drank more wine and chatted about Rome, pizza making, pizza eating...

After about 20 minutes at 500° F the pizzas started coming out. And you know what?

Every darn one was delicious.

Then someone mentioned Nutella.

Oh yeah.

Chef Spence grabbed a left over dough ball, stretched it onto a tray and popped it in the oven while someone went in search of a jar of Nutella.

All of it?

Yep... all of it

Spank It!

As the evening wrapped up Chef Spence and the staff packed to-go boxes with the left over pizza and most of us stepped out into the upstairs dining room for conversation, coffee, mignardises, and grappa. Fortunately, I wouldn't have to start my car for another 90 minutes... (thank you SEPTA).

A fantastic class, with wonderful people, a beautiful space, and a dynamic chef with a contagious love for his craft. Watch the Vetri website and grab the first class that grabs you - you won't regret it.

Bonci Dough & The Modernist Baking Steel

In my seemingly endless quest to make the perfect pizza (whatever that is) I recently came across something called The Baking Steel. This is nothing more than a heavy slab of treated steel that replaces the more traditional pizza stone. It has a couple obvious advantages: 1) it will never break and 2) its enormous thermal mass means even a rather wet pizza is going to cook very quickly. The big disadvantage is cost - $99. Nevertheless...

I had made a full batch on Bonci style dough for Tomato and Black Olive Focaccia over the weekend and still had two of the dough balls in the freezer when my Baking Steel arrived. So it seemed reasonable to use one of those for my first trial.

But first, I loaded the Baking Steel into the oven on a rack at the third from the top level. This is one level lower than suggested in the guidelines the company supplies, but I was pretty sure my pizza would be quite a bit taller than is typical. Pre-heat at 550 F for an hour and then...

Bonci Dough - Full Batch

Ingredients

• 1000 gm Bread Flour
• 800 gm Tepid Water
• 7 gm Yeast
• 20 gm Salt
• 40 gm Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Those quantities result in 3 big (about 600 gram), very soft dough balls. This dough is far too soft and sticky to ever slide off a peel on its own (after all it's meant to be baked on sheet pans). So I stretched one ball onto a piece of well oiled aluminum foil.

You can see from the wrinkling around the dough that it's already grabbing the foil in spite of the oiling.

Toppings were Neapolitan style: crushed tomatoes, fresh (as in made that morning) Valley Shepherd Creamery Mozzarella, a bit of crushed oregano and sea salt. Slide it onto the Baking Steel and about 10 minutes later I turned the broiler on high. After another minute I rotated the pizza and another minute later out it came:

2 inches of crispy and delicious

Yep. The Baking Steel worked exactly as advertised. Since we make pizza or some type of bread at least once a week, its worth the $99 (there's a thinner model for $79). It makes a tremendous difference in the the quality of what comes out of my oven.

Gabriele Bonci's Broccolini And Mortadella Pizza

The long awaited English translation of Gabriele Bonci's book on pizza finally arrived last Tuesday. So I spent the rest of the week browsing through the recipes trying to decide on which to try. Broccolini And Mortadella won out.

The first step (and by far the most time consuming) is making the dough. That process is documented in detail in the book and on many other blogs, so I'll skip it here. I made a full batch of the white dough recipe: 

White Pizza Dough

Recipe by Gabriele Bonci

Ingredients

• 1 Kg. Bread Flour
• 700-800 gm. Water
• 7 gm. Instant yeast (1 packet)
• 20 gm. Sea salt
• 40 gm. Olive Oil

Cooking Directions

1. Combine the flour and yeast, mixing well.
2. Add the water and mix until a shaggy mass forms.
3. And the remaining ingredients and mix for a few minutes until well combined. The dough will be rather wet.
4. Let the dough rise, covered for 1 hour.
5. Dump the dough onto a very well floured surface and gently shape it into a rough rectangle with a short side nearest you.
6. Fold the top 1/3 of the rectangle down to the center and press it down gently.
7. Fold the bottom third up over the center and press it down.
8. Turn the dough 90 degrees, re-shape the rectangle and repeat the folding.
9. And do it again.
10. And again.
11. Put the dough back in it's bowl and let it rest for 15 minutes.
12. Repeat the folding and resting 3 more times.
13. After a final resting divide the dough into 3 or 4 equal balls and place them in the refrigerator in lightly oiled bowls and covered tightly in plastic wrap, overnight.
14. The dough balls may also be frozen or simply allowed to rise in a cool place until you're ready to bake.

Two 600 gm. dough balls

I'm already pretty familiar with Bonci style dough and knew that it would take about 600 grams to fill my small jellyroll pan. So I divided the full batch into three balls: 2 for the pizza and 1 went into the freezer for next week. Those two went into a couple large bowls for the final fermentation. Since I would be using them in just a few hours I put them out on our rather chilly porch instead of overnighting them in the refrigerator.

Broccolini And Mortadella Pizza Filling

Recipe by Adapted from Gabriele Bonci

Ingredients

• 250 gm. Broccolini or Broccoli raab, Chopped
• 125 gm. Mortadella
• Salt
• Olive Oil
• Lemon Juice

Once the dough is made the process is simple.

Stretch one ball so it fills the pan. That's an aluminum 1/4 sheet pan about 10.5 x 15.15 inches.

That's Broccoli Raab

Spread on the chopped broccolini, lightly dressed with olive oil and a little salt. I used broccoli raab, which is a lot more leafy than broccolini.

Stretch the other dough ball and place it on top. Bake at 500 degrees for about 20 minutes.

Carefully lift off the top crust and give the broccolini  spritz of lemon juice, then layer on the Mortadella.

Put the top back on and let it cool a few minutes, then slice and eat.

Mario's Sicilian Pizza

Mario's Sicilian Pizza

Recipe by Mario Batali

We caught this recipe on The Chew the other day and decided to adapt it for a 2 person household. I used the wonderful all purpose pizza bianca dough recipe from Gabriele Bonci and cut the other ingredients back proportionately. We also used the tuna we canned a couple months back.

Ingredients

• 1/2 Recipe Pizza Bianca dough
• 1 cup Crushed tomatoes
• 4 oz. Fresh Mozzarella, sliced thin
• 1 Tbs Salt Packed Capers, rinsed
• 1/2 cup Sicilian Olives, chopped
• 1/2 cup Tuna packed in oil
• Oregano
• Red Pepper Flakes

Cooking Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 500 degrees.
2. Make the pizza dough according to the recipe and allow to rise for about an hour.
3. When the oven is heated, turn the dough out onto a sheet of parchment paper and spread it carefully into a large oblong. 



4. Spread the tomatoes evenly over the dough then add the other ingredients: tuna, olives, capers, mozzarella, oregano.
5. Slide the pizza into the oven and bake for about 15 minutes or until it's nicely browned.
6. Slice and serve!

As mentioned we used the tuna we canned a few weeks back on this pizza. If you can possibly do it can your own tuna! The big chunks were firm and moist and the oil, rather surprisingly was not overwhelmed by the tuna. It was a complete success.

We also opened a jar of the melanzane sott'olio from last week and it too was wonderful. The strips of eggplant were tender, with just a hint of acid from the vinegar boil, a breath of garlic and tiny hint of heat from the peperoncino.

#MeatlessMonday - Garden Pizza #1

Garden Pizza #1

Recipe by Bill C

Made with the first few vegetables from our little garden.

Ingredients

• 250 g. Bread Flour
• 200 g. Water
• 5 g. Salt
• 1 Tbs Olive oil
• 1/2 pkt. Active Dry Yeast
• 1 Small Italian or Japanese Eggplant
• 1 Small Zucchini
• 28 oz Can Peeled Tomatoes
• 4 oz. Fresh Mozzarella
• Olive Oil
• Salt
• Pepper

Gardening 2012 - Thinning & Pizza

Baby Cima di Rapa

Last night I thinned the cima di rapa and ended up with a pile of tender baby greens:
I couldn't just toss 'em in the compost so I made half a batch of pizza bianca dough, let it rise in the 'fridge overnight and put together this little pie.

Ingredients

Dough:

250 g. bread flour
200 g. water
5 g. salt
1 Tbs. EVOO
1/4 tsp. active dry yeast

Topping:

28 oz. can San Marzano tomatoes
4 oz. fresh mozarella
dried oregano
A big handful of fresh baby greens
Fresh basil
The most delicious EVOO you have on hand

Method

The night before, place all the dough ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix by hand until a rough dough comes together. Using the dough hook, knead on 80% power for 15 minutes. Be careful, at this speed the mixer will tend to "walk". Scrape the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, oil your hands, and shape the dough into a "ball", making sure to get it coated with oil. Cover the bowl tightly and place it the refrigerator overnight.

At least an hour before cooking place a baking stone on a rack in the lower third of your oven and preheat the oven to it's highest temperature: 500 or 550 F.

Get the dough out of the refrigerator, shape it into a disk and let it warm to room temperature on a well floured plate, covered, while the oven preheats.

Crush the tomatoes by hand and drain them. You'll end up using nearly all of them on the pizza. Save the juice and any left over crushed tomato for another use.

Trim the greens and chop roughly if they're large. Cut the mozarella into into 1/4" slices and break them up into irregular chunks.

When the oven has preheated for at least an hour gently stretch the dough into a pizza shape, leaving a slightly raised edge. Spread a thin layer of crushed tomatoes evenly on the dough. Sprinkle very lightly with dried oregano and scatter the mozzarella, basil and greens on the top.

Bake in the blazing hot oven for about 8 to 10 minutes or until the edges are nice and brown. Drizzle on a little of your most delicious olive oil and enjoy! It tastes the same no matter what shape.

Mmmmm....