Jeff Varasano

Reminds me of this classic HN thread [0] and accompanying amazing resource [1] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14289307 [1]: https://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

> he bakes those at 825F (440 °C), which unfortunately is unattainable with most regular home ovens He was using a regular home oven, subverting the cleaning cycle: "The cabinet of most ovens is obviously designed for serious heat because the cleaning cycle will top out at over 975 which is the max reading on my Raytec digital infrared thermometer. The outside of the cabinet doesn't even get up to 85F when the oven is at 800 inside. So I clipped off the lock using garden shears so I could run it on the cleaning cycle. I pushed a piece of aluminum foil into the door latch (the door light switch) so that electronics don't think I've broken some rule by opening the door when it thinks it's locked. ..." Scroll down to "4- The Oven" in http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm Impressive dedication, which he eventually turned into a restaurant: http://www.varasanos.com/

I use packed dry yeast but I have always let my dough do a slow rise in the refrigerator for a minimum of 3 days up to 6 days. I use 00 flour and cook the pizza's using my Roccbox pizza oven or a custom Baking Steel 23x19 3/8" steel in the oven. Also if you want a good guide for NY style pizza then this is a good read. http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

My favorite read on pizza: http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

I've found Jeff varasanos pizza recipe to be an excellent baker-nerd read, and is the basis for all my pizza (mis)adventures: http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

I have the Kettle Pizza with Baking Steel, and honestly, it's garbage. It's not worth the effort to set up once a week to get mediocre, not very repeatable results. Pretty sure I've ruined my Weber Kettle by using it too. I got a RoccBox last summer (after watching Kenji's review videos) and it's freaking amazing. It's not much more effort to setup. So easy to just turn on the gas and wait for it to heat up. I've been making VPN-ish style pizzas for 10 years at home and have a lot of experience with gadget and tips and tricks, and the Kettle Pizza just seemed too gimicky after I got it, and tried it once. Was honestly disappointing I spent so much money on it. This is my go-to guide: http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm ; Jeff is a great guy; talked with him for few minutes in ATL.

I've had a lot of success following the advice on Varasanos pizza recipe website. http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

While not as heavy with respect to the physics, this guide goes into all the detail you could want when it comes to making great pizza at home: http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

Yes, my favorite VPN had nothing to do with networks. You might find some of this interesting, if you haven't seen it already... http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm edit (in case you don't know): VPN -> pizzanapoletana.org/index_eng.php

Many of my favorite websites from the old Internet were exactly this, and I think it's sort of a shame that I can no longer find sites like that with Google. For example, I once read a site about this person's journey for the perfect pizza dough. It was obviously a labor of love and he had tried tons of permutations and research into the topic. The site was very web 1.0, presumably doesn't have great SEO, but the guy had better, more in-depth information than anything in the first several pages of the Google search results. ALL THE TIME when I'm researching topics, I'll think about how there is probably someone out there for whom it's their one true passion, and they have probably put up a little website on some corner of the Internet with more research and depth than 1000 well SEOd blog sites, but it's completely impossible to find. Edit: I found the pizza website, it was halfway down the second page of google's search results. I only clicked it because it was the only one without a picture http://www.varasanos.com/pizzarecipe.htm

Just did, and I'm mentioning that here so the OP won't get multiple correction votes. :) Nevertheless, I don't really agree with fleitz. Haphazardly throwing cheese, sauce, and pepperoni together on dough never makes good pizza (in my not so unbiased opinion as a New Yorker). While good pizza recipes obviously require trial and error to get there, they need to be built on a foundation of deep understanding. See http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm to get a feel for how difficult it actually is to make good pizza. You can have a successful business without a great product if your location and marketing are good, but I would not be happy running a successful software business that didn't sell good software. So I'm focusing this post on the quality of the business's product, not on how much revenue it makes. While you don't have to be the smartest person in the room to build a great product, you would need to be a great founder and be very good at surrounding yourself with smart people and knowing how to make them operate at their smartest, knowing which suggestions to follow, etc. Average founders almost never luck out completely (and stay successful) and in the specific case of pizza, the New Yorker in me doesn't believe that's possible. :) That being said, the original OP (I know that seems redundant) was talking about the person with the fewest specific skills, not the least intelligent. Most great founders probably have intelligence or skills, if not both.

Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe: https://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

If you want to know all about pizza temperatures, check out a pro's breakdown. http://www.varasanos.com/pizzarecipe.htm

Jeff Varasano's pizza page: http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm Sumptuous results once I acquired a wood burning oven capable of 850F.

I have found that the key to getting the dough really stretchy is the autolyse part: first mix ~⅔ of the flour/yeast with all of the water to make something like a pancake batter, stir for a few minutes, and let that sit for at least 20 minutes. Then add in the rest of the flour, knead, and let rest overnight. This isn't mentioned in the linked BBC article, but both http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm and http://www.perfekte-pizza.de/ swear by it, and I think it has made a noticeable difference to my dough.

If like me, you don't really think that highly of Neopolitan pizza dough, this recipe may have more to offer you: http://www.varasanos.com/pizzarecipe.htm

This is on my list of things to test. I've done 00 in the past but I wasn't capturing my notes from those runs. I've recently gone with KABF because it's easier to acquire and Jeff Varasano claims "...you can buy any bread flour available at your local supermarket and you'll be ok." [0]. Interestingly, Jeff uses a blend of 00 and KABF which may be another experiment to run. [0] - http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

Or learn from the master: http://www.varasanos.com/pizzarecipe.htm

I highly suggest this recipe (From here: http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm) Ingredient (grams) 1 Pie 3 Pied 5 Pies Filtered Water 110 330 550 King Arthur Bread flour 168 510 850 Kosher or Sea Salt 6 18 30 Sourdough yeast culture 15 45 60 Instant Dry yeast 0.5 1.5 2.5 All ingredients into mixer except 25% of flour. Mix on lowest speed for 1-2 minutes or until completely blended. Cover and Let it rest for 20 minutes. Start Mixing on Low speed for 8 minutes. 5 minutes into it start adding held back flour gradually. Mix for 1 more minute Divide in to 300g balls and either let raise warm (3-10 hours) or cold (2-7 days).

> Edit: I found the pizza website, it was halfway down the second page of google's search results. I only clicked it because it was the only one without a picture http://www.varasanos.com/pizzarecipe.htm You can argue that this article is a case of the system working fairly well at surfacing high quality content. When I searched for "New York Pizza Recipe" this result came half way down page one. Sure, there are other "high domain authority" listings on that page too, but this is an example of Google listing a well researched, in depth original post from a little known site on the basis of the strength of its content, even with quite minimal on page SEO. You can argue about whether that's the right term to be optimizing for, but it's the term the writer chose to optimize for as it's the title of the page.

Someone should combine this data with Jeff Varasano's Recipe[0]. Then we could actually make a good pizza. 0. http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

Use sourdough in your crust. I've basically been using these instructions for a few years and have nothing but rave reviews for my pies no matter what toppings I put on it: http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1464760, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2023280.

Also good: The epic "how an engineer makes pizza" page: http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm