I Found the KEY to an Authentic New York Slice

This is a proper New York slice. And after studying some of the top pizza shops in New York, I found a few secrets that I think are gonna help me make it at home. Wow, that is by far the best slice we've made yet. So this is episode two of my New York pizza series, where the goal is to recreate the perfect, authentic New York slice at home. And where we left off last time, I had tested three popular New York style pizza recipes, but none of them gave me exactly what I was looking for. Look at that. It's not it. But then I had an idea. We need a crisper, more evenly browned, and sturdier crust. So the plan is to move my pizza steel down to the second rack of my oven, and I'm gonna turn the temperature down to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. So that pizza was better, but it still wasn't quite there. And honestly, I was starting to get a little discouraged. But then I realized something else, largely thanks to a comment on last week's video that would completely change the course of this challenge. You see, the recipes I've been using have called for a pretty high hydration, much higher than is typical for a New York pizza shop. And their reasoning was that, since we're baking in a lower temperature oven at home, we need to bake the pizza for longer. And therefore, more of the water in the dough is gonna evaporate. Which is of course true, but I think they actually overcompensated for that effect when they were developing the recipes. I mean, in Kenji's recipe, he went a full 10% higher than most New York pizza shops. And Adam Ragusea went even higher. In fact, in his video, he said this. I really prefer wetter doughs these days. They bake up lighter and crispier. But that's a bit misleading. And honestly, it kinda led me down the wrong path for a while. So here's what actually happens when we increase the hydration in our dough. We know that as a dough rises during fermentation, what it's really doing is filling up with a bunch of tiny little gas bubbles, specifically bubbles containing carbon dioxide and water vapor. So once the dough starts to bake, those gases rapidly heat up and expand. And at the same time, even more gas is being produced due to the evaporation of the water in the dough. And you can imagine that the more water you use, the more gases produced, and the bigger those bubbles can get. So that's why Adam says that higher hydration doughs bake up lighter, but why crispier? Well, we can see that since the higher hydration dough forms bigger bubbles, the borders of those bubbles will be stretched thinner. So the exteriors of the bubbles will get very crispy because the water can evaporate off of that thin dough very quickly. But again, those are just a few bits on the exterior of the dough. It still contains more water overall. Therefore, the overall structure of the dough ends up a little bit floppier and chewier rather than the crispy and slightly rigid structure that we want. So with this knowledge, I came into the challenge with a renewed sense of direction. I took my Kenji recipe, which originally called for around 67% hydration, and reduced it all the way down to 60%. All right, that is what we're looking for. This is definitely the best slice we've made yet. It's got a little bit more structure to it. It is a little chewier than I would like, and not quite crispy enough. It is getting closer though. But the sort of realization has led me to question my method as a whole. I mean, if I have to modify these recipes so heavily just to create something slightly resembling a New York style pizza, are they even the right recipes to begin with? If authenticity is what I'm chasing, I shouldn't start with recipes designed for home cooks. What I need to do is study the pros, the people who have mastered this style of pizza. That is New York pizza shops. I'm not going to New York though as much as I would like to. I did actually go a few weeks ago though, and I had the opportunity to try one of the most iconic slice shops in the city. And I recently found out that that same iconic shop opened up a satellite location in my old college town. All right, here we are. There it is. I'm just kidding. Let's keep it moving. So first impressions of the slice, it's very thin, but it's got that perfect crisp, relatively sturdy crust that I've been looking for. Tip sag test. It's not nearly a 90 degree angle like I was seeing with my pizza. And if you just give it a little crease right here, it stands perfectly sturdy. Really nice browning on the cheese here without being too greasy. Bottom is really nicely charred as well. I don't think I could wait any longer. Let's give it a try. So we'll just talk about the crust first because that's what we're focusing on in this episode. But really this is exactly the crust I've been trying to achieve. I mean, the visuals tell pretty much the whole story. Again, it's nice and sturdy, but it's still got a little bit of chew to it. And it's also got a really nice crunch when you bite into it. Mm. Again, it's a really thin crust, but it does have a good bit of airiness to it. Nothing crazy though. Flavor wise, the crust does leave a little something to be desired. I think maybe it could use a little bit more salt, but texture wise, it's 100% spot on. Now in terms of the cheese, again, it's not too greasy. So I think they really nailed the cooking temperature there. I think it could have a little bit more flavor. If I had to guess, honestly, I don't think that they're using a full fat cheese. It does get a little rubbery after it cools down, but I mean, that's pretty hard to avoid with any cheese. Two main traits I would use to describe the sauce would be sweet and tangy. Firstly, I think I like it a little less sweet than this. So I think that's something we're gonna work on improving with our own recipe. All right, well, I think we got what we need. So it's time to head back to the lab and work on this recipe. So I think Joe's is a great embodiment of the New York slice that I'm going for, but it does definitely have its flaws. Namely the flavor and seemingly the quality of ingredients as well. But that's where our next shop comes in. It's one that makes it a point to maintain the tradition of the New York slice, but that also tries to improve upon it, primarily by using higher quality ingredients. Try to serve what the people want, like a good version of a New York style, and the beauty of it's not bad for you. So Scars is quickly becoming known as one of the best slices in New York. Unfortunately though, I haven't actually had the chance to try it myself. That's okay though. I think that with the help of the internet, we can gain a lot of insight into how and why this pizza is so great. Now again, there are aspects of both shops that I think I wanna replicate. For Joe's, it's mainly the texture of the crust, which is gonna come from the dough recipe and from the baking method. And then for pretty much every other aspect of the pizza, I'm gonna look to Scars. But since the crust is what we're focused on right now, let's start with Joe's pizza recipe, NYC. I would imagine there's a lot of Joe's pizza out there, so I should probably specify New York. Got a few promising links here. Yeah, that's not right. Next. This one claims that Joe's revealed the secret to the recipe, but nowhere in the actual article does it say that it is Joe's recipe. So next, this is what I'm looking for. This is what I'm looking for. All right, we struck gold, folks. I found this forum, pizzamaking.com. Basically, you know, people can go and ask questions about pizza making, as you might imagine. And someone was asking for Joe's recipe. So this guy who used to work for Joe's entered the chat and basically the rest is history. I mean, he gave us the entire recipe, everything from the dough to the sauce to the cheese. So honestly, I think we got what we need here. That ended up being a lot easier than I thought it would be. Now, let's see what we can find out about Scar's pizza recipe, NYC. So this one definitely isn't gonna be as straightforward as Joe. It seems like the owner, Scar, here, he keeps his recipe pretty under wraps. But there is one thing that I knew going into this, and it's the thing that most people point out when they mention Scar's. And we also mill our own flour as well. And so you're milling from grains like this? Correct. These are wheat berries? These are hard white wheat. We try to replicate New York style pizza without using what 90 something percent of New York style pizzas are, like, you know, chemically laced flours and stuff. We don't use any of that. So on this pizza making forum, people are speculating about the recipe and they're trying out different formulations. So that'll definitely give me a good place to start. But on top of that, there are a few pretty good videos that we can get some clues from. We make some high protein and low protein flour. So you're starting on low just to get everything incorporated. Yeah, we add salt, olive oil, super soft. You get one rise when you're balling. A slower rise when it's in the fridge. Then you get the last rise when you pull them out and we allow it to rise all day. The day of use, basically. Now this shot gives us a really good idea for the texture of the dough. It definitely looks very similar to Joe's in terms of the structure. So these videos pretty much give me all the ingredients that are included in the dough and they give me a good idea for sort of how the dough should look and feel throughout the process. A few things we don't know is number one, how much freshly milled flour he uses. And he also uses a bit more salt and a slightly higher hydration, which makes sense because that freshly milled flour is gonna be a little bit more absorbent than a typical white flour would be. So with my newfound knowledge and experiences, I developed three new recipes, each one aimed at testing a different variable. So recipe number one is what I'm calling my Joe's dough. As we learned, Joe's uses a hydration of 57% and they bake their pizza at 625 degrees Fahrenheit. So what I've got here is a 60% hydration dough because again, since I can only bake at 550 degrees Fahrenheit, I do think we need to add a little bit of extra water to account for that. Just not as much as Ken, Kenji, or Adam used in their recipes. And by the way, for all of these recipes, I'm using bread flour because that's generally the highest protein flour that anyone's gonna be able to find at their local grocery store. All right, time for the moment of truth. Look at that. That's like Joe's. That's like Joe's right there. I mean, it's got that same crackle. That is a good slice of pizza right there. I would say it could be a little bit crispier. That's my only critique, but let's see how it tastes. Mm, wow. This is by far the best slice we've made yet. Way better than any of the recipes we tested in the last episode. I think we're on the right track here. Now, recipe number two is sort of an attempt to improve the basic Joe's recipe. Because if you remember, I did find the Joe's dough to be a bit bland in flavor. So what I did here was bump the salt content from 2.7 up to 3.2%. And I also used a bit more olive oil than I did in the first recipe. I also bumped the hydration up to 62%, which is still significantly lower than the 67% from Kenji's recipe. But I just wanted to see what effect using sort of a mid-level hydration would have. So this is still a super solid slice. The one problem is, I did need to bake it a little bit longer to get it to the same level of crispiness as recipe number one. And even so, I don't think I got it quite as crispy. But really the main testing point for this slice of pizza was the flavor. So it is kind of subtle, but I do think I prefer the higher salt levels in dough number two. It just really makes those sort of fermenty, bready flavors pop a little bit more. Overall, this slice is a little bit too salty, but I think that I can balance it out more just by using a little less salt in the sauce. Now, finally, recipe number three is my first attempt at a Scars-style dough. So we know that a lot of what makes Scars dough special is his addition of some freshly milled flour. However, I didn't wanna do that because it's just not practical for most people, myself included, actually. I don't own a flour mill. But what I did do was replace 10% of the bread flour in the recipe with whole wheat flour. So in my mind, that should be a much easier method, one that anyone can follow to incorporate some extra flavor and nutrition into the dough. All right, now this is the one that I'm super curious about because I've never made a pizza with anything but 100% white flour. Maybe not quite as rigid as recipe number one. I might've actually stretched it a little bit too thin, which really, I didn't think that was gonna be a problem because whole wheat flour doesn't develop gluten as well. So I thought the dough might tear if I tried to stretch it out, but that really wasn't an issue at all. So pretty nice crispiness to it. Pretty solid structure as well. I mean, I would say it's on par with the other two recipes. Yeah, so the whole wheat flour definitely adds a pretty nice bready, wheaty flavor to it. It is pretty subtle, but given that the flour didn't have any other noticeable negative impacts, I don't see any reason not to include it. All right, so with all that testing done, it's time to build my ultimate recipe. So we're gonna talk in terms of baker's percentages, just that the recipe can be scaled however we need it to be. And if you're not familiar with how baker's percentages work, basically the flour is always at 100%, and then the rest of the ingredients are expressed as a percentage of the total flour. So for example, if you have 100 grams of flour and 60 grams of water, that's a 60% hydration. Likewise, two grams of salt per 100 grams of flour equates to 2% salt and so on. Now, like I mentioned, there were aspects of each of these three recipes that I liked, but for all three, I did keep the sugar and the yeast the same. Even though Joe's and Scar's don't seem to use sugar in their dough, I think that since we're baking at a lower temperature in our home oven, the sugar does help the crust to caramelize a little bit better. Now for the yeast, it doesn't really matter how much you use. That's just gonna affect how quickly or how slowly the dough rises. For me though, I like to err on the lower side, just about a half percent, because the slower the dough rises, the more opportunity it has to develop those nice, fermenty, bready flavors. And now for the flour. So again, by default, the baker's percentage is gonna be 100%. But in recipe number three, 10% of that flour was whole wheat. And that's something that I definitely wanna maintain because it added a nice flavor to the dough. However, I think I do actually wanna bump that up to 15%. Based on my research, Gari's uses somewhere between 10 and 20%. So I figured I might as well split it right down the middle. And in my experience, that increased whole wheat content didn't make the dough any harder to shape. So I might as well push it as high as it can go until I see any negative impacts. Now for the hydration, I definitely like the texture of recipe number one. So I would go with the hydration of 60%. But since I am using 15% whole wheat flour, which absorbs much more water than bread flour, I'm gonna bump that up to 61%. And that should give me about the same texture that I saw with recipe number one. Now for the salt, both recipes two and three use 3.2% salt. And I definitely thought that brought out the flavors of the wheat and the dough a little bit better. And for olive oil, again, I did like the texture of recipe number one the best. So I'm not gonna mess with that. I'm just gonna stick with 3% olive oil. So there we go. I don't think this is gonna be my final, final recipe just because I still need to rework the baking process based on some of these other new things that I've learned. But I do think that it gets us most of the way there. Otherwise, I'll see you in the next episode where we're gonna figure out what's the best cheese for a New York slice. So thanks a lot for watching and I'll talk to you in the next one.