It’s been over a month since my last blog post. Don’t worry…been riding (and wrecked) and making and buying lots of pizza (143 homemade and 32 purchased pizzas this year!)! I will catch you up on part of that in this post.
Neapolitan Word of the Day
Cheddar Cheese – there is no word for cheddar cheese in Italy! Funny thing is, if you search “what is Italian Cheddar Cheese” in Google. It comes up as Parmagian! But, don’t forget, we previously learned other cheese words in this blog…moozedell, parmagian, scamorch, and riggot! In my mind, scamorch comes closest to white cheddar…but again, good luck finding it!
Last weekend, I made an Upside Down Pizza and a Detroit Style Pizza. Of the 143 pizzas that I’ve made this year, about 130 have been Neapolitan Style. The others are various pan styles – Grandma and Sicialian, but no Detroit or Upside Down pies.
Detroit and Upside Down are pan pizzas and are similar in that they use a large amount of oil to “fry” the dough in the pan while cooking. And, both have their sauce on top of the cheese.
But, the Detroit style pan is slightly smaller at 9” by 13” but a deeper 2” pan, and when topped, creates a very deep, cheesy crust. Conversely, the Upside Down uses a 10” x 14” and 1” deep. It’s thick when compared to a Neapolitan Pizza, but only about 1/2 as thick as Detroit.
Also, Grandma and Sicilian pizzas use the same pan as a Upside Down pizza. The difference is an Upside Down has the sauce on top of the cheese. The early Nebelatans found that putting the sauce above the cheese prevented the cheese from burning when cooked at the longer times at lower temps of a gas oven (versus the wood fired jobs in Napoli).
Detroit Pizza also calls for the liberal use of brick cheese. Having grown up in the Midwest, I recall my mother shouting to me, “Hey Michael, go to Nappi’s and get me a block of brick cheese,” and off I’d run the 3 blocks. Made my first trip alone to Nappi’s at 6. I can remember telling the cashier to put it on mom’s tab!
ASIDE – Can you imagine having a tab at a grocery store now? Imagine….as I walk through the self check-out and yell, “Hey, Wegman’s, put it on my tab” now, further imagine, the security guard escorting me to the store’s holding bin after trying to walk out.
The use of brick cheese also separates Detroit from other pizzas. Detroit Italians, while also being in the Midwest, were smart enough not to work on the auto assembly lines! They were also smart enough to use the most abundant cheese available near Detroit…Wisconsin Brick! Unfortunately, we can’t get brick cheese in Upstate NY. So, I substituted a cheddar and moozedell mixture.
ASIDE #2 – THE CHEDDAR TASTE ON A PIZZA REALLY TOOK ME BACK! It made me think about the pizza we had at lunch in high school. I don’t remember the names of any of the lunch ladies at St. John’s cafeteria, but I do remember their CAFETERIA PIZZA! I also believe a few of the ladies were related to me (as was much of the town).
I think the entire school would buy lunch on pizza day! They cooked that pizza in very large, rectangular, steel sheet pans, maybe 20” x 36”, that were about 1.5” deep. The smell during baking would permeated the entire school. I’d get nothing done on that day! Also, we’d get a huge rectangle of pizza of about 6” x 8” and 1″ thick! (insert droolling emoji here)!
The pizza pan likely had a nice coating of oil since each rectangular cut (as they say in Old Forge) had a nearly fried crust. And, if you were lucky to get a corner piece…oh my, that extra amount of fried crust….still makes my mouth water.
BUT, the most memorable thing for me about St. John’s Cafeteria pizza was the CHEESE! It was the time of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, very high inflation, and those big hunks of government subsidized cheddar cheese blocks that the school (and my family) received. Hey Biden, where’s my cheese, man?
I’d not had “real” cheddar cheese until that point in my life having had to subsist on Kraft processed slices (is that cheese?) and copious amounts of Velveeta (is that cheese?). So, I believe that the subsidized cheddar cheese was my first “real” orange/yellow cheese.
The lunch ladies, primarily 1st and 2nd generation Southern Italians-Americans, used very liberal amounts of that subsidized cheddar on their lunch pizza. I’m sure that I questioned the taste the first time I ate it as a freshman, but by senior year, the under classes had to wait behind me! By then, I’d established enough cred with the lunch ladies as a student/athlete to get the chance to stop, observe the tray, and pick out my cut.
Quick Review – Homemade Detroit Style
Date – 8/7/22 – Pizzeria – Home, Kitchen Oven – Beverage Pairing – Chianti
Toppings – Cheese – yellow/orange cheddar (70%) + moozedell (30%), each freshly grated before cooking) and Valleriano Sauce (Hand Crushed, Whole Canned San Marzano Tomato, Oregano, Sugar, & Aunt Theresa’s special ingredient)
Cheese – Greasy, Stringy
Sauce – Tangy, Sweet, Spicy, Chunky
Cheese to Sauce Ratio – Sauce Amount – Medium, Cheese Amount – A lot. Part of the definition of a Detroit pizza is a massive amount of cheese to sauce ratio, although there’s still a good amount of sauce
Crust – Deep, Thick, No Cornicione since the cheese is piled up the side of the pan
Crust Flavor – Buttery (likely due to all the oil), Spongy/airy, Bubbly, Chewy
Crust Cook – Soft, Crispy (also due to the oil “frying” the dough)
Overall Rating – Good
Go Back/Make it Again? – Yes
Comments – I don’t make Detroit Pizza enough to have the result as “great” pizza (yet), but everyone really likes it every time I make one. So, I’ll do it again, but not wait another year.
Quick Review – Homemade Upside Down Pizza
Upside Down style is what is made at O’Scugnizzo (see link) in Utica, NY. Upside Down is their version of Utica Tomato Pie. O’Scugnizzo is one of my favorite, if not my favorite, pizza in the world! And that’s saying something!
ASIDE #3 – a scugnizzo (pronounced scugnizz (sku-neez) in Neapolitan, is a name for a “street urchin” (aka beggar, do you remember Ali’ was called an “urchin” in Aladdin?). Being an urchin was quite a noble job in Napoli after WWII with many families losing their fathers in the war (mainly southern Italians fought, while the northern Italians, with their money, paid their children’s way out (hmm…sounds familiar).
My favorite soccer player (other than my daughter and daughter-in-law) in the world, Lorenzo Insigne, was a street urchin in Napoli, and played for Napoli until this year when he moved to Toronto. Can’t wait to see him play!
Date – 8/7/22 – Pizzeria – Home, Kitchen Oven – Beverage Pairing – Chianti
Toppings – Cheese – moozedell (90%), solid layer underneath the sauce + parmagian (10%) sprinkled on 90% of the way through the back, each freshly grated before cooking, ample amount of Valleriano Sauce
Cheese – Stringy, Salty – from the Parmagian
Sauce – Tangy, Sweet, Spicy, Chunky, THICK
Cheese to Sauce Ratio – Sauce Amount – A lot, Cheese Amount – Medium
Crust – Thick, No Cornicione
Crust Flavor – Buttery, Spongy/airy, Chewy
Crust Cook – Soft
Overall Rating – Good
Go Back/Make it Again? – Yes
Comments
The definition of an Upside Down pizza has a layer of sliced moozedell placed end-to-end over the entire dough. The sauce is then layered, thickly over the moozedell. The parmagian is then added on top of the sauce about 2 minutes before the bake is complete. What makes an Upside Down different from a standard Utica Tomato Pie is the layer of moozedell under the cheese. Tomato Pie has no moozedell.
As with Detroit style, I don’t make this enough to make it great but everyone really likes it every time I make one. So, I’ll do it again, but not wait another year.
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