A New York Pizza Deep Dive

Everything you need to know to make perfect pizza at home

Hello Happy Friday! I have the perfect weekend project for you, a New York pizza party!

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I am so happy to be finally posting this recipe. It is something I have been tinkering on and off with for months! I could tell you some story that on one of my trips to NYC I had a lightbulb moment whilst eating the best slice of pizza in my entire life, which set me on a quest to recreate it for myself, but the truth is, I just really like this style of pizza. Waiting until my next visit to NYC for a good slice of pizza seemed far too long to wait.

For the longest time I was on a mission to make Neapolitan pizza at home, and this eventually led me to getting an outdoor pizza oven, which I love. I was making some truly excellent Neapolitan pizzas, but the problem with that approach was that I didn't have a garden. Yes, really. I had a pizza oven, but it lived at my in-laws house, so I would only get to use it a couple times a year. We moved into our new place at the start of this year, and the garden issue has been resolved. But it’s currently the middle of November, and I’m not exactly thrilled at the idea of firing up the oven outside in the freezing cold; this is London after all, not California. I am also well aware that not everyone has access to or a desire to buy a pizza oven. The problem is, making Neapolitan pizza in a home oven is next to impossible for one simple reason. Heat. Neapolitan pizza is cooked incredibly quickly at around 500ºC, the problem being most domestic ovens top out at around 250ºC. The solution is New York style pizza.

What defines a New York pie? With Neapolitan pizza, there are some well-established rules to making this style; heck, there is even a pizza association that defines exactly what makes a Neapolitan pizza authentic, and they're strict! Unfortunately (or not, depending on your viewpoint), a similarly strict set of rules doesn’t exist across the Atlantic. But there are some commonalities that can give us a starting point for the recipe.

New York-style pizza is actually a close relative to the ever-popular Neapolitan style. Pizza made its way to NY via Italian immigrants, and instead of the wood-fired ovens used back home, they used coal-fired ovens instead. The days of coal ovens are sadly long gone, and these days most pizza ovens in NYC are gas-fired (new coal ovens are actually banned). These ovens are less fiery than their wood-burning cousins, which means the pizzas bake for longer, resulting in a very different texture, much crispier than their Neapolitan counterparts. One of the other big differences is the size of the pizzas; they are commonly baked as large 16-18 inch pies and sold by the slice. They’re reheated to order, which also contributes to a crispier texture. Talking of texture, while the dough is crisp, it sits in the middle of the crisp spectrum. Crisper than a Neapolitan pizza but less so than a bar-style pizza, NY style pizzas should be crisp but with a tender inside, with a light chew, definitely not cracker or cardboard-like. While Neapolitan pizza uses fresh buffalo mozzarella or fior di latte, both of these cheeses have a relatively high moisture content and work well in very hot ovens. With the comparatively low temperature used to bake NY-style pizzas, a low-moisture mozzarella is preferred. If you try to make a pizza in a home oven with a ball of fresh mozzarella, you’re likely to be rewarded with toppings swimming in water from the cheese - a disaster!

Before we get into the recipe, let's dig into the individual components a little more.