Now Thatza Pizza!

As I wrote in "The Art of Scrambled Eggs", I have a few cooking mentors.  Last night the friend who taught me the egg whisking vortex method, made pizza for us, and tried to teach me along the way.  Being from the East Coast, this guy is a true pizza snob, and I say that in a good way.  We've had this guy's pizza before, but maybe I wasn't in the right mood, because even though that pizza was good, the pizza last night was possibly the best pizza ever.  I'm not much of a salesman, but I could sell that pizza.  Until last night, I never understood what the big deal was about East Coast Pizza.

Well, here's the big deal, as I can tell.  The crust is thinner and gets a crisp on the bottom, and the sauce is a bit sweeter and just tastes more fresh.  For me though, the crust and the crisp was the key.  We made 2 types of dough for the crust, a warm water dough that was a bit thicker and a cold water dough that was wafer thin.  While the warm water dough was easier for a novice like me to work with, the cold water dough was my favorite.  I pretty much botched my attempt at rolling out the cold water dough, but we salvaged it and it turned into a good pizza anyway. 

A few other tips I picked up:

1 - More basil, less oregano in the sauce.
2 - My pizza oven has never been hot enough...gotta get it over 500 degrees.  We were cooking at 525 last night.
3 - The baking stone has to be in the oven when you start...preferably for 20 minutes, so it is nice and hot.
4 - I need to get a pizza peel.
5 - Toppings don't matter if the sauce and crust is right.
6 - Anchovies are really good, but use the sparingly.

I also learned to toss a pizza last night.  I think I was successful on 5 of 6 attempts.  So, not bad for a beginner.  I'll have to try making pizza at home and see if I can come close to duplicating what I learned last night.  I also have to figure out how to do something really well so I can teach my friend something...maybe I can help him with his golf game.