New York-Style Pizza

A big, thin, crisp New York pie — bread flour, a little oil and sugar, low-moisture mozzarella — baked in a pizza oven at a lower heat and a longer time than a Neapolitan pizza, because the sugar and oil would burn at full blast.

Untested: I have not cooked this one yet — the pizza oven has not been bought. It is here for the Pizza Ovens dive, and it is adapted from the source named in the Notes.

Ingredients

Dough (four 16-inch pizzas)

• 567 g (2½ cups) water
• 2 g (½ teaspoon) active dry yeast, or 1¼ g (⅓ teaspoon) instant
• 872 g (7¼ cups) bread flour
• 9 g (¾ tablespoon) sugar
• 26 g (1¾ tablespoons) kosher salt
• 44 g (4 tablespoons) extra-virgin olive oil

Flour for dusting

Uncooked sauce

• 500 g (2¼ cups) crushed tomatoes
• 8 g (1¼ teaspoons) fine sea salt
• 1.5 g (2 teaspoons) dried oregano

Topping

• 400 g (4 cups) low-moisture mozzarella, shredded
• 32 g (5 tablespoons) Parmesan, grated

Directions

1. Dough. Stir the yeast into the water, then the oil. Mix the flour, sugar and salt separately and add them. Mix on the lowest speed 5–10 minutes (or with a wooden spoon), then knead by hand about 10 minutes until firm and stretchy.
2. Fold. Rest covered 1 hour. Fold the four sides into the middle, then rest another hour. Do this fold-and-rest three times in all.
3. Chill. Divide into four 380 g balls and refrigerate overnight — anywhere from 16 to 52 hours, until roughly doubled.
4. Sauce. Stir the crushed tomatoes, salt and oregano together. Don’t cook it.
5. Warm the dough 3 hours at room temperature.
6. Heat the oven hot, then let the stone settle to about 750 °F (400 °C) with the flame low.
7. Build. Stretch a ball to 16 inches (15 in a smaller oven). Spread a quarter of the sauce, then a quarter of the mozzarella and Parmesan.
8. Bake. Launch and turn the flame off (in a wood oven, let the fire die back). After 2 minutes, bring the flame back on low and keep turning for 2–3 minutes more, until the cheese bubbles and the crust is deep golden.

Notes

Source Adapted from Chris Cowan, “New York-Style Pizza,” on Ooni’s recipe pages (stone 750 °F; flame off at launch). The sauce quantities here are scaled from Ooni’s separate “New York-style Pizza Sauce” recipe (794 g crushed tomatoes, 12 g salt, 2.5 g oregano for six 16-inch pizzas).

Why lower heat A New York pizza is traditionally baked at 500–650 °F. In a pizza oven at Neapolitan heat, the sugar and oil in this dough burn before the base cooks.

Size A 16-inch pizza needs a 16-inch oven; America’s Test Kitchen measured 15 inches as the practical limit in the Karu 2 Pro.

Temperatures are for the oven floor (stone), read with an infrared thermometer. A pizza oven’s built-in gauge reads the air, which runs much hotter.

The Pizza Ovens dive on the Food site covers the oven, the fire and the dough in depth.