His dough is made daily, allowed to ferment at least 12 hours at 65 F, and portioned an hour or two before using. Molinaro spent time with Da Michele's staff learning about its dough and ingredient choices, and then brought those experiences back to his hometown of Pittsburgh, where he opened Il Pizzaiolo eight years ago. And I'm telling you, you'll have the most difficult time choosing what to eat." "There's only two menu items: pizza Margherita or pizza marinara (without cheese). I tasted that, it inspired me to pursue it to its origin in Naples," said Molinaro, who found what he claimed to be the best pizza anywhere at that city's Da Michele. Peter Reinhart, culinary instructor and author of "American Pie." He stumbled onto it at Patsy's, then located under the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge. While living in New York in 1990, he scoured the city looking for the ultimate pie. Those same sensations triggered Ron Molinaro's obsession to produce the perfect pizza. "When you bite it, the dough will snap on the outside, but have this wonderfully fluffy texture on the inside that dissolves into cream inside your mouth," he added. A scant 2 minutes to 3 minutes within the inferno is all that's needed to produce a thin, crispy crust with a puffy "cornicione" or edge. Tacky doughs yield a wholly unique pizza, he said, when baked within the scorching confines or a wood- or coal-fired brick oven. You just can't give it to a high school kid and say, 'Make a pizza.' It's too delicate for that." "An artisan dough is a trickier dough because it's wetter, a little fussy and needs gentle handling. "It's the skill of the baker who's drawing flavor out of the wheat through understanding proper fermentation, which is where it all begins," said Reinhart, who, along with his wife, owned and operated an artisan bakery. In the book, he dubbed the nascent trend "the artisan pizza renaissance." "Webster's Dictionary" defines artisan as "a person skilled in an applied art a craftsperson." Reinhart extends that to pizza makers who are obsessed foremost with dough, followed by the sourcing and preparation of the finest toppings available. The characteristic charred cornicione of an artisan crust.įor Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, one of the nation's top culinary schools. "What I realized is that same thing was beginning to happen in pizza," said Reinhart, chef on assignment In both cases, people had learned - either via international travel or study - bakers and brewers beyond America's shores were producing bread and beer superior to anything most Yanks had ever tasted. Those pizza makers' dedication to their craft and its Neapolitan roots reminded him of the artisan baking and craft beer movements begun in the early 1980s. It didn't take long, Reinhart said, to recognize the similarities between those and a bare handful of others in the U.S.: All were single-unit operations with wood-fired brick ovens, where the owners not only made the dough (often by hand) but baked the pizzas themselves, nearly every day. pizza temples like Lombardi's, John's Pizzeria and Frank Pepe's.īut surprisingly, he found other spots of keen interest along the way: Luisa's Brick Oven Pizzeria (Charlotte, N.C.), Scholls Public House (Scholls, Ore.) and Pizzeria Bianco (Phoenix). Sure, visits to great Italian pizzerias were part of his two-year search, as were stops at U.S. When author Peter Reinhart set out to find the perfect pizza for his book, "American Pie," he uncovered some unexpected treasures.
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