7 ms·

I am from Naples and eat regularly at Gino Sorbillo's and Ciro Salvo's places. As it often happens here, everyone will swear by its pretty small and obscure "fa

I am from Naples and eat regularly at Gino Sorbillo's and Ciro Salvo's places. As it often happens here, everyone will swear by its pretty small and obscure "favorite place", but they are masters without doubt ;) The dough recipe from the article is pretty legit and exactly the way I do it at home; the main problem I see is that it would be pretty hard to find good Mozzarella or Fiordilatte cheese (Fiordilatte di Agerola is slightly drier than Mozzarella, therefore producing less liquid in the oven, and also costs less), and I find that pizza done according to the Neapolitan recipe loses much when using a different kind of cheese. A pet peeve of mine is that many recipes, while getting most of it right, use instant yeast; an important part of Neapolitan pizza is the slow dough rise using very little amounts of yeast, that should take from a minimum of 7/8 hours to an entire day or more (of course by storing it in a fridge).

slow_donkey 6y ago
Why would instant yeast have an effect on slow rising? You'd just use a smaller amount than AD or cake yeast? I can't think of any significant difference especially compared to AD.
- albmoriconi 6y ago
  It seems that I wrongly thought that "instant yeast" was what we call "lievito istantaneo", i.e. baking powder, that would give a a pretty different end-product. It looks like it can also refer to instant active yeast, i.e. dehydrated beer yeast, that should actually be fine as far as I can tell (I have no idea of exact proportions however).
  - chrisgarand 6y ago
    Officially, I understood you couldn't use dry yeast, that has changed it seems: https://www.pizzanapoletana.org/en/ricetta_pizza_napoletana https://www.pizzanapoletana.org/en/ricetta_pizza_napoletana That being said, you can probably use a smaller amount of instant yeast, it definitely shouldn't be replaced as a 1:1 with regular yeast as the fermentation time is an integral part of the flavour profile.
  - Arnt 6y ago
    Dehydrated yeast will work, but getting the amounts right is more difficult in my experience. I can cut a paper-thin sliver from a yeast cube easier than than I can count the right number of grains of dehydrated yeast.
    - ggsp 6y ago
      Grams are a thing ;)
      - systemvoltage 6y ago
        Most people have a hard time measuring 0.02% baking percentage of 200g flour. Not because they don't know what grams is, but because they don't have the equipment or means to measure it. Everytime I hear someone say things about units, it is not that people don't understand - there are other issues around that. For example, Americans know that metric system is better but they can't just switch solo until the entire nation changes which is a huge task. Furthermore, those people who gawk at Americans still use 360 degrees for a full circle, 24 hour segments in a day and other weird units - for e.g. Switzerland still uses points for fonts! Not mm. I would go ahead and even say - Metric system is based on base 10 which sucks, we should rewind back the history and grow 12 fingers because Duodecimal system is far better than decimal system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal We are just stuck with base 10. Just like Americans are stuck with their archaic units. It has nothing to do with the fact that people are smart/dumb. I am gonna push back on that nonsense.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        colinjoy 6y ago
        > for e.g. Switzerland still uses points for fonts! Not mm. Anybody who deals with typography in any professional capacity does so. It is the normal, not some obscure Swiss habit.
        6y ago
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    As far as I know, beer yeast is different from bread yeast these days. Instant yeast for baking is said to be dried using a process that is gentler and kills fewer cells.
- seanhunter 6y ago
  Instant yeast tends to be very aggressive/successful so what happens if you use a small amount of instant yeast is you get a slow rise but it's a monoculture microbially speaking versus if you use a typical sourdough starter (called "madre" in Italian baking) there are several strains of bacteria which are about equivalent in terms of how fast they multiply. So the final dough has a more diverse microbiome. The theory is that leads to a more complex taste because of the way the different yeast strains digest the sugars etc and affect the taste of the resulting product.
  - slow_donkey 6y ago
    Definitely agree in regards to sourdough starter vs yeast. Although I thought most Neapolitan pizzerias didn't use sourdough anyways - would love to be wrong about this.
  - sk5t 6y ago
    It's called the same thing ("mother") in English, across uses in sourdough starter, kombucha, balsamic vinegar...
cmain 6y ago
A good place to source the cheeses in the US is Caputo Brothers in Pennsylvania. They are one of the few places in the US doing cultured mozzarella and also have a lower moisture version for pizza. https://caputobrotherscreamery.com/collections/cheeses https://caputobrotherscreamery.com/collections/cheeses
cmain 6y ago
Another thing to note is that since a lot of Neapolitan pizza makers conduct the entire fermentation at room temp, salt percentages are important and can change throughout the year with ambient temps.
misiti3780 6y ago
Ciao, Come siete ? I'm not sure if you have ever been to NYC but an interesting observation I have had with Gino Sorbillo is the pizza in Napoli is very good, but he/they opened a restaurant in NYC and it's absolutely average at best. I assume they import everything, but quality wise, the places are polar opposites. Also curious your thoughts of Da Michele?
- yomly 6y ago
  I recently went to Naples and IMO the secret to just how amazing everything tastes there is the quality of produce. I don't know whether you can even export it - I don't know whether that kind of quality travels. On the Netflix show ugly delicious one of the chefs explain supposedly in Naples chefs will choose their mozzarella freshness by the hour (e.g. 6 hours or 12 hours) but to make "authentic" Neapolitan pizza with Neapolitan mozzarella you're not going to get Mozzarella fresher than 7 days old...
  - davidw 6y ago
    > I recently went to Naples and IMO the secret to just how amazing everything tastes there is the quality of produce. I don't know whether you can even export it - I don't know whether that kind of quality travels. Bingo. Produce and ingredients are generally very high quality in Italy, because people care about and make their purchases based on that, rather than simply looking at how much they're getting at a given price and how good it looks on the shelves.
  - misiti3780 6y ago
    yes -- but on the same show they highlighted people making ridiculous high quality fresh naples-style pizza in other countries other than italy - japan, denmark, etc. the cheese is the hardest part of the pizza to replicate outside of italy for sure, you can easily buy high quality imported olive oil, flour, and san marzano tomatos.
    - yomly 6y ago
      yeah the guy from Denmark resorted to making his own mozzarella by rearing his own cows - hence the point about exporting. Japan have decent local dairy (Hokkaido milk) and their overall attitude to produce is similar to Italy which probably is a big contributor to their food culture
JessCav84 6y ago
Isn't the oven one of the keys? And how true is that 'leopard spots' on the cornicione is a sign of a well made pizza?
- albmoriconi 6y ago
  It is, because it has to deliver heat from the bottom at high temperature and for a pretty short time (around two minutes); it's not that unusual in Naples to have a wood oven in our vacation homes, but in the city many live in condos so it's impossible. Leopard spots, also called "maculatura" or "mako" in some pizza-lovers forums, is considered by some a mark of perfect maturation of the "panetto" (the little bread, i.e. the dough used for a single pizza); to be honest it's quite a mystery to me how to obtain a good one, and as it often happens in this matters reality tends to conflate with legend: I've also heard sometimes that it is a sign of temperature mismanagement of the panetto, and I am not experienced enough to have a say on this :)
dangerboysteve 6y ago
I use packed dry yeast but I have always let my dough do a slow rise in the refrigerator for a minimum of 3 days up to 6 days. I use 00 flour and cook the pizza's using my Roccbox pizza oven or a custom Baking Steel 23x19 3/8" steel in the oven. Also if you want a good guide for NY style pizza then this is a good read. http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm
- devchix 6y ago
  He hacks his home oven to use the self-cleaning cycle to bake at 800°F. :blink: I'm not comfortable doing that. I rarely crank mine to 500°F, when I do there's quite a bit of smoke that has to be vent.
  - gunshai 6y ago
    Think about accidentally dripping room temperature liquid on to the oven window during the process....
  - bluedino 6y ago
    If your oven is clean (and it will be after running it at 800 a few times) the smoke will stop
  - heelix 6y ago
    We like doing pizzas on our grill, which can get to 500F+ easy enough. A cheap pizza stone works really well on there and has a bonus of not heating up the house in the summer.
    - OJFord 6y ago
      > on our grill What is this, that it's 'on'? In the UK a grill is the hot element you put something under, in the oven. 'Broiler' in America I believe. I realise you're not in the UK ('500F'), but what then is this grill, that's clearly not the same? > not heating up the house An outdoor covered barbecue/smoker/pizza oven type thing?
elhudy 6y ago
Are they ever made using sourdough (wild yeast)? I imagine that would be more "traditional"?
- mhkhung 6y ago
  Would not considered Neapolitian. There are some 'higher-end' pizza places there that don't follow the 'tradition as dictated by committee'. https://www.eater.com/2018/2/23/17025722/ugly-delicious-pizza-recap-season-1-episode-1 https://www.eater.com/2018/2/23/17025722/ugly-delicious-pizz...
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  I've been doing this using my recently-begun starter, to excellent results. I don't especially care whether or not my results would ore wouldn't pass Neaopolitan milspec.
basch 6y ago
How do you feel about Neapolitan vs Montanara?
fenwick67 6y ago
Mozzarella is surprisingly easy to make at home in less than an hour.
- loriverkutya 6y ago
  Where you get the water buffalo milk from?
  - patrickthebold 6y ago
    Water buffalos.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Mozarella from powdered milk: https://invidio.us/watch?v=hVDDLEF0vTU https://invidio.us/watch?v=hVDDLEF0vTU
oggy 6y ago
Sorbillo's is the best I've tried. I remember walking in front of the shop a few times and thinking it's some kind of tourist trap (it's on the possibly most touristy street in the city), but decided to try it out in the end. Absolutely fantastic. The pie was great, but TBH I think there were other places in town whose pies were as good, but the quality of the toppings... just wow. And I was surprised that the price was the same as any other place in town (I think a marinara was something like 3-4 Euros). My second favorite is in Switzerland of all places, in the small town of Meilen. Amazing toppings too. But I went there once since the start of the lockdowns, and it didn't taste as good. I don't know if it's the pandemic leaving a bitter taste, or just an issue for their supply chains...
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  Switzerland is next door to Italy and there's a significant Italian minority, so you can generally find pretty good Italian food if you look.
  - Ididntdothis 6y ago
    Same in Germany. A lot of pizza places are run by actual Italians.
earth_walker 6y ago
Those ratios looked off to me so I tried it out today. Now, the amount of moisture a flour will absorb depends on many things, including its age, source and your climate. I'm in an arid region of Canada, and our flours are typically harder than most. Having said that, I'm lucky enough to have access to relatively fresh, locally milled flour. So as I said, this moisture ratio looked off to me compared to what I usually bake with. At 300 ml of water, I didn't even get a dough that would combine. I added about a tablespoon and a half of extra water, and still got a much firmer dough than I would usually want. After resting for 20 minutes, folding it left creases as it wouldn't stick to itself. I've got it rising now, so we'll see if it still turns out, but if you're trying this with typical American store-bought 0 or 1 flour, I would recommend starting with 5-10% more water and adding flour if necessary once it's combined.
blaser-waffle 6y ago
> an important part of Neapolitan pizza is the slow dough rise using very little amounts of yeast, that should take from a minimum of 7/8 hours to an entire day or more (of course by storing it in a fridge). This is gospel for pizza. My wife used to run a NYC-style pizza place in college, and later a chain pizza place, and they both had 24-72 hour slow proofs in the fridge. In other words, they mixed the dough and let it rise, very slowly, in the fridge for 2-3 days before using it. Kenji Lopez-Alt has similar advice in his pizza articles.

slow_donkey 6y ago

Why would instant yeast have an effect on slow rising? You'd just use a smaller amount than AD or cake yeast? I can't think of any significant difference especially compared to AD.

albmoriconi 6y ago
It seems that I wrongly thought that "instant yeast" was what we call "lievito istantaneo", i.e. baking powder, that would give a a pretty different end-product. It looks like it can also refer to instant active yeast, i.e. dehydrated beer yeast, that should actually be fine as far as I can tell (I have no idea of exact proportions however).
- chrisgarand 6y ago
  Officially, I understood you couldn't use dry yeast, that has changed it seems: https://www.pizzanapoletana.org/en/ricetta_pizza_napoletana https://www.pizzanapoletana.org/en/ricetta_pizza_napoletana That being said, you can probably use a smaller amount of instant yeast, it definitely shouldn't be replaced as a 1:1 with regular yeast as the fermentation time is an integral part of the flavour profile.
- Arnt 6y ago
  Dehydrated yeast will work, but getting the amounts right is more difficult in my experience. I can cut a paper-thin sliver from a yeast cube easier than than I can count the right number of grains of dehydrated yeast.
  - ggsp 6y ago
    Grams are a thing ;)
    - systemvoltage 6y ago
      Most people have a hard time measuring 0.02% baking percentage of 200g flour. Not because they don't know what grams is, but because they don't have the equipment or means to measure it. Everytime I hear someone say things about units, it is not that people don't understand - there are other issues around that. For example, Americans know that metric system is better but they can't just switch solo until the entire nation changes which is a huge task. Furthermore, those people who gawk at Americans still use 360 degrees for a full circle, 24 hour segments in a day and other weird units - for e.g. Switzerland still uses points for fonts! Not mm. I would go ahead and even say - Metric system is based on base 10 which sucks, we should rewind back the history and grow 12 fingers because Duodecimal system is far better than decimal system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal We are just stuck with base 10. Just like Americans are stuck with their archaic units. It has nothing to do with the fact that people are smart/dumb. I am gonna push back on that nonsense.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - colinjoy 6y ago
        > for e.g. Switzerland still uses points for fonts! Not mm. Anybody who deals with typography in any professional capacity does so. It is the normal, not some obscure Swiss habit.
        6y ago
- perl4ever 6y ago
  As far as I know, beer yeast is different from bread yeast these days. Instant yeast for baking is said to be dried using a process that is gentler and kills fewer cells.
seanhunter 6y ago
Instant yeast tends to be very aggressive/successful so what happens if you use a small amount of instant yeast is you get a slow rise but it's a monoculture microbially speaking versus if you use a typical sourdough starter (called "madre" in Italian baking) there are several strains of bacteria which are about equivalent in terms of how fast they multiply. So the final dough has a more diverse microbiome. The theory is that leads to a more complex taste because of the way the different yeast strains digest the sugars etc and affect the taste of the resulting product.
- slow_donkey 6y ago
  Definitely agree in regards to sourdough starter vs yeast. Although I thought most Neapolitan pizzerias didn't use sourdough anyways - would love to be wrong about this.
- sk5t 6y ago
  It's called the same thing ("mother") in English, across uses in sourdough starter, kombucha, balsamic vinegar...

cmain 6y ago

A good place to source the cheeses in the US is Caputo Brothers in Pennsylvania. They are one of the few places in the US doing cultured mozzarella and also have a lower moisture version for pizza. https://caputobrotherscreamery.com/collections/cheeses https://caputobrotherscreamery.com/collections/cheeses

cmain 6y ago

Another thing to note is that since a lot of Neapolitan pizza makers conduct the entire fermentation at room temp, salt percentages are important and can change throughout the year with ambient temps.

misiti3780 6y ago

Ciao, Come siete ? I'm not sure if you have ever been to NYC but an interesting observation I have had with Gino Sorbillo is the pizza in Napoli is very good, but he/they opened a restaurant in NYC and it's absolutely average at best. I assume they import everything, but quality wise, the places are polar opposites. Also curious your thoughts of Da Michele?

yomly 6y ago
I recently went to Naples and IMO the secret to just how amazing everything tastes there is the quality of produce. I don't know whether you can even export it - I don't know whether that kind of quality travels. On the Netflix show ugly delicious one of the chefs explain supposedly in Naples chefs will choose their mozzarella freshness by the hour (e.g. 6 hours or 12 hours) but to make "authentic" Neapolitan pizza with Neapolitan mozzarella you're not going to get Mozzarella fresher than 7 days old...
- davidw 6y ago
  > I recently went to Naples and IMO the secret to just how amazing everything tastes there is the quality of produce. I don't know whether you can even export it - I don't know whether that kind of quality travels. Bingo. Produce and ingredients are generally very high quality in Italy, because people care about and make their purchases based on that, rather than simply looking at how much they're getting at a given price and how good it looks on the shelves.
- misiti3780 6y ago
  yes -- but on the same show they highlighted people making ridiculous high quality fresh naples-style pizza in other countries other than italy - japan, denmark, etc. the cheese is the hardest part of the pizza to replicate outside of italy for sure, you can easily buy high quality imported olive oil, flour, and san marzano tomatos.
  - yomly 6y ago
    yeah the guy from Denmark resorted to making his own mozzarella by rearing his own cows - hence the point about exporting. Japan have decent local dairy (Hokkaido milk) and their overall attitude to produce is similar to Italy which probably is a big contributor to their food culture

JessCav84 6y ago

Isn't the oven one of the keys? And how true is that 'leopard spots' on the cornicione is a sign of a well made pizza?

albmoriconi 6y ago
It is, because it has to deliver heat from the bottom at high temperature and for a pretty short time (around two minutes); it's not that unusual in Naples to have a wood oven in our vacation homes, but in the city many live in condos so it's impossible. Leopard spots, also called "maculatura" or "mako" in some pizza-lovers forums, is considered by some a mark of perfect maturation of the "panetto" (the little bread, i.e. the dough used for a single pizza); to be honest it's quite a mystery to me how to obtain a good one, and as it often happens in this matters reality tends to conflate with legend: I've also heard sometimes that it is a sign of temperature mismanagement of the panetto, and I am not experienced enough to have a say on this :)

dangerboysteve 6y ago

I use packed dry yeast but I have always let my dough do a slow rise in the refrigerator for a minimum of 3 days up to 6 days. I use 00 flour and cook the pizza's using my Roccbox pizza oven or a custom Baking Steel 23x19 3/8" steel in the oven. Also if you want a good guide for NY style pizza then this is a good read. http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

devchix 6y ago
He hacks his home oven to use the self-cleaning cycle to bake at 800°F. :blink: I'm not comfortable doing that. I rarely crank mine to 500°F, when I do there's quite a bit of smoke that has to be vent.
- gunshai 6y ago
  Think about accidentally dripping room temperature liquid on to the oven window during the process....
- bluedino 6y ago
  If your oven is clean (and it will be after running it at 800 a few times) the smoke will stop
- heelix 6y ago
  We like doing pizzas on our grill, which can get to 500F+ easy enough. A cheap pizza stone works really well on there and has a bonus of not heating up the house in the summer.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    > on our grill What is this, that it's 'on'? In the UK a grill is the hot element you put something under, in the oven. 'Broiler' in America I believe. I realise you're not in the UK ('500F'), but what then is this grill, that's clearly not the same? > not heating up the house An outdoor covered barbecue/smoker/pizza oven type thing?

elhudy 6y ago

Are they ever made using sourdough (wild yeast)? I imagine that would be more "traditional"?

mhkhung 6y ago
Would not considered Neapolitian. There are some 'higher-end' pizza places there that don't follow the 'tradition as dictated by committee'. https://www.eater.com/2018/2/23/17025722/ugly-delicious-pizza-recap-season-1-episode-1 https://www.eater.com/2018/2/23/17025722/ugly-delicious-pizz...
dredmorbius 6y ago
I've been doing this using my recently-begun starter, to excellent results. I don't especially care whether or not my results would ore wouldn't pass Neaopolitan milspec.

basch 6y ago

How do you feel about Neapolitan vs Montanara?

fenwick67 6y ago

Mozzarella is surprisingly easy to make at home in less than an hour.

loriverkutya 6y ago
Where you get the water buffalo milk from?
- patrickthebold 6y ago
  Water buffalos.
dredmorbius 6y ago
Mozarella from powdered milk: https://invidio.us/watch?v=hVDDLEF0vTU https://invidio.us/watch?v=hVDDLEF0vTU

oggy 6y ago

Sorbillo's is the best I've tried. I remember walking in front of the shop a few times and thinking it's some kind of tourist trap (it's on the possibly most touristy street in the city), but decided to try it out in the end. Absolutely fantastic. The pie was great, but TBH I think there were other places in town whose pies were as good, but the quality of the toppings... just wow. And I was surprised that the price was the same as any other place in town (I think a marinara was something like 3-4 Euros). My second favorite is in Switzerland of all places, in the small town of Meilen. Amazing toppings too. But I went there once since the start of the lockdowns, and it didn't taste as good. I don't know if it's the pandemic leaving a bitter taste, or just an issue for their supply chains...

9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
Switzerland is next door to Italy and there's a significant Italian minority, so you can generally find pretty good Italian food if you look.
- Ididntdothis 6y ago
  Same in Germany. A lot of pizza places are run by actual Italians.

earth_walker 6y ago

Those ratios looked off to me so I tried it out today. Now, the amount of moisture a flour will absorb depends on many things, including its age, source and your climate. I'm in an arid region of Canada, and our flours are typically harder than most. Having said that, I'm lucky enough to have access to relatively fresh, locally milled flour. So as I said, this moisture ratio looked off to me compared to what I usually bake with. At 300 ml of water, I didn't even get a dough that would combine. I added about a tablespoon and a half of extra water, and still got a much firmer dough than I would usually want. After resting for 20 minutes, folding it left creases as it wouldn't stick to itself. I've got it rising now, so we'll see if it still turns out, but if you're trying this with typical American store-bought 0 or 1 flour, I would recommend starting with 5-10% more water and adding flour if necessary once it's combined.

blaser-waffle 6y ago

> an important part of Neapolitan pizza is the slow dough rise using very little amounts of yeast, that should take from a minimum of 7/8 hours to an entire day or more (of course by storing it in a fridge). This is gospel for pizza. My wife used to run a NYC-style pizza place in college, and later a chain pizza place, and they both had 24-72 hour slow proofs in the fridge. In other words, they mixed the dough and let it rise, very slowly, in the fridge for 2-3 days before using it. Kenji Lopez-Alt has similar advice in his pizza articles.