New York Style Pizza

New York pizza is my favorite style of pizza. Sure, I love me a neo-Neapolitan, sit-down-with-a-fork-and-knife on occasion, and grilled pizzas are fantastic in the summer. Even chewy, Roman-style pizza bianca has its place. But the pizza I find myself most often craving is of the simple, by-the-slice, medium-thin, crusty and lightly chewy style.
Luckily for us, it's also the variety that seems most easily adaptable to the home kitchen. Unlike, say Neapolitan pies which require wood-burning, 1000°F ovens (or at the very least a reasonable workaround), the modern* New York pie is baked in gas ovens that don't often go north of 500 to 550°F or so—a temperature range not out of the pale of even the most bog-standard home oven fitted with a pizza stone.
So what is it that makes a New York pizza unique?
First of all, it's the sauce. It's an emphatically tomato-ey sauce with a balanced sweetness and acidity and the barest hint of herbs and alliums. I tackled this sauce in a previous Pizza Lab post (the secret is a mix of butter and olive oil, using whole tomatoes, dried oregano, a couple of halved onions that get removed, and a slow simmer on the stovetop). No problem.
Next, it's the cheese. Unlike a Neapolitan, which uses fresh mozzarella, New York-style pizza uses grated, dry mozzarella—the kind you can get sliced on a meatball sub or wrapped in cryovac blocks near the milk. It's applied sparingly so that it melts into a loose matrix that mingles with the sauce underneath, browning ever so slightly in the heat of the oven. The top of a New York-style pie should look mottled with red, white, and brown, definitely not a solid expanse of white melted cheese. With a couple pies under your belt, you'll quickly discover two things about the cheese: it must be full-fat mozzarella (the part skim or low-fat stuff just doesn't stretch right), and you must grate it yourself. No matter how much you are tempted, do not buy pre-shredded cheese. Shredded cheese is coated with a dusting of potato or cornstarch intended to keep it from clumping. What it ends up doing is preventing it from melting properly. Your cheese will not acquire the requisite goo-factor. I've found that the best way to get good cheese for pizza at the supermarket is to go to the deli counter and ask them to cut you a pound or so straight off the slicing block in one chunk. Grated on the large holes of a box grater, it's perfect for the job.
Here's a problem I used to have: the cheese would overbrown and burn before the crust was done cooking. This happen to anyone else? I don't know if it's because professional pizza ovens have different convection patterns or some other sort of thermodynamic oddities going on, but the only solution I've found is to grate the cheese onto a plate, then pop it in the freezer for 15 minutes before applying it. This slows down its cooking just enough so that the crust can catch up before the cheese starts to burn.
The final factor that makes a great New York pizza—and this is the real key—is the crust. This is what separates the men from the boys. The New York slices from the Sbarros. The true Ray's from the hordes of imitators.**
Let's take a closer look, shall we?
Thicker than a Neapolitan crust but thinner than a pan pizza, a New York crust starts with a crisp, well-browned bottom layer about 2 millimeters thick. It must be sturdy enough that a single slice slightly bent lengthwise down the center will cantilever out straight under its own support, not requiring the eater to prop the tip with a second hand. There's nothing worse than walking out on the street with a slice, having the tip sag down, and the cheese slip off into a greasy puddle on the sidewalk. Even thinking about it makes my eyes well up.
The crust has to be sturdy enough, but—and this is important—just sturdy enough. Crunchy, tough, or cracker-like are not adjectives that can ever accurately describe a great New York pizza. The slice must crackle and give gently as you fold it, never crack or split.