The pie everything else is judged against
New York Cheese Pizza
A thin, foldable, unfussy round — and the hardest thing on this menu to get right, because there is nothing on it to hide behind.
A plain cheese pie is the test. There are three ingredients on it and no topping to distract from any of them, so every fault shows: a base proofed too fast tastes of nothing, a sauce cooked too long tastes of tin, and cheese laid on too thick turns the middle to soup. Sal has been making this pizza on 61st Street since 1994 and still tastes the first one out of the oven every morning.
What you should get is a slice that holds its shape for about a second when you pick it up and then folds cleanly down the middle without cracking. The underside should be dry and spotted with brown, never pale and never sooty. The cheese should have browned in patches rather than uniformly, and there should be a thin rim of sauce showing at the edge of it.
It is a pizza engineered around a specific circumstance: eating on your feet, in a hurry, out of a paper plate. Everything about it — the width of the slice, the dryness of the base, the fold — follows from that. It is not a lesser version of a Neapolitan pizza, it is a different tool for a different job.
What goes on it
The dough
Sixty-two per cent hydration, mixed the day before yesterday and rested forty-eight hours in the cold room. The long cold ferment is what gives it flavour; a same-day dough is just bread.
The sauce
Crushed plum tomatoes, salt, a little dried oregano, nothing else, and it is never cooked. Cooking the sauce before it goes on the pizza cooks it twice.
The cheese
Low-moisture whole-milk mozzarella, shredded here rather than bought shredded, because the anti-caking powder on pre-shredded cheese is what makes a pizza greasy.
The finish
Nothing. A plain pie leaves the oven plain. If you want oregano or chilli on it, both are on the counter.
How it is made here
Opened by hand
Pressed out from the centre so the rim keeps its gas. A rolling pin makes a flat, even, lifeless crust, which is why there is not one in the building.
Sauced thin
One ladle, spread in a spiral to within an inch of the edge. More sauce than that steams the base from above and you get the dreaded wet middle.
Twelve to fourteen minutes
On a 600°F steel deck, turned once at the halfway point because the back of the oven is always hotter than the front.
Cut in eight
Straight off the peel onto a steel tray, cut with a wheel rather than a rocker so the cheese is not dragged off the slices.
New York Cheese Pizza — what it costs
- 18" pie, 8 slices$24
- 14" pie, 6 slices$19
- By the slice$3.75
Prices include every topping listed above. Extras are $3 for vegetables and $4 for meats. Prices change when our costs do; the menu here is the menu in the shop.
Before you order this
A shared flour kitchen, and what that rules out. Our kitchen handles wheat flour in open air all day, along with milk, eggs, soy, tree nuts and fish. Flour becomes airborne every time a dough ball is opened, and it settles on every surface in the room, including the peels, the oven floor, the cutting board and the wheel. We can tell you what we put on a pizza, and we will tell you honestly. We cannot tell you that anything leaving this kitchen is free of an allergen, and we will not say it. If a reaction would send you to hospital, this is not a safe kitchen for you, and we would far rather say so than take the order.
The kitchen is one room. Every pizza here is opened on the same bench, baked on the same floor and cut with the same wheel, and that is true of this one as much as any other. The pages on allergens and cross-contact and vegetarian, vegan and dietary questions set out plainly what we can and cannot tell you, including the things most shops leave you to assume.
The rest of the menu
Other things worth ordering
Pepperoni Pizza
Small-diameter natural-casing pepperoni that curls into cups and chars at the rim, over the plain pie.
From $4.50
Sicilian Square Pizza
A thick square pie proofed in an oiled steel pan: an airy open crumb, a fried golden base and a crisp cheese edge.
From $4.25
Grandma Pizza
Thin, square and pressed straight into the pan: mozzarella first, then stripes of crushed tomato spooned over the top with sliced garlic and oregano.
From $4.25Asked at the counter
New York Cheese Pizza — questions
Why is your plain pie more expensive than the shop on the corner?
Because the dough costs us two days of cold-room space and the cheese is shredded here. Whether that is worth ninety cents a slice to you is a fair question and we are not going to argue it — try one and decide.
Can I get it well done?
Yes, and ask for it: two or three extra minutes darkens the underside and dries the cheese out slightly. A lot of people prefer it and nobody will look at you strangely.
Do you sell half-and-half pies?
Yes, on the 18-inch, at the higher of the two prices. We will not do quarters — the toppings run into each other in the oven and you end up with neither pizza.
Twelve to fifteen minutes, and worth the wait
Order a pie
Telephone the shop and we will tell you honestly how long the kitchen is running before you commit to anything. Collection is always quicker than delivery and the pizza is always better for it. If you are ordering for a crowd, the catering page has the trays and the notice we need.