Cheating Allowed: Molino Spadoni Instant Pizza Flour

 I normally scorn cheating in the kitchen.  I shun the artfully packaged pre-cut vegetables that the line the shelves at Whole Foods.  And I have been known to reprimand friends who think white powder that comes in a green canister is actual cheese. 

But for every rule there is an exception and I believe I have just found a rather good one to mine on cheating at cooking.  It is called Pizza Gran Sapore from Molino Spadoni- essentially pre-leavened flour that is designed for simple assembly of homemade focaccia and pizzas.

Anyone who ever bought a Boboli crust knows finding a way to cheat on the pizza dough is nothing new.  Part of it is convenience- a premade crust saves about 40 minutes of mixing, kneading, and rising- but it is also the fickle nature of yeast, that all important bread ingredient.  Yeast is alive so quality means everything. Those little packets of Fleischmann’s on the store shelf could have been there so long the yeast has long since kicked the bucket.  And high quality yeast is often expensive and only available in large quantities.  If you are not baking bread every day, there will almost certainly be waste.  

Enter the discovery of this Italian instant pizza dough flour I picked up at Buon Italia in New York’s Chelsea Market.  The directions were all in Italian, a language I know little more than “ciao”, but I could make out from the pictorial that all I needed to do was add warm water, mix, and roll out. 

Assembled

Surprisingly, it worked exactly like that.  The dough is breadier than yeasted pizza dough I’ve made in the past but each cup of the flour with about 2/3 cup warm water yielded smooth, pliant dough that pressed out nicely into a 10 inch round.  A couple of trials revealed that due to its more focaccia-like nature, this dough cooked more evenly at a slightly lower temperature (450°F) and for a longer cooking time (about 15-18 minutes) than your average yeast dough.

Fifteen minutes later

Overall, for the effort and outcome it was definitely worth the cheat.  Less than five minutes to mix the dough, ten to let it rest, and fifteen to bake, it was almost less hassle than ordering in.  And if I really wanted to cheat, and only a thin crust New York style could satisfy my pizza craving, Bleecker Street Pizza is only a phone call away. 

Note: A Google search revealed no apparent online retailers of this instant pizza flour.  But the Molino Spadoni brand does appear popular with Italian markets.  Either ask for it at your local Italian market, or try special requesting through Buon Italia’s mail order business.

Amy Powell is a food and travel writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and the French Culinary Institute. Follow her on Twitter @amymariepowell

What a Difference an Oven Makes: Tony’s Pizza Napoletana

Tony's Pizza Napoletana, San Francisco

They serve 10 styles of pizza cooked in gas, coal, electric or a 900-degree wood fired oven.  But if you want to eat the famous Margherita Pizza at Tony’s Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco, you better get there early.  Tony’s only makes 73 of this pizza each day.  As the 2007 winner of the World Pizza Cup in Naples, Italy, it goes to reason that this is one popular pie. 

It behooves one to get to Tony’s at an early hour for more than just the famous Margherita Pizza.  It is one of those rare restaurants with rock star status- everyone wants to be in Tony’s aura and they are willing to wait a long time during peak hours just to get a glimpse of what makes this pizza as legendary as it is.

On a recent holiday trip through San Francisco I endeavored to introduce John to Tony’s.  Although not quite experts, John and I have eaten more than our share of pizza around San Francisco- A16, De La Rosa-, New York- Otto, Bleecker Street Pizza-, and LA- Mozza, Gjelina-, to know a good pizza when we taste one. 

I had eaten at Tony’s several times always with groups large enough to justify the order of at least three different pizzas all done in different cooking methods.  Our waiter was a bit skeptical when I ordered two pizzas for just John and myself.  “Have you dined with us before?”  He asked, eyebrows conspicuously raised. 

I confirmed, yes, we were ordering two pizzas.  John had to understand what a difference an oven makes.

Our late dining hour meant the crowds had gone but so had the award winning Margherita.  In its place was a pizza with the exact same toppings but made with caputo flour instead of the San Felice flour of the limited edition pizza.  We ordered one of those, cooked in the wood fired oven, along Diavola Con Rucola done in the “Classic Italian” 650 degree gas oven. 

The Margherita was as I remembered: sweet sauce made of San Marzano tomatoes, sea salt, creamy mozzarella, extra virgin olive oil.  The crust was perfectly browned, nicely chewy on the edges, thin and crisp under the toppings.  John looked happy.

Then came the Diavolo.  The coal oven seems to produce a thinner, crispier crust than the wood oven, with a denser edge.  This was well suited to the pile of toppings- spicy sopressata, mozzarella, parmesan, topped with a scattering of arugula and drizzled in hot red pepper oil.  John’s face changed with one bite.  “The Margherita was like drinking a fine pinot noir. Now this,” pointed to the Diavolo, “is like moving onto a well aged Napa Cab.” 

I couldn’t have put it better myself.  Whether Tony’s makes the best pizza in the world or even the best pizza in San Francisco is up for debate (2007 was several years ago after all).  But it is the only place I can think of where you can do a virtual vertical of pizza, sampling your way through the icons of the pizza world from Italy to Detroit.  At the near toddler age of two and a half years old, one can only hope that like a fine wine, Tony’s Pizza Napoletana keeps getting better with age. 

Amy Powell is a food and travel writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and the French Culinary Institute. Follow her on Twitter @amymariepowell

California Pizza Dreaming

Pizza at Co. New York City

It has been seven months since I moved out of California back to the East Coast.  Friends ask me all the time if I miss it.  Sure I miss things- family, endless sunny days, beach out my front door.   But what I miss most, which comes as a surprise for other New Yorkers, is the pizza.

Sure I know, walk out my door, down 8^th Ave and hang a left on Bleecker St., I find myself at one of the classic New York pizza joints, John’s Pizza.  And if I head east, just north of Washington Square Park, there’s the thin crust Italian style pizzas of Mario Batali’s Otto.  Up 9^th Ave into Chelsea is a more (but not quite) California style pizza of Co., charred to a nice crisp around the edges and topped with interesting combinations of Italian meats and cheese.

But I can’t help it.  I love pizza in LA.  I miss it.

Fennel Sausage and green onion pizza, Pizzeria Mozza, Los Angeles

Mozza is the hands down favorite.  Oddly, it is also a Mario Batali restaurant but the pizza is the baby of his bread genius partner Nancy Silverton.  3000 miles away I can still taste the sweet pork sausage, squished down onto the crust at the suggestion of the bartender, juices oozing out over the chewy thin crust with billowy, hollow edge.  Some of my most memorable meals in Los Angeles during my time there happened at the bar at Pizzeria Mozza, watching the pies- goat cheese and leek, squash blossoms and burrata- go in and out of the oven.  (Note: For traveling pizza lovers, I have it on good authority from KF Seetoh, Singaporean food guru, that the Mozza in Singapore is excellent as well.)

Bollini’s Pizzeria in Monterey Park, south east of downtown Los Angeles, was a journey off the beaten track I never once regretted.  The wood fired oven burns at 1200 degrees, a feat achieved by few restaurants anywhere.  The pizzas are paper thin, with that just barely burnt around the edges look- the sign of a pizza oven master.  The toppings at Bollini are solid if not wildly inventive.  The Fungi Y Tartufi, wild mushrooms with fontina and truffle oil, never disappointed.  But is of that crust I dream.

For everyday eating near the beach where I lived, Gjelina in Venice was the go-to.  Reservations were impossible, waits were always long, but for the determined, like I was, the pizza was always worth the wait.  The menu there changed seasonally so toppings might range from heirloom tomatoes in August to beet greens in the fall.  It is the sort of place I could go often enough, not far away, not too much of a special occasion destination, that I could try out the new toppings on a regular basis- if I didn’t like what I ordered, there was always next time.

Pizza in New York sure is good.  But these days when I think of pizza, I’m California dreamin’.

Amy Powell is a food and travel writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and the French Culinary Institute. Follow her on Twitter @amymariepowell

African Pizza

I was stumped. A thirteen-year-old girl was standing in front of me waiting for an answer to what to her was a very simple question. "What is your staple food?" she asked.

I was at Chinyunyu Basic School less than 100 kilometers east of the capital of Zambia. Forty girls milled about me and twenty other visitors, all there on behalf of Room to Read. These girls were recipients of scholarships and life skills training as part of Room to Read’s Girl’s Education Program, their families too poor to pay the small tuition needed to keep them in school were it not for the scholarship.

In hindsight the question was not so strange. We all eat food, no matter where we come from. When surrounded by a group of strangers with limited English in common, food would seem a good place to start to learn about each other.

What is my staple food? I eat oatmeal every morning when home in New York but I’d hardly consider oatmeal a staple food. Other than that no one food would stand out as an essential component of my everyday diet- sushi one day, ramen the next, salad with fish, green beans with chicken- I am a spoiled American who can and does eat anything I want pretty much whenever I want it.

Buying time, I threw the question back. What is your staple food? “Nshima!” Four girls shouted together.

Driving the dirt road to their school this answer was out every window of our bus. Nshima is a cornmeal-based porridge not unlike very bland polenta. It was mid July, harvest time in the region, the subsistence farmers who lived around the school were bringing in their corn supply and storing it in large reed silos next to their round huts made of packed earth and thatched roofs. With the harvest, corn was plentiful which meant nshima was on the table often and bellies were full.

Having had nshima a few times that week and not minding it at all, I still cringed to think this might be their only source of food- nshima by itself hardly made for a balanced diet. I was reassured by Room to Read’s country director that most families supplement nshima with chickens and goats raised on their plots as well as beans. Roadside stalls sold tomatoes, onions, potatoes, and hardy greens, all nutritious additions to the nshima diet.

“But what is your staple food?!” the girls demanded again. I guess pizza and pasta, I said. Americans eat a lot of pizza and pasta.

Blank, puzzled faces looked back at me. Then the girls looked at each other and burst out giggling. They had no idea what pizza or pasta is.

I asked them if they knew what pizza is. The spokesman for the group said no and shook her head. I tried to explain.

I told my young friend that pizza is like bread that is a big circle. Tomatoes are cooked into a sauce and spread over the round bread. Then cheese is cut and placed over the sauce. The whole thing goes on a very hot fire until the cheese melts and the round bread is cooked.

Nods of comprehension assured me that my description was not completely terrible. But the girls looked back at each other and raised their eyebrows, a fit of giggles started again, no doubt wondering why someone would eat round bread with smashed tomatoes and cheese as a staple food.