Last week I saw the one of the best ways to make a pizza. Care and passion and attention to detail are obviously important. The place was Modern Apizza in New Haven CT.
Modern Apizza is one of these old school New York style pizza joints, family owned and run. What makes it good? Everything. It’s a thin crust pie with great toppings and a fantastic crust.
I got to talk to Steve the manager there and quizzed him on some of the methods and ingredients that make their pie so good. While he would not reveal all, he was able to confirm that they make their dough 18-24 hours in advance, with “00” flour, and the sauce was mmmmmm……. I had read once that to make a good pie you need an uncooked sauce.
What is that? Open the can of tomatoes add some spices and in this case some sweetness nothing else. The sauce will cook while it is in the oven.
Aside from the sweetener, the only thing Steve would confirm is that they use oregano in the sauce.
The pizza dough is thrown right onto the peel as it is a thin crust, New York style, there is no chance that you are going to be moving this thing around otherwise. The large is the same width as the peel about 18 inches. The toppings go on, I had the Margherita, and into the oven.
The oven, there are two, are old school, oil fired behemoths. The take out oven is fired up in the afternoon holds 15 large pies. The man on the peel is “the guy”, he has to not only put the pies in the oven but move them around so they cook evenly. He even takes into consideration the fact that when you put a pie in there is a cooling effect on the oven in that spot. The peel handle is about six feet long. The oven will heat up to about 900° if they want, but they find that 700° works about right.
The menu is straight forward, and they do not deviate from what works. They do not follow the trends for what’s hot. The end result? Well, it is something you will have to experience for yourself. While it would not be hard to replicate many aspects of this at home the hardest part would be getting your oven hot enough. That said, you can make this great pizza at home you just need to prep and pay attention to the details.
Store
Look at all the products!
