I Tested the Internet’s Most Popular NY Pizza Recipes

So pizza is probably my favorite food to both cook and eat, and it was actually one of the very first things that I've mastered when I first got more into cooking. But despite all that, I've never actually tried to make a New York style pizza. At least, I don't think I have. What even is a New York style pizza? Well, depending on who you ask, you may get different answers. But the giant cheesy thin crust slices that we're all familiar with actually stemmed from the Neapolitan style pizza. You see, when Italian immigrants in New York City opened the country's first pizza shops, that's basically what they were selling. But the pizza gradually evolved to fit in with its new surroundings. So when busy working class New Yorkers couldn't afford to buy a whole pie, they would bargain with shop owners to buy whatever they could afford. And hence, the New York slice was born. So today, New York style pizza is defined by those slices, which are made up of a stiff, crisp crust, a sweetened tomato sauce with a few herbs and spices added, and a cheese that's gooey, stretchy, and maybe just a little greasy. And as Ken Forkas describes in his book, The Elements of Pizza, the ideal New York slice should be just crisp enough to maintain a bit of tip sag so as to make the slice easily foldable. So I like to learn from books whenever possible, and this is one that I've actually been wanting for quite a while now, so I figured it was the perfect excuse to get it. Now in here, the author Ken Forkas, he does have one recipe for a New York style pizza, but it's different than most New York style pizza recipes I've seen before. You see, the four basic ingredients that all doughs need are flour, water, salt, and yeast. And a ton of breads and pizzas are made using just those four ingredients. But when it comes to a New York style pizza dough, it typically includes two more additions, sugar and olive oil. Sugar to help the crust brown evenly all over, and olive oil to provide tenderness to the dough so that it ends up crispy without being overly chewy. But Ken's dough just includes the four basic ingredients, so I'm very curious to see how that'll work as a New York pizza. Alright, so in addition to Ken's recipe from the book, I wanted to go with a couple other recipes that were a bit more, I guess, traditional for a New York style pizza, meaning that they also include olive oil and sugar. So the first is going to be Kenji Lopez-Alt's recipe from SeriousEats.com, and the next was from YouTube's New York style pizza legend himself, Adam Ragusea. Now both of these recipes contain the same basic ingredients, it's really just the ratios that are different. So it doesn't really make sense for me to try to make a recipe from scratch. I mean, these ones are already battle tested, and between the two more traditional recipes, plus the more bare bones recipe from the book, I should have all of my bases covered. So to make the dough, I'm following a very simple process, which I'm keeping the same for all three recipes. I'm simply mixing all of the ingredients in a bowl, using my dough whisk to bring them together. And by the way, I'm using bread flour here just to give the dough that little bit of extra structure that we're looking for for a New York style pizza. Then I'll knead each dough by hand until they develop some decent stretch, which will take about five minutes each. They don't need to be perfectly smooth and extensible yet, because I'm going to be using a very long fermentation period, which will give the dough plenty of time to develop gluten. So after the kneading, I'll just let each dough rise in an oiled container for one to two hours, until about doubled in size. Then I'll cut off a small piece of each one to use for testing purposes, before tossing all of the containers into the fridge for the long cold fermentation period. Alright, so it's been about three days since I put these doughs in the fridge, and it's time for the taste test. First thing I noticed is that the amount the doughs rose seems to be proportional to the amount of sugar that was in them. For example, this one had the most sugar, this one had no sugar, and then this was somewhere in the middle. And in terms of the smell, the sugar seems to be affecting that as well. So Kenji's dough has by far the most sort of fermenty, alcohol-y aroma, whereas Ken's dough is much more sort of mild and sweet smelling. So what I'm gonna do here is just coat them with a bit of uncooked tomato sauce, because really I'm just trying to judge the crust, so I don't care too much about perfecting the rest of the pizza quite yet. You know, I could test just the dough itself, but I feel like I'm not really gonna get the full effect unless I have some sauce and cheese on there. Normally I like to stretch them out a bit more, but it's proving to be a little difficult with these tiny pizzas, so we'll just slide them off into the oven like this. All right, so I'm basically looking for a few things here. Number one, I'm gonna test the crispiness. Number two, the chewiness. Of course, number three is gonna be the flavor. In a good New York pizza, it should have a little bit of crisp and crackle to it, but it shouldn't be crunchy or brittle. So before the taste test, I don't really notice any major differences between the three. They all have some pretty nice charring on the bottom without being too burnt. Crispiness seems pretty similar. If anything, the Adam Ragusea dough is slightly less crispy than the other two, but ultimately it's all going to come down to flavor. Immediately, I do prefer the texture of the Kenji dough. I think due to the addition of the olive oil, it makes the dough just a little bit more tender. This one's a little bit chewier, reminding me a little bit more of a Neapolitan style pizza, which makes sense given that the dough is essentially the same. So overall, I definitely think these two doughs, which had olive oil and sugar added, fit the bill a little bit better for a New York style pizza. This one's definitely a great dough, but again, I think it's just a little bit too chewy and bready for this type of pizza. Now, it's pretty hard to discern between each of these two, so I'll probably save my official judgment until I bake the entire pies. But just off of first impression, I do think I like the Kenji dough the best, just because it does have a little bit of a nicer crunch to it. Not to mention, the dough is a little bit easier to handle due to the lower hydration, so that's a nice bonus. One thing I am noticing is I'm getting a little bit of cheese separation, meaning that the cheese is getting too hot before the crust really gets fully browned. That's something I'll need to work out, but I'll deal with that one later. For now, let's compare these two crusts. Pretty decent foldability, not as crispy as I would like. Again, pretty solid crust on the bottom. This one seems to have a little better crispiness to it. So in terms of flavor, the two doughs are pretty much exactly the same, but because Kenji's dough is a bit crispier and more structured, I think it's the best representation of the true New York style. And so from this point forward, that's the recipe I'll be using. But there is still one more thing I want to test. All right, so this right here is known as a biga, and it's basically just a mixture of flour, water, and yeast, which I've left out to rise for about 12 hours. So it's similar to a sourdough starter in the sense that you can add it to any dough to serve as a source of leavening and to add some extra complexity and flavor to the bread. The difference, of course, is just that this is made using commercial yeast, where a sourdough starter is made using naturally cultivated yeast. Allegedly, it also helps improve the texture of the dough, but I'll be the judge of that. So the first thing I noticed is that the version with the biga definitely has a much stronger smell, a little more fermenty, alcoholic, and tangy. I also noticed as I was shaping the doughs, the biga dough seemed to be a lot easier to handle despite them being the same hydration. So I could see the biga being a good way to sort of work with higher hydration doughs without making them harder to handle. But of course, what I really care about is what they taste like when they're baked. All right, biga, no biga. Again, I am getting a bit of separation here between the fat and the cheese, so that's something I definitely need to fix. But for now, let's focus on the crust. Looking at the bottoms of the pizza, they both look pretty much exactly the same. A little bit of charring, but not too brown. I'd say that's just about perfect. Crispiness test. Seems like the no biga version had just a little bit more crispiness to it, but let's give them a taste and see what we think. It is hot, that's for sure. Very interesting. So the biga definitely adds some more complexity of flavor to the dough. I mean, it almost makes it more sourdough-like. But this is what I didn't really expect. I actually think I prefer just the straight dough. I think for this New York slice, it's all about simplicity, and the fact that this dough is already fermented for between 48 to 72 hours, I think that gives it plenty of flavor. But for some reason, I just don't think this is quite it. I mean, don't get me wrong, it is good pizza, but I just don't know if it's hitting the mark on that classic New York slice. But hold on, let me try one more thing. Not this. This is what we need to do. So one of the defining characteristics of a New York pizza is that slight tip sag you get when you lift up the slice. This is an example of a pizza that does not suffer from extreme tip sag. It's still crisp on the bottom, the cheese isn't coming off, even though it dips, it's not completely flaccid. But when you're cooking in a home oven, you usually don't end up with slices big enough to get a true accurate judgment of that. So what I've done, I've cut myself a nice big slice so I can give it a try. Look at that. We're talking 90 degree angle right there. It's not what we want. It's not it. So what's the problem? I mean, is it the hydration? I don't think so. It had plenty of oil in the recipe. I don't think it's the olive oil. The sugar shouldn't have any impact. I got it. Let's go back to the drawing board. New York style. Check this out. New York style, Neapolitan. I think I know what we need to do. Neapolitan, New York. You see, up until this point, I think my pizza resembles more of a Neapolitan style than a New York style. So the Neapolitan is lighter in color with just a few charred bits. It has a very soft and chewy crust with only a little bit of crunch to it. It's not meant to be sliced and held in your hand. Oftentimes, Neapolitan style pizzas are eaten with a fork and knife, whereas with the New York style, the crust isn't quite as light and airy, and it's more evenly browned all over with only a little bit of charring. And on top of that, the crust isn't quite as chewy, but it's significantly crisper. It shouldn't be hard or crunchy, but it should have a little bit of crispness to it, and it should be structured enough to at least relatively support its own weight. Of course, it's going to sag a little bit. I mean, that's why the classic way to eat a New York slice is to fold it in half, but it shouldn't completely flop over like what we were seeing with my slices. So that's what we need, and there are basically two ways that we can achieve that. The first is switching the ingredients, but like I already mentioned, I don't think I want to switch up the recipe. You see, there are primarily two ingredients that affect these aspects of the dough. The olive oil and the sugar. The olive oil contributing to the tenderness of the dough, and the sugar contributing to the more even browning. However, the recipes that I'm using are tried and true recipes, so I think it's unlikely that I'd really be able to improve upon them significantly. Instead, we're going to go with the second way, which is to change our method. So I thought I could just worry about the cooking method at the end, but that really doesn't make any sense. I mean, baking isn't an afterthought. It's the very foundation of this dish. It's what makes a pizza a pizza. So here's the plan. In my oven, I have three possible rack positions. Top rack is typically used for a Neapolitan style pizza, because with that style of pizza, you want your oven to be as hot as possible. In my case, the highest my oven goes is 550 degrees, but professional pizza ovens get up to about a thousand degrees. So up until this point, that's what I've been doing. I'm throwing my pizza stone on the top rack, cranking the oven as high as it can go, and then once I throw the pizza in, it only takes like four or five minutes to bake. But New York style pizzas are typically baked for longer than that, sometimes up to 12 or 15 minutes, which means clearly I'm doing something wrong. So the plan is to move my pizza steel down to the second rack of my oven, and I'm going to turn the temperature down to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. And since the oven temperature is lower overall, I shouldn't be getting those charred bits like you see on a Neapolitan style pizza. The crust should instead be more evenly browned all throughout. All right, here we go. We're going to reverse engineer this baby, and this time, we're going to do it right. Let's go. So be sure to tune in next week, same time and place, for episode two of this series. But in the It's more of a Neapolitan style, but it's modified to suit a home oven, so it's the perfect recipe to use if you want to start making great pizza at home.