Pizza Wizard

After being happily surprised to see that some people had fond memories of this blog (hell, I wasn't sure if anybody would remember it at all), I saw that more than one person asked me to do a post about Pizza Wizard on South Clinton Avenue in Rochester.

I'd been there before, more than once, but this made me realize that in addition to my personal to-do list of places I haven't been to, there are a lot of other places I have been to but never blogged about, because I went there during my blog "vacation." So I've got more than enough to keep me busy for a good long while.

In response to readers' requests, then, I went back to Pizza Wizard for lunch with my wife. For those who don't know, Pizza Wizard specializes in Detroit-style pizza. I don't remember exactly when I first heard of that style, but I believe it would've been in the late 20-teens, since that's when it suddenly seemed to catch on nationwide.

I do remember being skeptical when I first heard of Detroit-style pizza. I thought (and to some extent still do) that marketers are perpetually looking for something to turn into the Next Big Thing. Pick a city, call it a style, and run with it. It doesn't help matters that by the time a genuine style reaches the hinterlands, far beyond where it began, it tends to be a faint shadow of the real thing.  

But even when I wasn't blogging, I was keeping up with pizza news and pizza trends. And as I read more about Detroit-style, it seemed to me that yeah, it sounded like a genuine, distinctive style, not just a marketing gimmick. I won't try to describe it in detail here, but if you want a description I'll refer you to this post by one of my favorite food authors.

So when Pizza Wizard opened in October 2020, I was curious, and I went there not long afterwards. I liked it enough to return from time to time. But for purposes of this blog post, I'm going to focus on my most recent visit.

On this occasion, they had about ten pizzas to choose from, all Detroit style. I'm pretty sure that at one time they also offered thin-crust pizza, but that was nowhere to be found and I didn't see it on the menu.

Several of the pizza options intrigued me, but I always like to start with the basics, so I got a plain cheese slice with red sauce. My wife opted for a veggie slice, which was described as topped with tomato, kale, artichoke, onion, and sun-dried tomato. 

I've never been to Detroit, so I can only go by what I've read, but my slice checked all the boxes. Thick but light, airy crust, crisp and slightly fried underneath, with burnt cheese dripping down along the sides. It was topped with a thick layer of brick cheese, and atop that a wide stripe of tomato sauce, which was thickish and more sweet than tangy, reminiscent of one of those sauces you cook all afternoon on the stove.

 So yeah, I was pretty happy with my slice. I remain a New York-style fan, first and foremost, but I get why Detroit-style pizza has gained a solid place in the American pizza pantheon.

However ...

My wife was not nearly as happy with her slice. Her chief complaint was that it was too oily. She only finished about half of it, and gave the rest to me.

I may have somewhat broader tastes in pizza than my wife, so that may account for part of it. She likes thin-crust pizza. And because it's pan-baked, Detroit-style pizza will inevitably have some oil on the bottom. But I could see her point. Her slice was noticeably oilier and a bit denser than mine. 

I suspect that was attributable in part to the toppings.While "veggie" sounds like a "light" slice, it's not necessarily so. The toppings themselves are often sauteed in oil before being added, and the sheer weight of the toppings will tend to compress the crust. 

I also noticed that what I tasted didn't quite align with the description of the slice. I picked up a distinct note of garlic, which was not on the written description, and if there was artichoke on there, I missed it. Maybe it was scattered across the pizza, and this slice, or at least the part that I got
didn't have any. 

So. Thoughts.

I was happy with my cheese/red sauce slice. I remain a thin-crust lover, but this was much better than the typical thick-crust sheet pizza slice:  crisp, light and flavorful. It also reinforced my natural inclination to stick with the basics. Pepperoni probably would've been a good choice too, but I wouldn't overdo it. 

I would also caution readers that a lot depends on what you like. It's good to be open to styles you haven't tried before, but no matter how much others rave about a particular pizzeria or style, if it's not your thing, it's not your thing. In the case of my wife's veggie slice, I think part of her displeasure was attributable to her personal preferences, but again I could understand why she found it heavy and oily.

I'm still debating whether to again assign any sort of grades or ratings to pizzas. For now, no. I think I can better serve readers and the pizzerias by being as accurately descriptive as I can. To sum up this visit to Pizza Wizard, I'll say that they do a creditable job of replicating the Detroit style (again, based on what I know of it), and that unless you're a thin-crust-only diehard, it is well worth checking out. I mentioned earlier that I have stopped in from time to time, and I will continue to do so.

Pizza Wizard

760 South Clinton Ave. Rochester, NY 14620

585.565.4557

Hello again

 It has been a while, hasn't it?

This blog started on February 12, 2009, with an introductory post in which I wrote that it would be "an occasional, idiosyncratic exploration of pizza places in and around Rochester NY." Until just a few days ago, my most recent post was in June 2018, about six years and nine months earlier. I will admit that's a long time, but hey, I did say at the start that it would be "occasional."

So what happened? 

The simple answer is, writing and publishing the blog started to wear on me. It went from being a fun pastime to a chore. I try to avoid clichés in my writing, but "burnout" captures it pretty well.

Now the long answer. I'm writing this down in part just to sort out my thoughts, so feel free to skim over it.

 As a combination of my somewhat obsessive nature and my love of pizza, in 2009 I got it into my head to try every single pizzeria in the Rochester area. Blogging was just beginning to catch on, so I thought, why not blog about it while I'm doing it? I figured it would help me create a personal journal, for future reference, and maybe help other like-minded persons in search of good pizza.

 From the start, it was fun. But at first no one seemed to even be aware of it, which in hindsight is no surprise, given my internet ignorance at the time. I was getting no visits, no views, no nothing. It was like giving a lecture to an empty auditorium.

So I started educating myself on how to drive traffic to my site. Over time, I learned. I added search terms. I swapped links with other bloggers and pizza-related sites. I created a Facebook page tied to the Pizza Blog. Et cetera.

And it worked! I could see my numbers going up. A lot of readers were leaving comments and emailing me and asking for recommendations. For two years running the blog was voted Best Local Blog in City Newspaper's annual readers' poll. I was becoming, although the term didn't even exist yet, an "influencer."

As this was happening, I was enjoying it more in some ways, but the seeds were being planted for that eventual burnout. 

(As I'm writing this I realize I should move on. I'll have more to say in future posts about some stuff that happened over that period, if anyone's interested. But for now let's skip ahead.)

Early on I think I wrote a post in which I said that I would not let the blog become a dead site, un-maintained and un-updated. If I were to quit, I'd delete the whole damn thing. And when I decided to take a break in 2018, I had the intention of coming back to it before long. But I soon lost the motivation to do so. I wasn't ready to formally call it quits, but I also knew that people were still relying on the blog for advice. So I just left it up.

Fast forward: I recently retired, so I have more time on my hands. And I still love pizza, as much as ever. I've kept up with the local pizza scene, and I've maintained a to-do list of places to try. So I'm ready to give it a go again.

As at the beginning, I'm going to be finding my way through this all. I suppose if I want to blow this thing up, I'll have to do a lot of catching up and get onto a bunch of social media sites that didn't exist when I last posted. I would also be well-advised to do video, not just writing and photos.

But I'm not at all sure I want to go down that road. At this point my thinking is, get back to basics, keep it fun, and do it on your own terms, at your own pace. 

So I am going to resume posting about local pizza, both reviews and to pass along local pizza news, but I am not going to do it on any kind of fixed schedule or allow myself to feel pressure to post. I might or might not branch out onto a different social media platform. I don't know yet. I'm going to try to do this in a way that's good for me and good for my readers. Once a week? Sounds about right. But I'll see how it goes. 

As I go through this, though, I would appreciate your feedback, advice, and recommendations. Please email me or leave a comment. Far more than raw numbers, what has always meant the most to me is hearing directly from my readers. Given my relative lack of social media acumen, I would also love it if you could spread the word about the blog on my behalf.

Until next time,

Eat Good Pizza!

- The Rochester Pizza Guy

 

Homemade pizza

Although I bake bread about weekly, making pizza at home is more of a now-and-then kind of thing for me. I hadn't made any for maybe two or three months when I got the urge last week.

Unless I want to try my hand at a specific style (e.g. Detroit), my default recipe for a while now has been the Master Dough with Starter found in The Pizza Bible by Tony Gemignani. It's relatively simple to make and has consistently given me good results. I'm also fortunate enough to have a huge supply of Gold Medal All Trumps high-gluten bromated flour, which is ideal for this dough.

For toppings, I decided to go with what I would call a modified Margherita. Ordinarily for that style I would use crushed San Marzano (or at least plum) tomatoes, but I also had on hand a large quantity of Saporito brand "Super Heavy" concentrated pizza sauce, so I used that. I thinned it out with tap water until it seemed to be about the right consistency, and I also stirred in olive oil that I had used for sautéing some fresh garlic. 

(Quick aside: virtually every recipe that includes olive oil calls for extra-virgin. A few years ago, I decided to try plain old regular olive oil, and I've never gone back to the EVOO, at least for cooking. In some ways it's even better because it has a higher smoke point.)

One of the benefits of using high-gluten flour is that it creates a dough that it can be stretched well without tearing. That said, I have never mastered the art of stretching dough. I can do it well enough, but I am always amazed when I see pizzeria workers stretching and stretching to incredible dimensions. But given the relatively modest dimensions of my oven, I don't need to strive for that.

(Second aside: bromated flour contains potassium bromate, a flour "improver" that strengthens dough and allows for greater oven spring and higher rising in the oven. Potassium bromate has been identified as a possible carcinogen, but it breaks down at high temperatures, so it doesn't worry me to use it in pizza dough.)

Over an hour before baking, I turned on my oven to 500 degrees, as called for in the recipe. I have a half-inch-thick pizza steel, which I had cut at a local metal fabricator, at 15 inches square, which allows for about an inch of space all around in my oven. It weighs a ton--I probably could have gotten by with a quarter-inch thick--but it's great, and in my experience much better than the pizza stones I used to use, which inevitably would crack, and couldn't retain heat nearly as well.

The dough stretched easily, and after moving it to a square of parchment paper (which in my opinion isn't far behind the wheel among the greatest human inventions) on a pizza peel, I topped it with sauce, fresh mozzarella, and the garlic, and slid it onto the steel. 

I didn't keep good track of the time, but after about six or so minutes I took it out, added some basil leaves, and put it back in, rotated 180 degrees. About the same amount of time later, the cheese was showing signs of browning, the basil was wilting, and the underside was darkening, so I removed it and quickly gave it a quick sprinkling of grated Parmesan. 

All in all, it came out pretty well. The crust had risen nicely and showed some signs of charring underneath. If I had gotten this from a pizzeria, I would've had no complaints.

One thing that I both love and am frustrated by about baking, whether it's bread or pizza, is that I almost never am 100% satisfied with the results, and that I always think I could do better next time. And so it was here, in at least two respects.

One: no matter how thinly I stretch pizza dough, it rises to about medium-thick in the oven. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and maybe that's also a function of the flour I use, but I have yet to achieve the thinness of NY-style pizza. (Note to self: next time just cut down on the amount of flour.)

Two:  I'm still trying to figure out the ideal rack for the pizza steel. This time around I put it on the second-highest rack (my oven has four racks), and I would've liked a bit more charring underneath but I had to take it out lest the toppings got overcooked. Last time, I used the second-lowest, and it got too dark underneath. This calls for more consideration, and I have some ideas. (For a great examination of the subject, go here.)

Bottom line, though. I got back into pizza-making. And now here I am again blogging about pizza, for the first time since 2018. 

I don't expect many people to see this or read it. But if you do, check back. I have a lot of 'splainin' to do.