Untitled NY Slice

My recipe, worked out with AI research and still being tested. Built for the New York Slice Shop dough and a home oven with a steel.

Sauce

1. Drain the tomatoes. For whole peeled tomatoes, pour the can into a strainer and save the juice. Squeeze each tomato open over the sink to dump the watery seeds, then add back just enough of the juice to make [[tomatoes]]. Crushed tomatoes only need weighing.
2. Crush, don’t blend. Use a food mill, or pulse a stick blender 3–4 times for a second each. Blending longer cracks the seeds (bitter) and whips in air (turns the sauce orange).
3. Season. Stir in the [[sauce_salt]] salt, [[sauce_oil]] olive oil, [[sauce_oregano]] oregano, [[sauce_garlic]] garlic powder and [[sauce_pepper]] pepper. Taste, and add sugar only if it’s sharp. Refrigerate 4+ hours, then let it come back to room temperature. Cold sauce leaves a gummy layer under it.

Cheese

1. Grate coarse. Thick shreds, or ¼-inch cubes, melt slower and don’t break into grease.
2. Freeze 20–25 minutes on a parchment-lined tray right before topping. It should be frosty-firm, not frozen solid.

Stretch

1. Dust and flip. Dust the top of the ball in its container, run a scraper around the edge, and flip it onto a pile of bench dust. Dust the new top lightly.
2. Mark the rim. Press your fingertips straight down about ½ inch in from the edge, all the way around.
3. Press out the middle. Walk your flat fingers across the center to push the gas out, and press lightly over the inside of the rim too. A New York rim stays small and crisp, not puffy.
4. Stretch on the table to about 10 inches. Keep one hand in the middle and pull the edge out an inch with the other, turning a little after each pull.
5. Finish on your knuckles to 15 inches. Keep your knuckles under the rim, never the middle, or the center gets too thin and the slice flops. Shake off the extra dust.

Build

1. On a seasoned screen or a dusted peel: spread [[sauce]] sauce in a spiral to about ½ inch from the edge, without pressing into the dough.
2. Scatter the [[hard_cheese]] grated hard cheese over the sauce.
3. Add the [[mozz]] cold mozzarella, with more toward the outside and less in the middle so the center doesn’t sag.

Bake: home oven

1. Preheat. Steel on the upper rack, about 7 inches below the broiler. Bake at 550°F (convection if you have it) for a full hour after the oven says it’s ready. Stop when the middle of the steel reads 565–585°F with an infrared thermometer.
2. Pick a method:
   • Screen, then steel (my first try). Switch to high broil for 5 minutes before launch to charge the steel. Then switch back to 550°F bake and slide the pie, on its screen, onto the steel. At 3 minutes, slide a peel under the crust, pull the screen out, and drop the pie straight onto the steel, turned around. Bake 2 more minutes. Use a seasoned (dark) screen: a shiny one reflects heat and leaves the bottom pale.
   • Straight from the peel. No broiler before launch, or the bottom burns. Launch onto the steel at 550°F bake, turn it around at 3 minutes, and bake to 4½ minutes.
3. Broil to finish (1½–2 minutes). Switch to high broil, turning the pie a quarter turn every 45 seconds. Stop when the rim is deep golden brown and the cheese has amber spots. Total bake about 6–7 minutes.
4. Cool on a wire rack for 1½–2 minutes before moving it to a board, so steam escapes and the bottom stays crisp.

If something’s off

• Gummy layer under the sauce: sauce too cold or too heavy. Warm it to room temperature, and stay at the low end (130g).
• Pale bottom: the steel wasn’t hot enough, the dough was stretched too cold, or the pie stayed on the screen too long.
• Dough snaps back: too cold (under 60°F inside), or it was folded too much after mixing.
• Floppy tip: the center is too thin, or too much cheese in the middle.
• Greasy orange pools: the cheese wasn’t cold enough, the shreds were too fine, or the broiler went on too early.

Lab

Things to try once the base pie is working. Change one thing at a time.

• Two mozzarellas. Per pie, use 145g grated low-moisture mozzarella plus 65g fresh mozzarella (a low-moisture log, like Grande or BelGioioso, not the kind in water). Tear the fresh one into ½-inch pieces 2–4 hours ahead, sprinkle with a tiny pinch of salt, and press between paper towels in the fridge under a light weight.
  • Mixed in: freeze both cheeses 20 minutes, scatter the grated one, dot the fresh on top, and bake as usual.
  • Big white pools: bake with just the grated cheese. Keep the fresh pieces at room temperature and scatter them on at the 3-minute screen pull.
• Cheese first, sauce on top. Dust 15–20g grated Parmigiano and Pecorino (60/40) straight onto the raw dough. Cover with the two mozzarellas all the way to the rim, then spoon 135g sauce on top in three rings. The melted cheese keeps the sauce off the dough, and the sauce stripes caramelize under the broiler.
• Sesame rim. Before flipping the ball into the bench dust, mist the outer inch of its bottom with water and press it into a tray of half toasted sesame seeds, half semolina.
• Finishing touches. Right after the bake: brush the rim with garlic-herb oil, scatter 8–10 torn basil leaves, and finish with 8g of the Parmigiano-Pecorino mix and a drizzle of olive oil (or hot honey on a pepperoni pie).