When the word went out that Osteria's estimable chef Jeff Michaud was hosting a pizza workshop in the demonstration kitchen at Foster's Homeware in Old City, I could feel a mischievous glint rising in my eye.
I'd always wondered how he pulled it off; made those smoky, crackling-crusted pizzas so thin, so perfect, some so plain (with uncooked tomato sauce and basil), some so refined (with arugula, fontina cheese, and prosciutto di Parma, or sunny egg, or green and white asparagus.
Wouldn't it be a coup to learn the trick? I had visions of wowing my guests - wowing myself - with home-baked pizzas that at Osteria's moody North Broad Street digs go for $15 and up for pies the size of dinner plates.
Things did not start well. I would be needing (kneading?) special pizza flour, and a dough-hook attachment (which I don't have), and a pizza stone (which I don't have), and a paddlelike pizza peel (which I don't have). Michaud recommends flexible stainless steel over wood.
I learned some secrets right off the bat. First, flour can get very complicated. You can use all-purpose flour, or King Arthur high-gluten bread flour. But Osteria uses a special-order pizza flour blended from hard and soft wheats, soy, and who knows what else.
The night before you want your pizza, here's what you do: Mix about 21/2 pounds of pizza flour with the following:
1 ounce of yeast
1/3 cup of olive oil
21/2 cups of water
1/4 cup of sugar
Mix in a mixer with the dough-hook for eight minutes.
Then:
Add 1 tablespoon of salt.
Then:
Mix three more minutes.
Now cut off six-ounce chunks of dough (about seven or eight of them), and roll them into round balls. (You can dig your fingers in the bottom and pull the dough around to fill the hole. But whatever, you have got to make the ball round, otherwise the pizza crust won't be.)
Put the balls on a cookie sheet, about three inches apart. Cover tightly with plastic wrap. In the next day, those suckers will swell up by about 25 percent.
Let us discuss sauce. I am not about to make my own cotecchino sausage, a central feature of the Lombarda at Osteria, which is finished with a glistening cracked egg.
But the sauce for the Margherita was more my speed.
Here's the recipe:
1 16-ounce can of plum tomatoes (Michaud uses Lavalle, reputedly the finest of the San Marzano brands)
1/4 cup of olive oil
8 basil leaves
salt and pepper
Puree coarsely in blender. (Don't cook.)
Store in jar in refrigerator.
That part, I get.
