Cooking With Cold Fermented Pizza Dough

Last weekend I made some cold fermented dough. In theory it’s a great idea for the summer time, but eventually you gotta turn that oven on to cook the dough. But hey, you get to put a bunch of flour in the freezer which is a fun novelty. 

I let the dough sit out for three hours at room temperature before preparing it for the oven. It didn’t rise too much which I chalked up to being part of the experience. Neapolitan pizza is the end goal here, which means a naturally thin pizza. I can vouch for this dough’s workability. It was smooth, soft, and a pleasure to stretch. It could get a job in any pizzeria if it needed one. 

Look at this guy, hanging out on my pizza stone with a thin layer of sauce and fresh mozzarella dotting the landscape. This was all about the crust so I opted to keep the toppings scant. One mistake I made was not precooking the crust. Most of the time when I make dough I precook it because it never cooks fast enough. My oven wasn’t made specifically for pizza dough so I gotta find other ways to make it work. No preheating the dough meant burnt cheese. 

I’m not too happy about it. The cheese was bland and the dough was flimsy. It couldn’t have ended any worst. You can see the dough lived up to the promise. It didn’t rise to the heavens, but was nice and crunchy. I went back to the drawing board with the second pizza and emerged with a better pizza strategy and a cute looking pie. 

I turned the heat up to 500 degrees fahrenheit from 450 and precooked the dough. I got it to brown to the level I wanted and the cheese and sauce weren’t absolutely ruined in the the sweltering oven. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that cooking pizza in the oven is less about set times and more keeping a watchful eye on the oven. Anything can happen in that heat den!  The best laid plans of mice and pizza, am I right?

Would I use cold fermented dough again? Possibly. It’s time consuming, but if you’re looking for thin crust this is your ticket. It was one of the easiest doughs to work with and once I got the handle on how it cooked we got together perfectly. If you want to make the type of pizza you get from a pizzeria you’ll want to avoid this and go for a traditional dough recipe with warm water. Again, you can find the recipe I used at 101 cookbooks. 

Pizza Review: Fazio's White Pizza in Bloomfield

I’m a big fan of the traditional cheese/red sauce/crust pizza. Nothing fancy. If a pizza can’t hold its own when it comes to the pizza triforce, it’ll never be good. Ingredients piled on only serve to trick the eater into making them think they’re eating something better than they are. 

I bring this up because I recently visited Fazio’s pizza on Penn Ave in Bloomfield to eat their white pizza. I normally shy away from pizza that doesn’t have that red sauce fueling its tastiness. It’s like the life blood of the pizza. Without red sauce it’s like eating a pizza that perished. A vampire pizza of some kind that’s been resurrected after 200 years. Something is just off and there’s an uncomfortable amount of garlic. But the owner of Fazio’s, Jon Fazio, told me that his favorite pizza is their white pizza. It’s a staple. Everyday they create the “white pizza mixture” by hand. It’s something he’s very proud of and I had to eat it to believe it.

I recruited John Carman, local Italian expert, to help me conquer this fabled white pizza. Would it satisfy our hunger? Or, like Captain Ahab, would we come away from this experience unsatisfied and spend the rest of our lives finding the white pizza that Jon Fazio whispered in my ear. 

We ordered a large white pizza from Mr. Fazio. There was some hesitate before we dove deep into the depths of this white pizza. We looked at the pie and returning our hungry gaze were images of ourselves. Below the diced tomatoes, ricotta, mozzarella, and oregano, was a shimmering layer of grease. Precious grease that would line our gullets as we slipped slice after slice down our throats.

The ingredients were fresh and each bite was accompanied with a flood of flavor. It was peculiar at first. Finally a white pizza that satisfies. Then a kind of melancholy set in. I had hyped it up to myself and thought about this white pizza for so long that its extraordinary mixture of toppings failed to meet my expectations after the second slice. While it’s not strong enough to be a staple in a pizza diet, it’s worth eating just once. Like a pizza tourist attraction. 

Oh, and bring some napkins, cause this thing gets crazy greasy.

Beat the Heat With Ice Cold Pizza

It’s Summer time and the only savior we have from that horrid sun shining its gloriously hot light onto our feeble bodies is the cold. Ice cold if possible. The notion of embracing the cold is counter to the pizza fundamentals. Piping hot pizzas sprout from ovens that seem to have channeled the power of Hell. The most uncomfortable environment to be in on a sweltering Summer day.

You’re sipping on your iced coffee, huddled by the air conditioner wonder where pizza has a place this season. I got you, pal. You should know by now that pizza always has a place. I was searching for some pizza dough recipes and found a recipe for cold fermented pizza. The crutch of this dough is that every aspect is chilled to a refreshingly cold temperatures. My typo “00” flour sat in the freezer for a few hours and the water I added to the recipe was a crisp 40 degrees Fahrenheit. 

From what I’ve gathered, cold fermented pizza returns a crispier outer crust. It’s thin and parallels what Italy devours on the regular. It’s a departure from the recipes that require the dough to rise at room temperature for four hours and the yeast to dance with a warm cup of water before rising. 

The recipe resulted in a hefty amount of dough, dough that was a bit too soft for my liking. While it was spinning helplessly in my mixer I added more flour to get it to come together, but the results were still syrupy. On the plus side it’s soft and a pleasure to hold. Is there a possibility that these dough balls could double for kids toys? When the child is bored of playing with the dough you turn it into dinner. That’ll teach them to leave their toys around the house!

Here’s what the dough looked like after all was said and done. It’s sitting in my fridge as we speak. Surprising no one, they haven’t risen an inch. I’m worried, but I’ll put my faith in the pizza gods. They’ve yet to steer me wrong on this pizza pie we call life. 

Pizza Goals for the Week of June 24

While I’m still wandering around Pittsburgh as its local pizza dumpster, I feel like I’ve done a poor job of providing coverage and entertainment. I’m really worried about the tiniest demographic who can’t read the newspaper because there’s no pizza coverage. Can’t turn on the TV or YouTube because there aren’t any pizza videos. Can’t open their mailbox because there’s no pizza in it. Don’t worry, I’m hoping to pick up the slack.

Here’s some pizza content you can expect in the coming week.

  • Video Q&A will be returning. You can submit a pizza question for me to answer here.
  • I’ll try and reach out to someone in the pizza community for an interview. Maybe Jeff Varasano? 
  • Pizza review of Fazio’s white pizza!
  • A pizza haiku. 
  • Pizza news as it happens.

So get hyped up! Keep the links coming my way and if you have any pizza suggestions don’t hesitate to ask. Lots of great pizza content coming your way in the next week. Tell your friends.

Pizza Review: Mercurio's Neapolitan Melts in Your Mouth

It was a bright and sunny Father’s day, and all through the town, not a creature was stirring, not even a clown. The heavens were calm and the birds did chirp. If I didn’t know any better I could have sworn they did burp. This Father’s day I took my dear ol’ dad down the street. We would go to a place where pizza we would eat. Mercurio’s fine pizza! Neapolitan style! I just hope we wouldn’t have to wait a while.

We entered the shop with empty tummies, and as soon as we got in we could smell something yummy. The scent of gelato mixed with the burning pizza oven, if I had died and gone to heaven, well, this is no coven. We took our seats in an alcove to dine and noticed that there was an abundant menu which included some wine.

To start things off we ordered some bruschetta, we ate it as though it held our vendetta. The tomatoes mixed with the soft cushy cheese, unfortunately the bread buckled at the knees. It wasn’t able to support such toppings, so what remained were plenty of tomato droppings. Yet, it was refreshing and cool, with a bit of a crunch. Would I order it again? Maybe for lunch. 

The pizzas were vast and as far as the eye, I could tell you now that this is where I’d want to die. There were simple pies made with the basic of cheese, and extraordinary delights that would certainly appease. I stuck with the basics and ordered one margherita,  while my dad ordered the primavera con carne-a.

My pizza arrived warm and gooey. I put a slice in my mouth and found it chewy. It’s buttery base sizzled my senses, but the pizza was worth the humble expenses. So simple and clean with moderate cheese, this is the pizza that blesses my dreams. It’s tasty and firm and is gone too soon, it’s the only type of pizza that can make me swoon. 

So what are you waiting for? A groupon or more? Don’t walk to Mercurio’s, but run or soar! Their pizza is as legit as any I’ve had, and if you never taste it, well, that’s just too bad.