Grandma Bea’s New York Chopped Liver

As we approach  Thanksgiving day I have been agonizing over how I could do a relevant New York food post.  Finally it occurred to me that my grandmother always made one dish on Thanksgiving that is fairly unique to New York kosher deli’s and not something you find at most other Thanksgiving gathering.  That dish is chopped liver.

Before I share, I will tell you that this recipe is almost sacred in my family.  I only publicly divulge it here because I have accepted the fact that there is a pretty small market for chopped liver and this recipe, however good, will not make anybody in my family a millionaire.  That said, in honor of my Grandma Bee who is no longer with us and the Thanksgiving holiday I present to you Grandma Bea’s Famous New York Chopped Liver.  Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Ingredient list:

• 1 pound of chicken liver
• 3 hard boiled eggs
• 1 large  (or 2 small) onions chopped
• 1/4 olive oil
• Kosher salt (to taste)
• Pepper (to taste)

In a frying pan sauté onions with olive oil until they are translucent.  At the same time bring a pot of water to a boil (enough to cover the chicken livers).   Add salt and the chicken livers and cook until the livers are no longer red (approximately 10 minutes).  Place cooked livers, sautéed onions, hard boiled eggs, salt and pepper in a food processor and mix together until you reach your desired consistency.

A Simple New York Pizza Recipe

I am fairly certain I swore in a previous post that I would never list a New York Pizza recipe on this site.  Mostly because it has been covered on countless blogs and web sites. But low and behold I made a great tasting pizza the other night and I thought it would be shameful to not share this fairly simple recipe with the world. 

This recipe covers a lot of ground that has been covered by others but simplifies the overall process.  I think you will find it can deliver tremendous results.

The Dough

The dough recipe simply follows Peter Reinhardt's recipe from his book The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread.  You can find a legally reprinted copy of the recipe on the 101cookbooks.com blog posted here.  I have only a few points to add to the recipe:

• Follow the instructions regarding ingredient temperature religiously (i.e. refrigerate your flour and use ice cold water).
• Use the weight measurements and NOT the volume measurements (except in the case below).  I have found they give very different results. (Note that after you have made the dough a few times you will learn what it looks like and you can revert to the volume measurements for simplicity sake and adjust flour and water amounts as necessary till the the dough looks and feels as it should.
• Unless you have an incredibly accurate scale use volume measurements for salt and yeast.
• If using any olive oil at all use at most about an 1/8th a cup
• If using Sea Salt or Kosher salt be mindful of how much you use because you can quite easily kill the yeast if you use to much salt.
• Use high-gluten flour.
• Let you dough rise in the refrigerator for 2 days ( 1 day will work but 2 days seems to be the optimum time).

The Sauce

Pizza sauce is actually so simple but yet many people including myself tend to overcomplicate it.  At it's core a pizza sauce should be uncooked tomato pulp.  Here is the recipe that works for me (note this recipe makes enough sauce for two or three small 12-inch pizzas.  You can double the recipe as needed)

• 1 can of whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes ( I am currently using San Marzano Cento Organic Italian Peeled Tomatoes, DOP Certified)
• Purchase any Italian Tomato Press
• Pick the tomatoes out of the can (not the juice) and repeatedly run them through the press until you squeezed out all the pulp and juice and only have seeds in your waste bowl.
• Strain the tomato pulp and water until you are left with nothing but tomato pulp
• Add a teaspoon of Italian seasoning (or use fresh herbs)
• Add a pinch of sea salt and pepper
• optional: add a little garlic powder

That's it!

The Cheese

Very little effort is required for the cheese portion of this recipe.  All you need to do is buy the right ingredients.  I have been using the cheese blend listed below.

• Buffalo mozzarella (can be purchased at Costco here in Seattle)
• Whole Milk mozzarella (don't use part skim)
• Shredded Parmesan cheese (from a block)

Don't overdo the cheese.  New York style pizza does NOT have a blanket of cheese on it.

How to make it and bake it

For all the various components people have claimed are necessary to make a great New York pizza I have come to the conclusion that above all the main thing needed is high even heat.  So to bake your pizza properly (assuming you don't have a pizza oven)  you need two things:

• A pizza stone
• A gas grill that will fit the pizza stone (I use a Weber Spirit E-310)

Let the grill heat up for a good hour.  The thermometer on the front of the grill should be close to the max 600 degree mark.  I promise this technique will make a great tasting crust and deliver a great char on the bottom of the pizza.

To make your pizza first follow Peter Reinhardt's instructions on taking the dough out a couple hours prior to making the pizza.  To stretch the dough flour your peel (don't use corn meal ... no self respecting New York pizza place uses corn meal).  Place your finished dough on the peel and push down creating a flat disk.  Then slowly stretch the dough by pulling your hands apart and turning.  Repeat this movement till the dough is very thin.

Once your dough is stretched, top it with sauce and cheese.  Place the uncooked pizza pie on the pizza stone and close the grill.  Depending on how long you preheated the grill the pizza should cook in 3 - 6 minutes.  I recommend you turn the pizza once.

Caveats

Although the grill works great, it still has it's limitations.  In general I find that unlike my oven which has to much top heat (i.e. the cheese cooks before the dough), I find the grill is a little heavy on bottom heat.  So although the pizza cooks through I am not a 100% happy with the dough color I get on the top of the pizza.  That said I think this is the best you can do without owning a pizza oven or following Jeff Varasano's methods of altering your home oven (and probably violating your insurance policy).

Final thoughts

This recipe is actually really easy if you have the right tools.  It is a bit time consuming but not difficult from a recipe perspective.  There are countless other recipes on the web ranging from incredibly simple to Jeff Varasano's dissertation on pizza making.  I promise this recipe will deliver equal or greater results than most of the recipes out there in a reasonable amount of time.  You just might never need to search for a New York Pizza ever again.

If You Can't Find New York Pizza Make It, Stupid! (Part 3)

Hopefully by now you have read the other two segments on making New York pizza.  We have covered everything from some simple not well known basics (i.e. using high gluten flour)  to a very complicated recipe from Jeff Varasano.  And if you are anything like me you have tried all of these techniques in varying combinations and had some great pizzas and some bad ones.

So this final post on the subject is really about introducing consistency into your pizza recipe so you can turn out a great New York pie over and over again.  After reading all these resources it is easy to see that baking is as much a science as it is an art.   When one is dealing with Art and Science it is best to learn from a master.  Who better to turn to then the master baker himself Peter Reinhart.

The Perfect recipe | Instant Yeast | Consistency

After years of making pizzas using the previously mentioned resources I stumbled across Peter Reinhart's book titled The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread. Peter Reinhart is a baking instructor at Johnson & Wales University and a professional baker.  In his book is a very detailed recipe for pizza dough that gets really specific on some of the techniques we have discussed.  Even better when you try this recipe you will get amazingly consistent results.  I won't reprint the recipe here but it has been reprinted on other blogs.  If you want to see a scaled back version of the recipe check out Heidi Swanson's 101 cookbooks blog.

The first thing I took away from Peter's book was what yeast to use.  Until I read Peter's book I was stuck between using Active Dry Yeast or Using a Sourdough yeast culture as described in Jeff's recipe.   I always got inconsistent results with ADY and I found Jeff's Sourdough technique to be immensely time consuming (note if you are interested in trying the sourdough technique you can read Ed Wood's Classic Sourdoughs: A Home Baker's Handbook).  Peter's recipe was the first I had seen exclusively calling for instant yeast.   I have found instant yeast much easier to use and my dough appears to come out much better.   Much like high gluten flour, instant yeast is hard to come by in your typical supermarket.  I purchased mine from our local Cash and Carry. 

The next great part of Peter's recipe is the wetness of the dough.  Peter describes what the dough should look and feel like better than any recipe I have read.  This is really helpful since a lot of baking involves just knowing what the dough should feel like.  In addition the weights and volume measurements he provides give truly consistent results.

Finally Peter gives very precise instructions on rise times and locations.  I think this is the most critical and important component of this recipe.   Until I read Peter's recipe I was all over the map with my rise times and where I allowed the dough to rise.  Dominic's book calls for a 2 hour rise prior to refrigeration where Jeff's recipe has a completely different solution.   If I follow Peter's recipe to the "T" my dough comes out perfect almost every time.  Even better the dough is VERY easy to work with!

Closing thoughts

If  you decided to embark on the quest to make a great New York pizza I hope these past few posts help you along the way.  To recap some of the key points in these posts:

• Try and find high gluten flour it will help you make dough that stretches with out breaking
• Let your dough rise for at least 24 hours in the refrigerator  (I prefer3 days)
• Your dough should be fairly wet with a hydration level of around 60% or higher
• Make your sauce from uncooked San Marzano tomatoes
• High Heat is critical to a successful pizza
• Consider using instant yeast

Until next time happy New York pizza making!

If You Can't Find New York Pizza Make It, Stupid! (Part 2)

In our last post we reviewed Dominick A. Deangelis' book The Art of Pizza Making: Trade Secrets and Recipes.   If you read the book you will quickly learn that Dominic is an engineer by training and his book is peppered with some of the science behind pizza making.  Well being an engineer and being obsessed with making pizza must have some correlation because not only do I also have an engineering background but so does the author of our next resource Jeff Varasano.

Jeff Varasano originally posted his multi-page dissertation titled Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe in 2006.  It has since become one of the most referenced resources for making New York Pizza on the web.     The rest of this post discusses some of the highlights of Jeff's recipe/dissertation.

00 Flour | Wet Dough | SAN MARZANO TOMATOES | High Heat

One of the first things Jeff discusses in his document is that you don't need high gluten flour to create a great pizza.  Jeff discusses some other options including using 00 flour which is a super fine Italian flour.  This was news to me since before I read Jeff's article I assumed you would fail with anything other than high gluten flour.  Jeff provides additional methods on how to knead the dough to develop the gluten even with lower protein flour.  00 flour is usually only available in Italian import stores.  I buy my 00 flour from DeLaurenti Specialty Food and Wine in Seattle's Pike Place Market

The next eye opener for me was the amount of water in Jeff's recipe which results in a very wet dough.  This was very different from my older recipes which were much drier. Jeff suggests hydration levels of over 60% (in baker's percents) compared to the 50% in my older recipes.   This really made  a huge difference in my pizzas both in flavor and my ability to work the dough.

Another little tidbit which I already knew but is quintessential for any pizza maker is that a good pizza sauce is really just crushed uncooked tomatoes.  And specifically the best pizza sauces use imported Italian San Marzano tomatoes.  The reason for using uncooked tomatoes is that the oven is so hot that the tomatoes cook while on the pizza in the oven.  If you precook the sauce you are basically cooking the sauce twice.  This flies in the face of most peoples first instinct which is to make a cooked tomato sauce.  Like the 00 flour, San Marzano tomatoes are sometimes difficult to come by but I have found them in most high-end supermarkets including Whole Foods.  In the summers I actually grow my own tomatoes and make a sauce using the Velox Tomato Press / Tomato Strainer.

Last but not least Jeff describes the need for VERY high heat.  I don't think I appreciated how critical this was to success until I read Jeff's article and tried using a high heat oven myself.  The difference in your pizza will be dramatic.  Now if you follow Jeff's suggestion you will be breaking the lock off your oven door and running it on cleaning cycle (not a good idea).  If you want an alternative check out Kiko Denzer's book titled Build Your Own Earth Oven, 3rd Edition: A Low-Cost Wood-Fired Mud Oven; Simple Sourdough Bread; Perfect Loaves.  I cooked my first "high heat" pizza in one of these home built ovens and it was fantastic.  I plan on building one in my own yard.

There are lots of other great tidbits in Jeff's article.  I highly suggest you read this dissertation on pizza making if you want to make a great New York pizza pie.  Here is the link one last time for everybody.

Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe

In the next post we will discuss the final reference that opened my eyes to pizza making and some closing thoughts.

If You Can't Find New York Pizza Make It, Stupid! (Part 1)

Ok I just called the few people who read my blog stupid. In the marketing and PR world the only person who would be called stupid would be me!

But seriously folks what does one do after they have identified the New York food they crave and discovered there are no restaurants in their area that fulfill this craving. Well you do the very next best thing which is try to make it yourself.

Now I will be the first to tell you that it is very difficult to make food at home that tastes like what you can find at a restaurant. Reasons abound, but the biggest are equipment, ingredients, temperature control, and last but not least LOT'S of salt and butter. I believe it was Anthony Bourdain in his book Kitchen Confidential who enlightens us to how butter and salt are key to restaurant food! All that said I still think with a bit of effort one can come pretty close to restaurant style in their house.

What I want to talk briefly about is making New York pizza at home. Now before you all go expecting a thirty page dissertation on pizza making I will just say this subject has been covered and recovered by countless people in countless books, blogs, and papers. So I will just cover some of the highlights and link to my favorite recipes and sources of information. This started as one post but as I started writing I quickly discovered it would be better if I broke it into parts.

High Gluten flour refrigerated Rise Even Heat

The first time I tried to make a New York pizza I actually tried to fly dough home from my favorite place in New York. That didn't work and I will leave it at that!

After that debacle I searched Amazon.com for a book on the subject of pizza making and came across a little gem called The Art of Pizza Making: Trade Secrets and Recipes by Dominick A. Deangelis. When it was finally delivered to my house I was amazed to see a tiny book that looks like it was printed at Kinkos! But in true keeping with the age old saying "never judge a book by its cover" this book had some VERY valuable information.

The first thing this book teaches you is that the secret to why Pizza dough stretches as it does is because of gluten. Gluten is a composite of proteins that gives bread and pizza dough it's elasticity. Hence if you want your pizza dough to stretch without breaking you need a lot of gluten. Since gluten is a function of protein a high protein flour can be key to developing gluten. Hence this book explains that many pizza places use high gluten flour (In a later post we will discuss other ways to develop gluten without high protein flour). So if you are taking your first stab at pizza making I HIGHLY suggest you go find yourself some high gluten flour.

Now the problem is that high gluten flour is very hard to find. I have searched every supermarket far and wide and have yet to find it. In my early days I actually purchased my high gluten flour from a bakery/cheese shop on Divisadaro in San Francisco. This isn't something they actually sold and I think they just gave it to me at cost. But once I really got going I wanted a more steady supply and they only place I could find was the local Cash and Carry. The great thing is they actually sell high gluten flour. The downside is it comes in very large fifty pound bags! Another option is to order it online from companies like King Arthur, however be prepared to pay more for shipping than you paid for the flour.

The next great "a ha" moment in this book is that you should slowly (as long as 3 days) let your dough rise in the refrigerator (sometimes called retarded rise). By letting the dough rise in the refrigerator you slow the fermentation process down. This allows the flavors to better develop and totally changes the texture of the end product. If you want chewy pliable New York Pizza dough a refrigerated rise is a must.

Finally there is the notion of having even heat distribution. Basically when you cook a pizza you want all parts of it to cook at an equal temperature otherwise the bottom might burn before the cheese melts or vice versa. You also want all sides of the pizza to cook evenly. Throw a thermometer in any home oven and you will discover temperatures vary widely within the oven. Hence a pizza stone is critical since it helps distribute the heat evenly below the pizza.

That is it for part 1. In my next post I will move to Jeff Varasano's "dissertation" on New York pizza making and discuss cooking with very high temperatures, higher water content, and using imported 00 flour.