Surprising lessons from the best pizzeria in LA
Perfectly puffed crust, half-liquified mozzarella, soft center crust. We haven’t had the pleasure of eating pizza in Naples, but we imagine this is the closest we’ll get in LA. I know the measly 500 degrees of our home oven will never get us results like this, but our visit to Mozza, Eater’s top rated pizzeria in LA was still instructive. Here are three lessons learned, plus one bonus lesson from our visit to 800 Degrees.
The Distinctive Neopolitan Crust
Now I get what they mean by the puffy Neopolitan crust. There’s a lot of rise and air in the crust, and it’s fat, which is totally unlike a NY or Roman pie. It’s almost like a cream puff in there, but with a crunchy, savory exterior. I know we will never get the same blister in our oven, but we should be able to get the air.
Saucing
The tomato sauce of the Marinara was thicker, saucier than our home pie, with nothing but a dusting of fragrant dried oregano. We followed our textbook instructions to the T, but realized after Mozza that our crust needed to be fatter to truly align with the Neopolitan tradition — meaning more density of sauce in the center.
Different styles of shaping
The open kitchen of Mozza meant we got to watch how different pizza makers shaped the dough. Some flipped the dough onto the peel after tossing, others eased it down same-side up. Most punched the rim of the crust first, before pushing down the center. Nobody shaped the same way as Forkish does in our textbook, or how the YouTubers we watched did it. It’s still a mystery to us how the Mozza method manages to retain so much air in the crust, without using the technique of pushing air from the center out. We still have a lot to learn, but we felt empowered by knowing the even the best pizza makers find their own style of shaping that works for them.
Surprisingly helpful bonus tip
Mid-week we went to 800 Degrees, a Neopolitan pizza franchise that is spreading its wings in our region. It’s not the same fine dining experience as Mozza, but they make a decent pie, and follow the Neopolitan tradition. Again, an open kitchen meant we got to observe the dough shaping, which followed a traditional Naples slap technique.
The chef was chatty, and I peppered him with questions about his technique and how long it took for him to learn. Two hours to get the basic technique, and two weeks to get fast and good he said. I described some of our challenges with overstretching and tearing and he explained that there are basically two variable you can tinker with to get the dough to the right texture: softness, and stretchiness.
Softness is about the water content, which varies depending on the flour. Since we went to the trouble of getting the highly standardized Caputo flour and measuring our water with precision, that was not likely to be the issue.
Stretchiness, on the other hand, was what clearly became a problem for us when we were throwing our second and third pies at home. Simple, he explained, just keep them in the fridge for longer. Keeping the temperature of the dough lower means it will be less stretchy. This likely explains why my son’s stretching was less harrowing than the subsequent pies that my husband I stretched, which both tore.
It is so obvious in retrospect that leaving the dough out for longer at room temperature would result in a difference in texture, but it took a quick lesson from a pro to alert us to this variable we hadn’t taken into account. Up next — how we applied these lessons to our next home trial.
