San Francisco Chronicle food critic Michael Bauer answers, quoting Pizzeria Bianco's Chris Bianco: "'Pizza is like snowflakes. No two look the same. At some moment, there's a line of perfection and you're there for it.'"
We're starting a new series here on Slice called The Pieman's Craft. In it, we'll talk to various pizza-makers and see if we can glean techniques and secrets from them. Today we start off with a basic dough-stretching technique used by Motorino's Mathieu Palombino. —The Mgmt.
[Photograph: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]
The pizzas at both the Brooklyn and Manhattan locations of Motorino are known for their puffy outer edge (what the Italians call the cornicione). We wondered how Motorino owner and head pieman Mathieu Palombino achieved this effect. So we visited with videocam in hand and captured it here, after the jump.
Posted by Nick Solares, September 17, 2010 at 10:00 AM
De Lucia's Brick Oven Pizza
3 First Avenue Raritan NJ 08876 (map); 732-725-1322 Pizza Style: Somewhere between New York–style and Neapolitan-American Oven Type: Oil-heated brick oven The Skinny: The oven has been in operation since 1917 and pizza has been around since the 1930s at this Raritan landmark still run by the same family, now in its fourth generation of ownership. The pies are supremely crisp with the cheese and sauce completely integrated Price: Small, $5.90; large, $9.75
My hopes were high when I arrived at De Lucia's Pizzeria, and not just because the place looks like it could have been featured in the opening credits of The Sopranos (were it not for Pizzaland actually getting that part). De Lucia's had received the title of best plain sliceby the Pizza Patrol and I was expecting something spectacular.
Certainly the place has all the hallmarks of a great pizzeria — a storied past, a vintage oven, four generations of family ownership. The pizza is all made from fresh ingredients and is assembled by a cadre of pretty young girls before being handed off to Allie De Lucia, the old man of the operation, who shovels the pies into the vintage oven.
Said oven is, I think, the most compelling reason for visiting De Lucia's — it is a working relic. Encased in white brick, it was once coal-fired but was converted to oil operation at some point in the distant past. It has been in operation since 1917, when family patriarch, Constantino De Lucia, founded the establishment as a bakery. Pizza came later, in the 1930s, and proved so popular that by the '50s it became the only menu item.
Posted by Adam Kuban, September 16, 2010 at 6:25 PM
Slice was invited to a pizza preview at Donatella Arpaia's new eponymous pizzeria last night. I'm not going to go on about the pizza there, and you should not take this as a review. A) Because who would "review" a pizzeria at one of these press/friends/family things and B) it wasn't Ms. Arpaia herself making the pizzas nor her chef de cuisine for the restaurant, Jarett Appell, but rather third-generation Neapolitan pizza-maker Enzo Coccia.
Mr. Coccia stretched dough and built pies, saying, through Ms. Arpaia's translation, "This pizza is exactly what you would get at my pizzeria in Naples." We were basically eating a pizza omakase meal, with Mr. Coccia creating pies according as he fancied. You can take a look at some of them after the jump.
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