illdothedisheslater

I have eaten Chicago Deep Dish pizza in Chicago, and New York Thin Crust in New York. I have never eaten St. Louis Style pizza in St. Louis, but if presented with the opportunity, I might actually throw it on the floor, which is where it belongs (see St. Louis Style Pizza blog entry). And I have never been to New Jersey, so I have no idea what Trenton Tomato Pie should look or taste like. I do, however, believe I have created a thing of true beauty today.

I’ve been reading American Pie – My Search for the Perfect Pizza by Peter Reinhart, a renowned food writer and master baker (oh, grow up.) This may be one of the finest books on food I’ve ever read. Mr. Reinhart travels across the country, wanders into Italy, and discusses the history of pizza styles, then offers an impressive volume of recipes. I read it cover to cover – even the recipes. He details the life and craft of the true pizzaiolo, and refers to himself as a hunter – always searching for the next great pie. Just a brief review. I wanted to mention and recommend his book for any aspiring home pizza maker. He’s one of the rare writers that values both authenticity while recognizing that not everyone has an 800 degree wood fired oven in their backyard. (Yet…)

Unfortunately I’d already settled on the Trenton Tomato Pie and he didn’t cover that – he stayed with the basics – Neapolitan, Chicago, New York, American, etc. And here are a couple things I’ve learned, both from his book and from my thus-far limited experience: the longer the dough rises the better it will taste – a long cold rise is the best for developing flavor without the dough rising out of the bowl and creating large bubbles. A little science, courtesy of Mr. Reinhart (paraphrasing here) – yeast contains enzymes that convert simple sugars from the flour into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide raises the dough, and the alcohol cooks off in the oven. So sciency! Rising slowly (like in the fridge) retards the yeast activity while the enzymes continue to break down the starches. Less sugar is converted to carbon dioxide and alcohol, leaving more flavor behind. Got it? Nah.

The other lesson is not to fear heat. Cooking temperatures, as it turns out, are merely suggestions – ballparks even. All ovens heat differently – mine heats very unevenly. All those tedious pre-heat instructions? Are actually important. The longer an oven pre-heats, the better chance you have of cooking your food at the correct temperature. Say it’s 350 – you’re waiting for that beep so you can get dinner started. Beep! The oven says. So you open the door and shove in your casserole. BUT that 6 seconds of open oven drops the temperature up to 100 degrees! You have to start over! Your food is not cooking! It takes another five to ten minutes for the temp to creep back up and the cooking process to start. Good to know, huh?

So anyway, Trenton Tomato Pie – it’s a variation on Sicilian, and started in predominantly Sicilian-American communities (according to Wikipedia). It’s usually served in square pieces at room temperature. Huh. It may have started in Utica, New York (not the home of steamed hams) as early as 1914! BUT Joe’s Tomato Pie opened in Trenton in 1910, so as far as history is concerned, it’s a Trenton thing. The most famous tomato pie restaurants were Joe’s (now closed), Papa’s which opened in 1912, and De Lorenzo’s (now relocated), which opened in 1947.

Moving on from history and science at last! There aren’t a whole lot of Tomato Pie recipes online, and seeing as Mr. Reinhart isn’t being as forthcoming as I’d like, I do what I usually do – print out a handful of recipes, takes a little from this, a little from that, and do my own thing. (I mean one recipe insists that it must be cut into triangles, one insists on squares, and one, suspiciously, calls for “piccarino romano” cheese. WTF?)

We start with:

2 Cups AP Flour

1 ¾ Cups Bread Flour

¼ Teaspoon Active Dry Yeast (heaping – a big one)

2 Teaspoons Salt

1 3/4 Cups Warm Water

Simply whisk the dry ingredients together, then add the water slowly, stirring with a wooden spoon. Eventually it will come together. Knead for a minute or two, then shape into a ball and set into another oiled bowl that you totally remembered to prepare ahead of time, before your hands were all covered with dough and flour.

Cover tightly with plastic wrap and start your long cold rise. Since we are having record-tying cold temperatures here, I’m not even using the fridge – just going to leave it sitting around for a while. A long while. At least eighteen to twenty hours to be exact. More time = more flavor.

Divide the dough into two equal pieces.

One goes back into the bowl and into the fridge, where it can keep for maybe three more days, developing more flavor the whole time. The other becomes our crust. It’s very thick and dense – not a fluffy, yeasty dough like I’m used to. I let it rise and relax for another hour, then carefully stretch and pull (and eventually roll) it into something like a circle shape, trying to keep a little ridge around the edges for my cornicione.

Then it’s a simple matter of toppings.

With this style of pizza, the tomatoes are the star of the show, so we go straight to San Marzano tomatoes imported from Italy. They are widely recognized as the best canned tomatoes. One large can of whole plums and their juices get crushed by hand (squish! squish! go the hearts of my enemies) with just a sprinkle of Italian Seasoning. No onions, garlic, or cooking. Another quirk of the Trenton style is that, like with Chicago Deep Dish, the cheese goes on the bottom. The tomatoes act as toppings, not as a sauce. The crust gets topped with one cup of shredded whole-milk mozzarella (which I’m delighted to find at a reasonable price at Walmart – before it was Whole Paycheck or nothing. Get with the program, Kroger!) (Fresh mozzarella will have too much liquid that, when combined with the tomatoes would result in a soggy mess.) Then the tomatoes get just kind of glopped on here and there:

All this time (not the 18-20 hours, but the last hour of rising) your oven will have been pre-heating to 525 degrees. That’s really hot. Also you will have a pizza stone in there too (did I not mention the stone? If you don’t have one, an upturned cookie sheet will do almost as well. You also need a peel for this – did I mention that? You totally need a peel. I’m not doing a very good job here, am I?

Transfer the pizza onto your peel that has been liberally dusted with cornmeal – and I mean liberally. I mean the pizza should support gun control legislation and medical marijuana. Lotsa cornmeal I mean. When you shake the peel the pizza should slide around on it. As quickly as you can, open the oven door and slide the pizza from the peel to the stone. This is quite difficult, as it turns out, but I manage to get the job done. Change the oven setting to high broil. Let it cook 6 to 8 minutes – but keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn. It turns out magnificently:

The sparsely scattered cheese and random tomato glops merge into a delicious mess. The taste? Definitely top ten. This is one of the first crusts I’ve made (aside from deep dish) that rivals a restaurant pizza – full of flavor, chewy, flaky, etc. Look at that cornicione! I sent a photograph of my cornicione to several co-workers who seemed politely pleased for me, if puzzled at my enthusiasm. (They didn’t get to taste it.)

I admit that I couldn’t wait for it to hit room temperature, and instead we dug right in while the cheese was still molten. It was good. I mean real good. The tomatoes were definitely worth the extra cash – sweet and tangy, blending perfectly with the creamy, stringy cheese. On top of the superior crust, I have to give myself a gold star for this one. And if I’m ever in New Jersey, I’ll definitely seek out the Tomato Pie.

Downfalls:  The high oven temperatures may have set off the smoke alarm, causing much hurried stress for my husband and dog.  Not so much the deaf, elderly cat.  Also my pizza stone wasn’t quite up to the task.

A new and better pizza stone immediately gets added to my Christmas list.

One more tiny little thing – Luke just realized that he loves Loralei and she has NO idea. Okay, I’m done.