The Overnight Rise

I think we make a pretty mean pizza in the Fillippelli household. The crust, courtesy of  my wife, has a good balance of flavor and chew, and whether it's a simple pie with just a little sauce, some Moroccan olives and freshly grated pecorino or something bit more adventurous with radicchio, fontina, and walnuts, the final product is always delicious and satisfying.

But there's always room for improvement. In today's New York Times, Oliver Strand suggests a way to take your crust to a new level of flavor: letting the dough rise overnight (if not longer!).

It’s not a new idea. Anthony Mangieri redefined New York’s artisanal scene when he opened Una Pizza Napoletana in 2004 (now living in San Francisco, he will reopen his pizzeria there later this summer). He learned to let dough rise for 24 hours in Naples. Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles, Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco and Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix all have overnight rises; at Lucali’s in Brooklyn, the dough rises for about 36 hours; and at Saraghina, also in Brooklyn, it goes for as long as 72 hours.

What's the difference between a 3-hour rise (ours is usually more of a 5- to 6-hour rise) and a 24+-hour rise?

...the prolonged fermentation of an overnight rise not only develops the dough’s structure, it also enables starches to transform into flavorful sugars. The dough becomes complex and nuanced.

Hmmm... I'll be the judge of whether "complex and nuanced" translates into "better tasting."  Love a good pizza experiment!

Azzeria (Wexford)

Being a true pizza snob is a difficult existence. Simply put, often I'd rather go without than eat an inferior slice just because it's technically pizza. There are times when hunger, convenience, and a lack of options gets the better of me. But, as a general rule, I try to avoid poorly made pizza.

What are the/my criteria for "poorly made"? Well, let's start with the crust, which, remarkably, is the most underappreciated component of a pizza. Think about a crust from a typical chain, whether it be Dominoes or a smaller, local chain. It typically has the texture of damp cardboard, lacking any crispiness or chewiness, and has almost no flavor, with the exception being that of grease.

Next the sauce. Again, the sauce at most pizza joints taste primarily of grease, excessive salt, and tomato paste. There is little actual flavor of tomato or even any herbs. There is also often an excessive overabundance of sauce. The toppings? Mass-produced, tasteless mozzarella, and, again, typically too much of it. Mushrooms? Canned or dried, sad little things that taste like and resemble jigsaw puzzle pieces. Olives. Boring black, likely from a large can. Sausage? Crumbly, dry, closer to bird droppings than a meat product. Pepperoni? Well, pepperoni is pepperoni. The only difference typically is that of quantity.



Which brings me to a relatively new addition to the northern 'burbs of Pittsburgh, Azzeria. Located in the Village at Pine on Rt. 19 in Wexford, this is a second location -- the original is in (or at least on the border of) Mt. Lebanon -- for Azzeria. And I can say without hesitation that the pizza at Azzeria is quite good.

Is it on par with Dinette? No. Then again, few pizzas are.

Generally, though, the pizza at Azzeria is at least two steps above what can be had at most predominantly pizza joints and at other restaurants that also offer pizza on the menu.

The crust could use a little more salt, and often times could use another minute in the brick oven, but generally it has the flavor and texture that you would expect from what is in effect homemade bread, and serves well as a canvas for the toppings.

Speaking of the toppings, Azzeria seems to understand the fundamental importance of moderation. The sauce or cheese or various toppings are not heaped on and seem to be of high quality (even the pepperoni).

The plain red is quite good. Tangy tomato flavor and the fresh mozzarella tastes, well, fresh. The "white," topped sparingly with 4 cheeses, including a whipped fresh ricotta, is also well done. You can taste the different cheeses with no single one dominating.

The vodka sauce pizza, an idea I like, is an interesting offering and mostly successful. The beans & greens pizza, another good idea, is overwhelmed by too much garlic. I suppose this appeals to some people, but I'd rather taste the bitterness of the escarole and creaminess of the beans. My favorites are the white and my personal concoction of sausage and escarole.

Also on offer are some salads, a bit small for my liking, but fairly fresh, and soups, which I've yet to have. The wings, which are doused in herbs and fired up in the brick oven, are smoky and meaty (could be a bit crispier) and a welcome change from the overly sauced and underflavored wings that litter the menus of restaurants across the city/country.

There is also delectably creamy and locally made gelato, made by Mulberry Creamery. Among the many flavors on offer, the "Death by Chocolate" lives up to its moniker and the pistachio tastes like pistachios. An excellent way to end a visit here.

The setup at Azzeria is a little atypical. There is no wait staff. You place your order at the counter and a few minutes later they call your name to pick up your food. Herein can be a problem, because let's say you need to get an extra drink or some gelato or, heck, another pizza, you have to wait in the ordering line, which, depending on how busy things are, can take 5-10 minutes. Yes, typically you'd have to wait for your server to get any of things, but at least you'd be sitting.

It's also BYOB, with small wine glasses and corkscrews available. Unfortunately, there is no liquor store in the plaza. The new Giant Eagle in the same plaza will soon have a liquor license soon, though. The restaurant itself is wide open, with a few booths and tall two- and four-top tables, and garage door-like walls that open up to ample outdoor seating for when the weather feels like cooperating.

Overall, I'm a big fan of Azzeria and am glad it's here. With so few good dining options in this neck of the woods, it's nice to know there is a kid-friendly place where we can have an affordable, quality meal in a comfortable environment.

"You Ought to Make Pizza at Home"

So sayeth Sam Sifton in this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine. He is correct. You should.

Michael Ruhlman agrees. Where Sam Sifton says you need a pizza peel and a pizza stone, Ruhlman says you can do it in a baking sheet or even on the bottom of an inverted cast iron pan.

I have seen others still recommend cooking them on a grill on a piece of unglazed quarry tile. I have meant to try this.

Our regular pizza lineup includes:

- Margherita
- carmelized onions, fresh mozz, arugula, prosciutto
- House special, aka, red sauce, Moroccan olives, grated parmesan (see picture)

Most recently we made what will now be added to the regular line up:

- Grilled radicchio and onion with fontina and toasted walnuts (an adaptation of a Dinette pie)

The recipe in Sifton's column called for a mix of bread flour and all-purpose flour, and to put it in the mixer for a short period of time. My wife, the pizza dough maven in our household, uses only double zero flour, which I believe is an all-purpose flour, and does not use a mixer. If she does, I have been blissfully ignorant of this activity.

Speaking of grilling pizzas, taking a cue from Mark Bittman, several times my wife has made a few extra doughs on pizza night and we freeze it. At some later point, I:

- defrost the dough
- roll out the dough
- get the grill very hot
- brush the dough with olive oil
- top the dough with plenty of salt and pepper and some chopped rosemary
- put the dough on the grill

About 4-5 minutes later, we have a wonderfully crisp and chewy flatbread to eat with a salad or meatballs.

The point being: You Ought to Make Pizza at Home.

On a grill or in an oven. On a pizza stone or a quarry tile.

Use the Google or go to Food & Wine or Epicurious and find a recipe.

It is likely to taste better than any pizza you order.

It is likely to be much healthier than any pizza you order.

And, particularly with some red wine, it is fun to make and drink.

Respect the Crust

Hey, dude. It's been a while. What's cookin'?

Well, tonight, it was eggplant parm. Pretty good. Last week had this white bean soup with scallions and tarragon. Yum.

Umm, I meant, why no posts recently?

Oh. Duh! Sorry about that. No reason, really. Lazy, I guess. I'll have a few this week.

Good. Otherwise I'll have to keep reading those blogs that actually get some traffic...

Thanks. I think.

Onto more important things. Crust. Pizza crust.

I really never thought I'd have to write something about pizza crust. My wife thinks this is just another example of my food insanity. Perhaps. But I must push on.

We were supposed to eat at Tessaro's on Saturday night, 'cause the wife was in the mood for a burger. Got there at 5:00 and, to our shock, there was a 40-minute wait. [Side note: What is wrong with you people??!! I know they've got good burgers. I know the economy sucks and Tessaro's is a good place to get a quality meal at an affordable price. But the only reason we were eating at that ungodly hour is because we had two 6 and unders in tow. For those childless patrons, might I suggest a martini with a host of olives if you're hungry at 5:00 and then dine at a respectable adult hour, OK?]

So, two hungry kids. Bloomfield. Kid-friendly needed. Good food needed. Pizza? Where? The Strip? Nah. Shadyside? Maybe. Dinette (technically East Liberty?)? Yes.

Excellent choice. An incredible squid appetizer, grilled, with romesco sauce, some charred greens, some little green olives, bits of fried potato. Incredible. My 6-year-old son, whose experience eating fish, with one exception, is limited to frozen, fried forms of various white-meat fish, loved the few bites we were willing to share with him.

He and my 4-year-old daughter mowed on some long, skinny bread sticks and really liked the fresh mozzarella and tomato sauce pizza. The wife and I enjoyed an excellent pie with savoy cabbage, lardons (aka, little pork bits), goat cheese, little bits of sage. The other was, I almost hate to say it, OK. Mozzarella, tomato sauce, anchovie, a few capers, some sliced red chili. It was a little too one-note.

As for the topic of this post, crust. Seated in the corner table were two couples, maybe two years post legal drinking age. At some point I notice, resting uncomfortably on the plate of one said customer, gnarled bits of crust. At the table behind ours an older couple, late 50s, early 60s. As we're leaving, I see on the female half of the duo's plate more gnarled bits of crust.

For a second, I thought maybe we were in a kindergarten cafeteria. You don't like your crust? What, the perfectly charred bubbles of perfectly crisp yet pliant pizza dough turns you off for some reason?

Perhaps you would prefer a Stouffer's with some pepperoni-like bits instead?

Some advice for anybody else thinking of going to Dinette. Eat the crust! It's good. Really good. It's exactly what the crust on a Neapoletan-style pizza is supposed to be. Yes, it's a little charred. But, trust me, it's wonderful. Please. Eat. It.

Scrapin' Up the Bits... GO PENS! Style

I’ll be honest, I really don’t consider Domino’s to be pizza. Rather, I see it as cardboard layered with tomato- and cheese-like products and ridiculous amounts of processed meat products overflowing in saturated fat.

Nevertheless, this is swee…eee..eeeT:

"We basically just had to keep the fluids going, get some food in you," Sykora said. "We had some pizza coming. We had some power bars and stuff like that."

Asked if the pizza was Little Caesar's, the company founded by Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch, Sykora flashed a smile.

"Domino's," he said.

The first pick-up of the year from our illustrious CSA included carrots, spinach, field greens, local honey, local syrup and a few other things.

The selection is limited this early in the season. Nevertheless, the carrots worked very well in an excellent carrot-ginger soup. The spinach accompanied some (mediocre) Italian sausage, onions, garlic, among other things, that ended up atop some gemelli. The field greens were fantastic eaten along side some homemade pizzas (including a fabulous experimental pie with red sauce, arugula pesto, and goat cheese), topped only with a standard balsamic vinaigrette.

And speaking of pizza, here’s a shot of our house specialty pizza: just sauce, chopped kalamata olives or, if you can find them, Moroccan olives, and, just as it comes out of the oven, a healthy sprinkling of freshly grated Pecorino.

A good addition to this pie are some thinly sliced roasted red peppers.

My mushroom hunting adventure had to be scrapped. Instead, got to see my soon-to-be 6-year-old score his lone soccer goal of the 8-game season. It was game 8.

I ordered and have received Michael Ruhlman’s Elements of Cooking. When I first read about this book last year, it seemed, well, kind of pretentious. But after reading some posts on his blog based on some of the “elements” included in the book, I decided maybe I was the one being dumb.

Inspired by Mr. Ruhlman, I hope to make my first homemade mayo this weekend.

And to wrap things up… For our 11^th wedding anniversary, we finally made it to Bona Terra in Sharpsburg. Tremendous meal. Can’t say enough good things about the food and service.

We ate:

• Chicken mouse tart with bacon-tomato relish (compliments of the chef)
• Foie gras with finely diced mango and guava (the foie gras looked like a grilled pork chop, the mango and guava like corn and carrots!)
• Brioche rolls with a roasted tomato butter (at least I think it was “roasted” tomato)
• A field greens salad with candied pecans, dried blueberries, a Spanish cabrales blue cheese, and a raspberry vinaigrette
• Potato, parmesan, and leek soup with ramp oil and hot chili oil
• Beef tenderloin topped with ramp butter
• Roasted duck with a pomegranate sauce
• Cheese plate with English toffee cheese and a wild berry compote

My only disappointment, and this is admittedly nitpicky, was the failure to specifically note on the menu the source of much of what was on our plate. After all, Bona Terra was named one of the top 100 farm-to-table restaurants by Gourmet, so I think Chef and owner Dennis Dick, now the three-time Chef of the Year according to Pittsburgh Magazine, owes it to his customers to be as explicit as possible about the local sources of the food being served.

We’re hoping to make Legume in Regent Square, another farm-to-table restaurant with a burgeoning reputation for fantastic food, for our next dinner out.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: GO PENS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pizza Fusion: Eco Friendly and Pretty Darn Good

I’ll get this out of the way right up front. I had my doubts. Yeah, yeah, organic. Yeah, yeah, local. Yeah, yeah, hybrid delivery vehicles and old Levi’s masquerading as insulation. All part and parcel of this new “green business” known as Pizza Fusion.

A small chain with only four locations at the moment, three of which are in Florida, I can honestly say I was expecting to leave disappointed. And, I’m happy to report, my expectations were greatly exceeded.

Located on route 8 in Gibsonia, not far from the Turnpike exit for Butler Valley and in the same plaza as one of the relatively new Atria's outposts, Pizza Fusion makes a good pie, even if it is oval.

We ordered a large, half-plain (for the kids), half with sausage and roasted red peppers (for the nonkids). The pizza was thin, with a slightly crisp crust that offered just the right amount of chew. The sauce, just a touch too sweet, the cheese, and the toppings all were obviously of above average quality. The roasted red peppers were organic, the sausage was not.

Overall, an enjoyable pizza. We’ll be back. In the meantime, though, some other observations:

1) Pizza Fusion offers beer and wine, all of which are organic. My wife and I both had a pale ale from Peak Brewing, which wasn’t bad. My personal opinion, however, is that, ecologically speaking, local can be as important as organic, so it would be nice if some local beers of a certain quality (cough, cough… any from Penn Brewery) were offered.

2) Some of the pizza options are, to my mind, unnecessary, bordering on the irrational. A “surf and turf” pizza with steak, shrimp, and lobster? It’s bad enough that there is a BBQ Chicken pizza on the menu (abomination!), but a pizza laden with steak and lobster? For $48? I don’t know what that is, but it ain’t pizza.

3) The service was pretty slow. But this was day two for this restaurant. I was amazed the service wasn’t worse.

4) Finally, our bill was over $40, which most people might say is expensive for dinner at a pizza joint (anticipating a long wait for our pizza, we also got some bread sticks for the kids).

I’m not complaining. I understand that quality ingredients cost more. But when you can get a few (nasty) pizzas from the various national chains for less than $20, that kind of price is a hard sell for those who equate organic and anything “green” with pot-smoking hippies and bleeding heart liberals from San Francisco, and who actually think Domino's is an acceptable meal.

Scrapin' Up the Bits, Jalapeno Chip Style

Ah, sitting on the couch, watching a recording of today’s Inter Milan vs. Liverpool Champion’s League match, drinking a Stone Pale Ale, and treating myself to a highly rare treat, Miss Vickie’s hand-picked Jalapeno potato chips.

Odd combination for a Tuesday evening, but perfect for reporting on this mish mash of interesting news, some local, some not so…

To begin with, a special type of ticket for Tony Bourdain’s March 31 talk as part of the Pittsburgh Arts & Lecture series went for some big bucks on eBay. It included a one-on-one with the smoking cook world traveler, autographed book, a top-notch seat. The bidding apparently went back and forth, peaking at more than $2,200.

"We never expected this great a response," said Jayne Adair, director of the Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures series.

Alas, I waited too long to finally order tickets. Just too long. They sold out two hours before I called.

And here’s some important news for Strip District junkies. The former Il Picolo Forno on 21st St. in the Strip District, next to La Prima Espresso, is now Colangelo's.

Picolo Forno is a well-regarded Italian restaurant in Lawrenceville, run by the son of the former owners of Il Piccolo Forno, Antonio and Carla Branduzzi. Antonio died in January 2007 and, up until a few months ago, his wife had continued to operate Il Piccolo Forno. We only discovered it more than a year ago, and fell for it immediately. Nothing like a late morning espresso or cappuccino from La Prima with a slice of pizza from Il Piccolo.

Mrs. Branduzzi closed Il Piccolo Forno a few months ago. As I learned Saturday morning, it has reopened as Colangelo's, and appears to be mostly unchanged. There were still thick slices of pizza on the counter, still delicious pastries in the glass case (we had some great cannoli's Sat. night), and still an open walkway between it and La Prima for some world class espresso drinks.

Needless to say, this is excellent news.

Meanwhile, according to the Post-Gazette, local restaurants are in a pinch.

Rising fuel costs meant many suppliers bringing in produce, meat, pasta and other ingredients had started adding surcharges for every load. Eat'n Park officials studied ways to consolidate truck loads. Or, as Mr. O'Connell put it, "Can we make two deliveries instead of three deliveries to a restaurant a week?"

The cost of ingredients also weighed on results. Beef prices are up, as are wheat, dairy, even fats and oils used in cooking. For Kings, food costs rose more than $560,000 above the previous year.

The article focuses on chain restaurants, which have greater flexibility in dealing with rising prices. The indies have to be feeling it that much worse. There have been numerous reports about the skyrocketing costs of wheat. But costs for everything are going up.

However, there could be sort of a silver lining to all of this, at least in terms of America’s bulging belt line.

Take the "senior menu" at Eat'n Park. It's never been just for seniors, Mr. O'Connell said, because anyone could order from it, but in February the chain turned it into a "smaller portion" menu. Someone who wants the Rosemary Chicken but wants just one chicken breast can get that.

"It's really, 'Hey, here's another way for people to save money,' " he said.

Kings is approaching desserts in the same way. "Our desserts were huge," said Mr. Whalen. In the past couple of years, the chain has been offering mini-desserts for those who want just a taste.

And, finally, it’s been a while. But this week’s Fast Food Abomination of the Week goes to… Quiznos, for its Prime Rib Ranchero: with loads of meat, pepper jack cheese, and chipotle mayo. I believe this is the second time Quizno's has secured this honor.

I couldn’t find the nutritional information for Quizno’s entire menu on its Web site, but I did find some examples of healthy Quizno’s eating here.

Among some of the highlights: As of November 2007, Quizno's large tuna melt has over 2,000 calories and 175 grams of fat! And what is probably the closest relative to the Ranchero, the large Prime Rib Cheesesteak Sub, has 1,770 calories and 116 grams of fat.

Those numbers speak for themselves.