Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

That cornicione on the Mozza Pizza does look very nice!

Quite humorous that the joint discourages photos because of the "celebrities"....I guess they are more important than us commoners

"With all the tangy, yeasty flavor you'd expect from a good bread".

I wouldn't call a yeasty flavor something that should be in good bread, but that's just my opinion.

Looks like a very nice 1-2 hit in LA for you Adam. What a great trip so far. Looking forward to Phoenix :) --K

"My experience is also that Pepe's is much more variable than it was when the previous generation was running it and before its expansion, but I have had some remarkably good pizza there recently...."

IMO, I strongly feel that product AND consistency is what makes a great pizzeria. Most pizzerias, either because of lack of ingredient quality, lack of skill sets by the pizzamakers and/or lack of passion are not even capable of making a great pizza to begin with.

A "great" pizzeria is capable of making a great pizza and is driven to get as close to that greatness as often as possible.....which is most of the time.

It sounds like Pepe's is in the process of falling, or has already fallen from greatness, even if it can still crank out a great pizza from time to time. That's really sad to this pizza lover and a situation that hopefully will right itself sooner than later.

Adam, the pic of the Sally's pizzas look delicious BTW. I need to get to New Haven ASAP! --K

I'm vibe-in' on the checked Vans

@seriouspizza: I agree that more than heat alone causes leoparding......thorough fermentation and other factors, all of which I do not pretend to understand as I have never cooked pizza in a WFO.

Although a pizza certainly does not need to be leoparded to be good!

Ah, exactly like when there is an occassional monster blister on the cornicione of a neapolitan influenced pizza......the blackend dough on the bubble is almost the consistency of flaked fish food that nearly floats on air when broken.......undesrtood.

Nice pics of those pies BTW.

@passion4pizza: yeast whisperer = no. raving lunatic with a propensity to blather at times = yes.

The real yeast whisperers here would be people like Foolish Poolish and Paulie Gee.....and most definitely some of the folks over at pizzamaking.com. I'm still a rank amateur when it comes to pizza making.

@seriouspizza: GMAFB. Don't use hydro basil, have and use 3 SD cultures as well as instant yeast and fool around with squares, rounds and grilled pizza for fun....although that mixture may brighten my mood today! :)

Adam, I've just given this a quick read and have not read all the comments, but I feel this is as dead on a pizza post I've read in quite some time, and very timely at that.

The fact is either most of the ingredients used are either the same (often the flour) and the handling-technique and/or the ingredients themselves are of a decent, but not remarkable quality.

And why spend the extra time learning technique or searching out ultra high quality ingredients when the purchasing public will buy virtually any pizza, regardless of quality?

I've seen growing popularity in the use of, and advertisement of the use, of things like Molino Caputo Italian 00 flour, San Marzano tomatoes, etc. Any asshole can buy an ingredient, but it takes patience, attention and art to coax the flavors out of what is required to make a great margherita.

Sauce: If you are a pizzeria buying canned DOP rated San Marzano tomatoes and literally pouring them out of the can and using them as sauce.....you are lazy. You need to first find a quality brand which procures high quality tomatoes (not all tomatoes grown in a particular region are of the same quality!). The liquid they come packed in needs to be poured away, then you need to rinse the tomatoes....and rinse them again. By the time you are done pouring away and rinsing to get to the pure tomato essence, you've essentially "thrown away" a good 1/3 or so of what came in the can. You've got to correct for salt, realizing cans from one year may be more salty than cans from another year, etc, etc. As far as VPN, why just limit yourself to salt? Pepper, oregano, thyme and other herbs can be welcome additions to a good sauce at times, even if I like just salt most times.

Crust: The farina MC00 is actually MORE difficult to coax flavor out of compared to many flours -- it is not easy to get the full potential of this flour realized in a pizza. And as mentioned by many here ad naseum, I would rather eat a pizza made with ACME flour by a person who knows how to manipulate dough to acheive maximum flavor than eat crust made from the most pure "from the source Napoli" farina by a person who is only interested in advertising Italian or "authentic" ingredients and who makes a mediocre crust. A great crust can be made from many types of flour (often resulting in structural differences which may be pleasing)....why limit the possibilities?

Cheese: Has any pizza cheese been more standardized than fresh mozzarella? Adam, you are correct....mootz is mostly a textural component, but fior-di-latte is mostly made the same these days....with obtained curd instead of making it directly from raw milk. This method is more timely and while the flavor is not astronimically better, there is a difference. And raw milk from one farm will not taste the same as another. What is the fat content, what type of grass are the cows eating, etc, comes into play. Go out and visit dairy farms offering raw milk, taste the milk, look at the farm....get off your arse and strive for something excellent!!! Not to mention I firmly believe there is more taste in good quality bufala, but that's another issue.

Basil: Once you wash basil you literally kill some of the flavor...those surface oils are mas importante. Growing your own makes a difference.

Olive Oil (if used in lieu of grapeseed, flaxseed or other oil): It takes a very fresh and high quality olive oil to endure a high temperature oven and still deliver some flavors. Oils like Fillippo Berio, while not bad for normal cooking, does not make the grade for high quality pizza (sorry Dom).

Adam said:
"The best pizzas I had were from people who were unconcerned with meeting someone else's standard or even a perceived traditional-Neapolitan standard and who took their pies in different directions, whether they were Neapolitan-inspired or doin' their own thing."

Bingo 1000%....why contrain yourself to anyone or anything? I've argued strongly that what Chris Bianco is doing in Phoenix is likely more Italian in heart, spirit and soul, than any pizzeria in the country...and a LOT of what Bianco uses does not come from Italy.

God, I hate pizza demons. The more pizza I make the more I realize I have no idea WTF I am doing, or talking about, so what I'm saying means nothing. Thank god we have you, Adam!

Have you ever played opera to your basil plants or talked to your dough late in the evening? What an effing mess this all is! --K

@andrewm I find that most of the pizza joints anywhere undercook their pizza. It's a chronic problem.

There may be many reasons for this and I don't pretend to know them all, but many pizza operators fire their pizzas at relatively low temperatures, with 450°F to 525°F being a quite common range of cooking temps. At these temps, cooking the dough until it's properly cooked can actually result in a completely dried out crust and sauce and toppings which are somewhat "nuked".

To me, that upskirt looks cooked, as the fault lines from the fold reveal the crust has lost some of its pliancy. The hole structure definitely looks like a step up from the everyday pizza shop slice for sure.

Nice looking space and good looking pies for sure.

So, what are the two wooden wine casks that are sitting on top of the walk-in used for?

Nice write up Adam. Happy trails out West! --K

Uh, how about realizing you need to read the rest of the article, pblogger

Good points all.....as long as the pizza has good balance of flavors and textures between crust, sauce, cheese and whatever else is on the pizza, then style is much less a concern for me. --K

I'll be down there on the pronto to check it out!