Why I Oughta...

I'm not *exactly* sure how I recently came across this new (to me) pizza style, but it sure has my attention.  What style is that?  I suppose the widest birth name-wise I can give it is: Sfincione.  It is a version (most often) of something similar to a Sicilian or Grandma pizza.  Tweaked.  Kenji @ Serious Eats has done his thing with it and calls it "New Years Pizza" .  It is characterized by a light, hole-filled dough that is crisp/fried on the bottom.  Sauce on top.  And...finished with the crunch of breadcrumbs.  That recipe is, however, NOT where I started on this pizza journey rabbit hole.  Nope.  It was earlier this year when I read that a pizza pop-up from Nashville (of all places) was coming to town to participate in a Chicago pizza festival.  That place is St. Vito Focacceria.   Well...that's interesting, I thought.   I didn't attend said fest. But, I've been sitting on this Instagram po...

I've been a proponent of a low-moisture cheese for pizza making for a number of years.  A special cheese, specifically:  Chellino Scamorza Cheese .  It isn't smoked and is most-similar to the traditional low-moisture Mozzarella that you find at the Jewels or Marianos.  But, I've been experimenting with a different set of cheeses with my Bar Pies.   I took that class with the OG Pizza-online-guy Adam Kuban last year where he talked about his "KuBlend" where he talked about how he blends a couple of cheeses for Bar Pies.  For some recent Bar Pie experiments , I've moved away from the Chellino Scamorza and have begun to trial this 2 parts Whole Milk Mozzarella (low-moisture) and 1 part Fontina.   Fontina has been on my radar for a bit as the folks at Via Napoli in the World Showcase at EPCOT Center use it (see this post from 2017 that shows a few cheeses they use including: Robiola, Parmesan, Provolone and Fontina.) Below are the two products ...

Up at Angelo Caputo's in Addison, they're selling pizza cheese for a full buck cheaper than Frankie's Deli in Oak Brook Terrace .  Cheapest I've come across was at Nature's Market in Westmont, but that $5.99 price is (now) almost four years old.      For tracking purposes, I shredded six of these #1'ers, but ended up using probably four of them across 10 bar pies and 2 skinny Detroit pies on Christmas Eve.  Also, four white Cheddars was probably 50% too much, too.  Next year - with the same amount of bar pies, I could factor 4 scamorzas and 2 white cheddars. They bill it as "Cheese for Pizza" from The Chellino Cheese Company, Joliet, Illinois on their packaging.  And that's how we use it.