4 Levels of Pizza: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

I'm Stephen and I'm a level 1 chef I'm Beth and I'm a level 2 chef I'm sim Cass and I've been a breaker since 1973 so I came up with this recipe basically any time my friends will come over and they said let's spend money and I'm like absolutely not we're gonna make our own and it's gonna cost under $10 it's a really special recipe because this recipe has my mother-in-law's sauce sadie came all the way from shaka Sicily and this recipe is an ole marster heart this pizza has a soft Airy interior with a nice crusty shell on it and a lot of flavor we're going to start with the dog this is my store-bought dough which is nice and already the dough has to rise so I'm gonna use some active dry yeast throughout water and we're gonna let that dissolve this is a three-day dough and this is the first day then we're gonna add our flour we're gonna mix this together this scraper easiest thing to use I'm gonna put my mixer on low I only have flour in the mixer right now but they add some salt I'm gonna slowly pour in some olive oil add the yeast mixture and the dough is just gonna come together in a sticky mess it's not really gonna come together it's gonna be very scruffy you can tell that it's very very sticky and that's exactly what you want I'm gonna cover the dough put it in the fridge overnight and this gets left outside northern refrigerator for 12 to 17 hours this is going to develop flavor and when we add it to our dough tomorrow it's gonna add a lot of nice holes in our pizza now we're gonna make our main dog with flour water salt and yeast then we're gonna add the pre from a bigger unit our this is the same free ferment that I made earlier only this one is 24 hours old there's now developed and as these nice biggest holes in it and lots of flavor lastly I'm gonna add some starter this particular one has been around for about three years this will add a lot of flavor this dough will be wet let's turn it onto the table turn the dough into itself to get it going and you're gonna push this forwards and backwards on the table now start pulling it into itself look now I got a pizza dough right here all my bowl here we're gonna cover it and we're gonna leave it the refrigerator overnight and that's gonna be yet another way to introduce even more flavor into our doll so now we're gonna get started on the sauce this is a store-bought sauce this is a tomato basil this gives it a little bit of the aroma that we're looking for first of all get your pan hot then you're gonna get some good olive oil in that the oil is coming up to temperature so just cut my garlic right into the pan you want your onions just get a little color on my onions and then I put my garlic's into that little space I'm now smelling there's garlic there's no better smell I'm gonna strain the crushed tomatoes because I really don't like the taste of the seeds in goes my whole Tomatoes that's good and now I add about half the amount of puree I put a little oregano in two or three bay leaves I also like to add a little bit what's a sauce a good gloopy glue in there alright ground pepper same amount of salt and about 10 leaves of fresh basil and I'm just gonna be tiling about it and just throw it in like that now I'm gonna reduce temperature when it's nice and thick you know it's done the idea of cooking the sauce for three or four hours is to take the acidity out of the tomatoes if we put a little sugar in we can reduce the cook time to about an hour hour and a half you can see that the sauce has reduced its amazos have disappeared and it's ready to go on the top Pizza next step is preparing the cheese I like to use the narrow part skin so it's a little bit on the healthier side I only use whole milk mozzarella I really don't think that if you're eating pizza you need to worry about a diet and it tastes so much better good mozzarella I get a slice and I think it should be round like a pizza well that's what grated parmigiano I think that the pecorino romano has a better taste than the parmesan and I like to put the peeled parmesan in the center then I like to put some bell Pease very very creamy cheese you can't get too much cheese on a pizza so now we're gonna get our toppings ready we have some fresh pepper we're gonna use about half of each this is just so we can add a little bit of color if you're Pro like myself you know that you want to keep your fingers out of the way okay that was close I tried to include the seeds in there it looks ready so now we're gonna get to the mushrooms precooked most toppings are precooked watch it fingers I feel like somewhere there's like a chef that's creaming all I put on the pizza is basil my husband Richie doesn't like anything on his pizza so this pizza I'm making for him calamari olives make sure there's no pips in there the sausages put them in the oven cook them through I like a very thin sort of long now we're gonna put our peeps in together here's our dough it waited for us 24 hours all we have to do is pinch off a piece then I put a lot of flour to make the dough less sticky and it's really really easy to roll out Mallory please do not have as much flour as I did they're not gonna push down with my fingers and you should be getting air bubbles at this stage I like to just let gravity do the job basically I want to get my pizza up off the counter and right onto my stone so I purposely shaped this in the shape of a Christmas stocking it doesn't need to look like a perfect rectangle or perfect circle bullet has to do is taste really really good that looks good I never put oil in my dog I always put oil on the dog might go with Parmesan on some I done I like to start with the mutts instead of the sauce because the sauce makes the middle of the pizza a little mushy if it goes on first now we want to add the sauce people make a mistake here too much sauce um you don't want to be too stingy with the sauce I don't really spread it out I leave it in flops that looks good I like to leave an edge now we add the cheese parmesan in the middle for my first bite then I'm gonna put my mozzarella and then I'm gonna put some bill payees bell pay is kind of melts like cream hungry think about it if you're feeling fancy you can do yourself a favor and stuff some of the cheese into the crust so when you bite into the crust it's a little surprise inside now we want to grab our mixed vegetables throw it on the pizza I'm not going to cut the mushrooms and leave in big pieces from a couple of olives the sausages just like this then I like to go back in oil on the edge the olive oil around the edges are gonna make the edges nice and crispy they look professionally done I think we're ready to put it in the oven we're gonna put it in at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for about 10 to 12 minutes and we'll see if it's ready to rock and roll and this is my pizza 500 degree oven 12 minutes and it's perfect so our pizza is fresh out the oven I put it in for an extra three minutes just sort of crust to get a little bit crispier to my liking mmm this oven here mimics a wood fire oven three minutes later approximately we're gonna set this pizza rel you know I'm a big fan of a lot of color on a pizza I don't like him cheap bland look at this one's go dark round the edges that's fine let's top it off with the arugula a little bit of extra virgin olive oil on the outside pepper a little bit more salt basil break it on there sorry first thing you smell when it gets the table only sauce cheese and basil on this pizza because that's Richie's favorite so here's a pizza for my Richie it looks good I think it looks delicious and I know it tastes delicious looks good if I say so myself now I'm gonna actually go chase this hmm okay that's cool good does have the characteristics of a wood floor of Sadie's sauce good dough you can't beat it this is gonna be my tinder profile just this picture we saw three different chefs make three different pizzas making pizza dough involves a fermentation reaction does a series of chemical reactions that takes the sugars naturally found in flour and converts them into carbon dioxide ethyl alcohol and flavoring compounds all Pizza dough's are leavened with yeast the carbon dioxide produced by the yeast helps to leaven the pizza dough while it's baking Stephan used a store-bought pizza dough that had yeast in its ingredients Beth made a homemade pizza dough and mixed in dry active yeast these looks nice and bubbly to me by adding water to the dry yeast you can hydrate it and then mix in some flour to start the fermentation reaction sim used pre fermented starters in his pizza dough if you could put more pre ferment in you're gonna get a lot more flavor pre fermented starters start the fermentation process before they're mixed in with the pizza dough ingredients starting this process early develops flavor compounds in the starter and this can be done over a period of years like we saw in Sims starter this particular one has been around for about 3 years we can add that back into the pizza dough to provide a complex flavor profile protein provides visco-elasticity to bread dough using a high-protein flour like sim did will give the dough stretch and rise when it bakes the flower should be high gluten flour and will give us a nice stretchy dog using a moderate protein flour like Beth did will not provide as much elasticity in the bread dough it will create as much puffiness or air bubbles in the final product what I like about this recipe is that the dough doesn't spring back all of our chef's used a tomato-based sauce on their pizza Stephan used a jarred sauce Bethan Sims both made homemade tomato sauce with canned tomatoes canned tomatoes are picked at peak ripeness this means that the starches and the tomatoes have been converted into sugars and the tomatoes in our cans are quite sweet fresh tomatoes in your grocery store may not be at peak ripeness which means they ultimately might not be a sweet Stephan used pre shredded low-fat mozzarella on his pizza pre-shredded cheeses are coated in an anti-caking agent this helps to ensure that in storage they don't clump together or cake together when this is heated in an oven the cheese will hold its shape and will create a uniform layer over the pizza Stephan chose a low-fat cheese to top this pizza part skin so it's a little bit on the healthier side lower fat mozzarellas separate more easily when exposed to heat creating an oily layer on the top of the pizza Betty used whole milk mozzarella and graded it by hand I only use whole milk mozzarella these two factors improve the melt ability of the cheese over the pizza she also added pecorino which will add another layer of flavor you can't get too much cheese on a pizza Sam intentionally staggered three different cheeses over his pizza this will provide a unique eating experience by tasting different cheeses as you eat a slice thinking about the future a little bit all the time when you're doing this stuff when you roll the pizza dough the elastic nature of the gluten in the dough pulls it back to its original form creating a thicker crust nobody likes been across pizza myth when you stretch the pizza dough we can stretch out the gluten and create a thinner crust the reason why this is so stretchy is because of all that high gluten flour and all the gluten that we developed in there on the table like this when adding toppings to the dough we want to prevent sagginess one way of doing this is by adding a layer of cheese before adding the sauce like Beth in Tsim did source makes the middle of the pizza a little mushy if it goes on first another way to do this is by pre-cooking the toppings like sim did most toppings are pre kuk pre-cooking our topping draws up some of the moisture creating a nice crisp crust using rock toppings like Steven did can allow the moisture to seep out and create a soggy crust okay that was close Stephen and Beth used the highest temperature setting on their oven to create a crisp pizza cooked over a longer period of time it's about 500 screaming degrees sim used a specialized pizza oven that has a much higher temperature than a home oven and can cook the pizza in just minutes to create a really crispy crust this oven here mimics a wood fire oven everybody has their own preference when making pizza whether it's a thin or thick crust using different toppings or cheeses there's a lot to learn from the pizza making methods [Music]

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 4,595,424

Rating: 4.775897 out of 5

Keywords: 4 levels, pizza, 4 levels of pizza, pizzas, food scientist, amateur chef, pizza 4 levels, 4 levels epicurious, 4 levels of, professional chef, homemade pizza, pizza epicurious, how to make pizza, make pizza, making pizza, pizza recipe, best pizza, amateur pizza, professional pizza, easy pizza, 4 levels pizza, epicurious 4 levels, easy pizza recipe, make pizzas, making pizzas, how to pizza, pizza at home, make pizza at home, make homemade pizza, epicurious

Id: 9j_5wGwn5P8

Length: 14min 53sec (893 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 24 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/adamomg]

What's with the added sound effects?

[u/Average_male]

It’s more like three levels of pizza with someone explaining at the end. Fun to watch them make their pizzas with the crossover edits

[u/Frocker34]

I was enjoying the video, right to the end, when that amateur proved he was an amateur by claiming no one likes Thin Crust pizza.

Clearly, that dude has never had a real thin crust pizza.

[u/McMissile]

I always heard that rolling the dough out with a rolling pin like the first two people did will push all of the air out and give you dough that doesn't rise. The level 4 person didn't say anything about that though.

Did they overlook that or am I just wrong?

[u/SnoopDrug]

Adding basil before slow cooking the sauce instead of adding it fresh at the end

"Level 3 pizza"

[u/danivus]

So the level 1 was just horrific, level 2 looked alright but still not great, and the 3 was way too frou-frou for a pizza.

[u/miketava]

Do yourself a favor and watch Bon Appetit's 'Perfect Pizza' breakdown instead of this trash.

[u/LastMan0nEarth]

What's with the weird foley?

[u/cwhiterun]

Man, it must feel pretty bad to spend 3 days making a pizza and then it comes out burnt. "Professional" lmao.