Adam Ragusea is pretty sharp, but even he is not above critique. (Ragusea himself admits he's just a home cook, not a trained chef, but he tries to give the viewer recipes that are plausible and, to some degree, intuitive.) In the video below, Chef James Makinson critiques Ragusea's 2.0 version of his New York pizza recipe. Do Chef James's critiques make sense to you?
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For the most part, yeah, the critiques make sense to me. The ones that stuck out to me were...
ReplyDelete* Measuring by weight: Maybe this is a little rigid, but I automatically stop trusting any baker who measures their flour by volume rather than by weight. It's not like it is hard to do; in fact, I think it is easier to measure by weight. Just get yourself a good scale, but the bowl on it, and then add your ingredients however you want, zeroing out between each ingredient. The only ingredients I measure by volume are those that require very small amounts, like yeast.
* Sticky dough: This is, as Chef James points out, related to the above. But dough will naturally first get sticky once all the ingredients are properly incorporated--it is only after sufficient kneading and other processes (more on this below) that the dough starts to get smooth. If you're not to use a stand mixer, you're going to have to deal with sticky hands. When I used to knead dough by hand, I would on occasion rub my hands together to get most of the dough off. As you knead, your hands will eventually become clean as the dough gets smooth.
* Olive oil: I agree that Adam uses way too much oil. My pizza dough recipe calls for 5% oil (in baker's percentages--that is, as a percentage of the flour by weight), and that is all I use. It gets added at the beginning and that's it.
* First rise: I agree that Adam greatly underestimates the importance of the ferment in developing gluten structure. And you can tell by looking at his dough--that dough looks way too rough to be considered done.
* Cold cheese: This is the one thing that I probably learned from this video. I never thought about that before, but it does make sense.
* Shaping: I just wanted to say that shaping has always been my weak point, although I have moved away from the rolling pin to using the gravity-powered method Adam uses. I generally try to make my pizzas round, but I don't get too worked up over it if it's not perfect. I am still very much an amateur as well.