Resource Guide: Favorite Canned Tomatoes, Mozzarella, Pan Pizza Pans & More

Plus: A Pizza Depth Year?

Hello Pizza Friends,

A week ago I received an email from Maddie Burton, who writes the newsletter On The Cusp. She told me she was cooking her way through Pizza Night and documenting it, too. I learned through her newsletter that this undertaking arose due to a craving for depth — the desire to commit to a “depth year.”

I was unfamiliar with the concept, which I learned was popularized by David Cain who explains it as such:

I keep imagining a tradition I’d like to invent. After you’re established in your career, and you have some neat stuff in your house, you take a whole year in which you don’t start anything new or acquire any new possessions you don’t need. No new hobbies, equipment, games, or books are allowed during this year. Instead, you have to find the value in what you already own or what you’ve already started. You improve skills rather than learning new ones. You consume media you’ve already stockpiled instead of acquiring more. … The guiding philosophy is “Go deeper, not wider.” Drill down for value and enrichment instead of fanning out. You turn to the wealth of options already in your house, literally and figuratively.

In her newsletter in early May, Maddie wrote: “I’m craving the kind of easy confidence that’s only earned by working diligently on one area of focus, not allowing myself the option of ducking away to a novel interest or fun distraction when things get tricky.”

I love this idea, and I’m loving following along on Maddie’s journey both in her newsletter and her YouTube channel. She is clear to note that her video documentation is not an attempt to be a cooking show but rather an exploration of the “expected and unexpected joys and frustrations of going in depth on just about any hobby.”

She is very thoughtful in her approach, and she is very honest about the challenges she has faced thus far from the time spent grocery shopping to the costs of pizza-making equipment and pantry ingredients to the mechanics of launching dough into a burning hot oven. With every pizza-salad review she posts, she also includes a wine pairing from Erin Henderson of Quaintrelle. (Another great newsletter!)

I’m sharing all of this should any of you be interested in your own depth year, pizza or otherwise. At the moment, I know a depth year is not for me, and I appreciated Maddie noting that “depth isn’t always a suitable goal” and that in certain times of her life it wouldn’t have made sense.

I hope to get there sometime soon: I’ve long wanted to immerse myself in gardening or really really learning Spanish or playing an instrument — I was actually taking ukulele lessons before I started working on Pizza Night, and I really miss having that element in my life.

How about you, Friends? Is a depth year in your near future?

Also and finally: Below you’ll find a compilation of all of my favorite pizza-making items from equipment to ingredients. I hope it is a helpful resource for you, and if I’ve missed anything, please let me know.

PS: Next Thursday, August 1st from 6-7:15 pm, I’ll be teaching a virtual cooking class on Sicilian and Grandma-style pizzas. I’ll be making three recipes from Pizza Night. This class is part of Milk Street’s summer pizza series, which includes classes taught by Peter Reinhart and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt.

Use PIZZANIGHT15 for 15% off my class.

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Resource Guide

Equipment

Digital Scale

• Ooni Dual Platform

• Nourish Digital Scale (very reasonably priced)

Baking Steel

• The Original

• The Pro (very heavy, very good)

Peels

• Epicurean Peel

• Turning Peel (for outdoor ovens)

Pan Pizza Pans

Lloyd Pan Pizza Pans

• Detroit-Style Pizza Pan

• Grandma Pan (for both Sicilian- and Grandma-style pizzas)

Other

• parchment paper rounds

• infrared thermometer

• Pizza Rocker

• Pizza Scissors

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• Beautiful Wooden Serving Board

Portable/Outdoor Ovens

I have experience with the three ovens listed below, and I have reviewed them all here on Pizza Every Friday. Find links to both the ovens and reviews below.

Gozney Dome

The Gozney Dome: A Review

Ooni Koda 16

Why Christy Alia Loves Her Ooni Koda 16

Breville Pizzaiolo (If you are in the market for an indoor countertop oven, I’d suggest looking into the Ooni Volt, which I’ve heard great things about.)

A Review of the Breville Pizzaiolo

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Dough Storage Containers

Two Quart Vessels (for Detroit and grandma dough balls)

• 4-Quart Lidded Vessels: (for storing full batches of dough and Sicilian-pizza dough)

• Kevjes (for individual Neapolitan or thin-crust dough balls 250 grams each)

• DoughMate (for room temperature proofing)

Food

Tomatoes:

• La Valle

• Bianco DiNapoli

• Stanislaus Alta Cucina (very expensive online, best to find at a local restaurant supply shop)

The Canned Tomatoes Beloved by Pizza Makers Near and Far

Mozzarella

• Calabro low-moisture, whole milk mozzarella (I find it at Whole Foods)

Hot Honey

• Zab’s

• Mike’s

Giardiniera

• Caruso’s

• Hank’s

• J.P. Graziano

Pepperoni

• Vermont Smoke and Cure

• Battistoni Cup and Char

• Ezzo (hard to find in retail shops)

Yeast

• SAF instant yeast

  

Flour

• King Arthur Baking bread and all-purpose flour

• Cairnspring Mills (freshly milled, stone milled)

  • Glacier Peak Bread Flour

  • Sequoia All Purpose flour

• Semola Rimacinata

• Semolina Flour

• Rice Flour

• 00 Flour (stay tuned… currently experimenting with Petra as I have been disappointed with Caputo recently)

• Gluten-Free Flour

  • Caputo Fiore Glut

  • King Arthur Baking Gluten-Free Pizza Flour (gluten-free thin-crust recipe here)

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Love pizza and salad? Find recipes, tips, and tricks in Pizza Night 🍕🍕🥗🥗

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