Perfection is a lofty goal for any artist, whether a painter, a dancer, a musician, or a chef.
What defines perfection? Technical precision? Yes, partly; but in art, as in cooking, there has to be something else too. Thomas Keller, in his writings, calls it “finesse.” Carrie Bradshaw, in her writings, calls it the “za za zu.” Whatever it’s called, Brandon Pettit, chef and owner of Delancey in Seattle, Washington, strives for it every day.
“A musician can spend eight hours a day on one paragraph of music,” says Pettit, who knows something about music, having pursued his Ph.D. on the subject. “The attention to detail required in music is greater than what you find in most restaurants.”
As if to prove his point, Pettit applies a musician’s dedication and focus to each of the pizzas he makes in the wood-burning oven at Delancey. When I eat there, the night before we cook together, he joins me at my table to chat; but any time an order comes in for another pizza, he leaps to his feet. He cooks every pizza at Delancey himself.
“Time slows down when I make a pizza,” says Pettit. “It takes three minutes to make a pizza, but for me, it feels like ten.”
How did this obsession begin? When Pettit first moved to Seattle to join his wife, food writer Molly Wizenberg, he was unhappy with the pizza that he found.
“Any random corner pizza place in New Jersey was better than the ‘good stuff’ I found here,” he tells me. “Pizza here was underdone; there was no char, no salt in the dough; the sauce was a cooked sauce. It wasn’t bright at all.”
At home, Pettit started experimenting with making his own pizza. He read an essay in Jeffrey Steingarten’s book about tricking one’s oven to heat hotter than normal (a scalding-hot oven is important for excellent pizza) by wrapping the thermostat with cold, wet T-shirts. Twenty minutes later, the T-shirts were on fire and Wizenberg forbade him from trying it again.
But Pettit persisted, recalling something he had learned in music school about Aaron Copland’s music teacher Nadia Boulanger. “She said, ‘If you want to write a piano sonata, listen to every sonata out there. Then pull your favorite things from all of those, pick the best, and use that in your own work.’” Pettit applied this to pizza by traveling the country and sampling the nation’s best pizzas.
“I liked the texture of the pizza at John’s on Bleecker Street in New York,” he says. “I liked the cheese from Di Fara on Avenue J in Brooklyn. The sauce from Cafe Lago in Seattle.”
The pizza at Delancey is the apotheosis of Pettit’s pizza passion. Each pie comes out crisp and crackling from the wood-burning oven (no wet T-shirts visible), the sauce bright red, the whole thing slicked with olive oil. To my mind, it rivals some of New York’s best pizza, but Pettit himself isn’t completely satisfied.
“It’s not as good as I want it to be yet,” he confesses before I go. “I’m still getting better every day.”
“Picking the bassoon part out of an orchestral score is the same as picking out what spices are in a really good curry.”
Makes enough for 5 pizzas
The Delancey pizza dough recipe is proprietary, but Pettit gave his approval of this recipe I adapted from Tim Artz. In fact, Pettit has no problem with the home cook using a store-bought pizza dough. He’s less concerned with the recipe itself than he is that you treat your pizza dough properly. That means letting it rise for the requisite amount of time so the flavors can develop. That also means stretching it as thin as you can so you don’t get a big bready blob when you bake it. To know if the dough is going to be flavorful, do what Pettit does: taste it raw. Its level of saltiness and sourness will dictate how to flavor what you top it with.
½ teaspoon dried yeast
2½ cups water, slightly warmer than room temperature
2 to 2½ cups all-purpose or double-zero pizza flour, plus 2½ to 3 cups for later (plus more, as necessary)
1 tablespoon coarse salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
The night before you plan to make the pizza, mix the yeast and the water together in the bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attachment on medium speed until the mixture is fluffy, about 1 minute. On medium speed, mix in 2 to 2½ cups of flour until the mixture is slightly thicker than pancake batter (this is called your “sponge”). Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature overnight.
The next morning, add the salt and olive oil to the sponge and, with the mixer on medium-low speed (and using the dough hook attachment), begin adding more flour, ½ cup at a time. Let the flour fully integrate before adding another ½ cup. When the dough stops sticking to the sides of the bowl, you’ve added enough flour (it’s better to add less flour now than too much). Continue kneading the dough in the mixer for 10 to 15 minutes, until it has a smooth, elastic surface. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for at least 4 hours (or until the dough rises to the top of the bowl).
Divide the dough evenly into 5 pieces* (each piece should be 10 to 12 ounces), rolling each one into a round. Place them on a large oiled cookie sheet (you may want to use two because the dough expands) and cover again with plastic wrap; allow to rise, again, at room temperature for another 3 to 4 hours, until bubbles appear on the surface.
Make sure that the oven is preheated to its highest setting (usually 500°F) and that you have all the toppings ready to go: you want to do everything all at once so the pizza can slide easily into the oven.
On a floured surface and with floured hands, flatten a round until it’s a circular shape. Stretch it out and then, using the back of your hands, lift the dough up and continue to stretch it out. Allow it to rest on your knuckles and let gravity do the work for you, rotating it around and around as it continues to stretch. If you’re brave, you can toss the dough in the air to stretch it; but it’s not necessary. What is necessary is to get the dough as thin as you can get it before topping it. The thinner it is, the faster it’ll cook and the crisper it’ll be. If you’re using a pizza stone, make the dough into a round shape. If you’re using a cookie sheet, stretch it into a large oval to cover the length of the sheet.
When your dough is stretched very thin, lay it on a wooden pizza peel coated with a little flour (you can also use cornmeal here) or on the cookie sheet. You’re ready to proceed to any of the following pizza recipes. (You can use this same dough for the calzone.)
Makes enough for 2 to 3 pizzas
The flavors in this pizza sauce are big because they mellow as they cook. When you taste the sauce it should be slightly too salty and slightly too acidic. At home, it’s also important that the sauce add big flavor to the pizza because you’re compensating for your oven’s lack of heat (a commercial pizza oven goes up to 800 or 900°F; you’re lucky to get your home oven up to 500°F).
1 (28-ounce) can whole, peeled
Alta Cucina or San Marzano tomatoes
Red wine vinegar (optional)
Kosher salt
Sugar
Dry oregano (the kind that they sell on the stalk)
1 clove garlic, pressed through a garlic press*
Strain the tomatoes* and place them in a large bowl.
This is where you have to use your palate to guide you: If the tomatoes are very acidic, don’t add any vinegar. If they’re not very acidic, add a splash. Continue flavoring the tomatoes with a big pinch of salt, a pinch of sugar, a light sprinkling of oregano, and the garlic.
Using a hand blender, blend the mixture until it’s the consistency of a chunky tomato soup. (A regular blender will get it too watery and a food processor would leak.)
Taste the mixture and adjust to make it slightly too salty and bright. Use immediately or store, refrigerated, for up to 3 days.
Serves 2 to 4
There are two secrets to an excellent Margherita pizza (named after Italy’s Queen Margherita and visually representative of the colors in the Italian flag): (1) good tomato sauce (see Pettit’s pizza sauce) and (2) the best olive oil you can afford, drizzled on the pizza hot out of the oven. In summer, Pettit adds garden-grown basil at the end of cooking; in winter, he uses greenhouse basil and adds it right before the pizza goes into the oven.
1 cup Pizza Sauce
1 ball fresh mozzarella
4 or 5 fresh basil leaves
Good olive oil (to add before cooking)
Excellent olive oil (to finish pizza)
Get the oven as hot as you can get it (most likely, 500°F). If you have a pizza stone, place it in the cold oven and allow it to preheat for at least 30 minutes.
Pour some sauce onto the center of the prepared pizza dough and spread it out with a ladle, taking it close to the edge. You want just a thin layer of sauce or your pizza will be soggy.
Using your fingers, break apart the fresh mozzarella over the pizza surface and scatter around whole fresh basil leaves. Drizzle with the good olive oil.
If using a pizza stone, open the oven and carefully shimmy the pizza from the pizza peel onto the stone’s surface. If using a cookie sheet, place the pizza in the oven.
Bake the pizza for approximately 10 minutes*, until the cheese is brown and bubbly and the crust is golden brown.
Remove from the oven and slice into wedges or squares (a pizza cutter is handy for this). Drizzle with excellent olive oil, and eat it hot!
Serves 2 to 4
This is a balanced, nuanced version of the classic New York–style pizza that inspired Pettit to open Delancey in the first place. You may be surprised by the brands of cheese Pettit suggests—Polly-O? Grande?—but he assures me that the best pizza makers in the country use these brands too because they have so much flavor. When you serve it and your family asks what kind of pizza you made, tell them, with your best New York accent, “It’s a Brooklyn pizza, you got a problem with that?”
1 cup Pizza Sauce
½ cup aged mozzarella (look for Polly-O or Grande brand), cut into ½-inch cubes and pulsed in the food processor
1 ball fresh mozzarella (Grande or Lioni brand)
Good olive oil
½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Get the oven as hot as you can get it (most likely, 500°F). If you have a pizza stone, place it in the cold oven and allow it to preheat for at least 30 minutes.
Pour some sauce onto the center of the prepared pizza dough and spread it out with a ladle, taking it close to the edge. You want just a thin layer of sauce or your pizza will be soggy.
Rub the aged mozzarella between your hands and sprinkle over the pizza in a thin layer. Pinch off chunks of the fresh mozzarella and scatter around. Drizzle with olive oil and place the pizza in the oven, either from the paddle onto a pizza stone or via a cookie sheet.
Bake for 10 minutes, or until the cheese is brown and bubbly and the crust is golden brown. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the Parmesan. Cut into wedges or squares and serve.
Serves 2 to 4
If the first two pizza recipes are a welcome taste of the familiar, this is a pizza that takes you by surprise. It’s really a beautiful study in contrasts: the meaty, fatty sausage against the zingy, spicy pickled peppers. You could probably buy commercially packaged pickled peppers (something like pickled jalapeños), but making your own pickled peppers is so easy and so worth it. Even though you may be tempted to, don’t overload the pizza. Less is more, even when it comes to pizza.
A splash of olive oil, plus more for drizzling
3 or 4 links of pork sausage, out of the casing
1 cup Pizza Sauce
½ cup aged mozzarella (look for Polly-O or Grande brand), cut into ½-inch cubes and pulsed in the food processor
1 ball fresh mozzarella (Grande or Lioni brand)
A scattering of pickled peppers*
Heat the olive oil in a sauté pan and shape the sausage meat into a patty*. Cook the sausage on both sides until slightly browned on the outside and still pink in the middle. Remove the sausage to a plate and allow to cool.
Get the oven as hot as you can get it (most likely, 500°F). If you have a pizza stone, place it in the cold oven and allow it to preheat for at least 30 minutes.
Pour some sauce onto the center of the prepared pizza dough and spread it out with a ladle, taking it close to the edge. You want just a thin layer of sauce or your pizza will be soggy.
Crumble the sausage on top of the pizza sauce and then sprinkle with the aged mozzarella, pinches of the fresh mozzarella, and a scattering of the pickled peppers (depending on how hot and vinegary you like it). Drizzle with olive oil and place in the hot oven (either on the pizza stone or on a cookie sheet) for 10 minutes, or until the cheese is brown and bubbling and the crust is golden.
Remove from the oven, drizzle with olive oil, and cut into wedges or squares. Serve hot.
