Pizza Today - October 2016 - 20

with TONY GEMIGNANI

respecting the craft

Thin Skin
Part II of Tony's tips for making the perfect thin-crust pizza

ast month I gave some pointers
for making a great thin-crust
pizza. But since there's so
much to the subject, we broke it up into
two parts. Without further adieu, here is
the second installment!
* Saucing your thin-crust pizza.

If you sauce your pizza and cook it for
two minutes before you add your toppings, you'll have a much stronger pizza.
At one of my pizzerias - Capo's - we
do it this way. That's because we have
one of the thinnest crusts I make there.
And, let me tell you, it's super delicious!
This technique is used on my St. Louisstyle and Chicago Cracker-style pizzas.
* Finishing toppings. Remember
that your finishing toppings should
typically be more than your cooked toppings. The more ingredients you can add
post-bake, the stronger and crispier your

achieve a crispier crust by cooking in a well-seasoned pan. And
doing so also is great for texture
and flavor. Different types of oils
can be used if you settle on this
method. Play around with olive
oil, cottonseed oil, canola or fats
such as Crisco, butter or lard.
* Oven. I'm not saying to
toss your conveyor away, but
typically you will achieve a much
crispier thin-crust pizza in a gas
or electric brick oven by cooking
directly on the stones. Anytime
a pizza is cooked entirely on a
screen and never has a chance to
cook directly on a stone you typically have a weak bottom.
A thin crust pizza is optimal
cooking between 525 to 600 F.
crust will be. One example is a common
Italian-style pizza called Prosciutto e
Pomodorini. This is a cheese pizza that
is cooked. After the bake prosciutto,
arugula, shaved Parmigiano, cherry
tomatoes and olive oil are added. A lot
of pizza makers think that more ingredients need to go on before the bake.
This is not correct!
* Aged dough. The older the dough,
the crispier crust. Old dough performs
and cooks much better than dough that
was freshly made. A 24- to 48-hour
dough is optimal for a thin crust. A
dough that is older has less simple
sugar content in it, which means a
slower browning. The ultimate result is a
slightly longer bake and a crispier crust.
Yeast feeds on simple sugar. Therefore,
the longer it has to feed, the better.
* Thin in a pan. You can actually

* Sheeter, press or rolling
pin. From my experience, using

a rolling pin or sheeter makes a
much thinner pizza compared to
a dough press. They can be much
more precise. Most dough presses use oil and heat your dough,
resulting in an odd residual flavor
(for more on presses, see the
Dough Doctor column on page
26). Some dough press models
that don't heat your dough are
better for flavor, but they may not
get the thinness you want. So you
may need to give an additional
stretch to the dough after the
press and use some of the techniques I mentioned above. ■

RESPECTING THE CRAFT features World Pizza Champion Tony Gemignani, owner of Tony's Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco and Pizza Rock in Sacramento. Tony compiles the column with the help of his trusty assistants, Laura Meyer and Thiago Vasconcelos. If you have questions on any kitchen topic ranging from prep to finish, Tony's your guy. Send questions
via Twitter @PizzaToday, Facebook (search: Pizza Today) or e-mail jwhite@pizzatoday.com and we'll pass the best ones on to Tony.

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Pizza Today - October 2016

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