The Gravesend Pizza-Dough Panuozzo
(pah-NWOT-tso)
Chapter 4 — Slice Shop Specials
The panuozzo wasn't born in a centuries-old Neapolitan courtyard; it was engineered in the nineteen-eighties and perfected in the neon-lit slice shops of Gravesend, Brooklyn. It is, unapologetically, a pizza-dough sandwich. To make it at home requires abandoning romantic notions of imported water in favor of brutal thermodynamics: a high-hydration dough, an aggressive dose of diastatic malt, and the unrelenting thermal mass of a baking steel. When the dough hits that hot steel, it violently puffs into a hollow balloon, ready to be sliced, stuffed with heavy Italian-American artillery, and double-baked into a crispy, molten triumph.
Before you start
Prepare the chicken cutlets and slice-shop sauce in advance.
The panuozzo requires your full attention once the dough hits the steel. Have your hot fried cutlets and warm sauce ready to go for the second bake.
Ingredients
- bread flour460 g
- high-gluten flour115 g
- water414 g
- fine sea salt14 g
- instant dry yeast2 g
- extra virgin olive oil11 g
- diastatic malt powder8 g
- semolina flour1/4 cup
- breaded chicken cutlets2 med
- slice-shop tomato sauce1 cup
- low-moisture whole-milk mozzarella8 oz
- Pecorino Romano1/4 cup
Method
- 01
Whisk the bread flour, high-gluten flour, and diastatic malt powder together, then combine with the ice-cold water.
Mix until no dry spots remain, forming a shaggy mass, and let it rest covered for 30 minutes to build the gluten network passively.
- 02
Sprinkle the yeast over the dough and knead aggressively for three minutes.
Add the salt and knead for two more minutes until it dissolves, then slowly drizzle in the olive oil, continuing to knead until the high-hydration dough becomes smooth, glossy, and highly elastic.
- 03
Perform one set of stretch and folds before moving the dough to the refrigerator.
Cover the dough and let it sit at room temperature for an hour to wake the yeast, then cold-retard it in the fridge for 24 to 48 hours to develop complex lactic tang and optimal extensibility.
- 04
Divide the cold dough into four equal 250-gram pieces and shape them into tight balls.
Tension on the outer skin is critical for trapping steam. Proof them in a covered box at room temperature for three to four hours until doubled in volume and yielding to the touch.
- 05
Preheat a baking steel on the upper-middle rack at your oven's maximum temperature for one full hour.
The ambient air heats quickly, but the 1/4-inch steel requires a full hour to achieve the maximum thermal saturation necessary for a violent oven spring.
- 06
Gently stretch one proofed ball into a 12-inch oval, brush lightly with oil, and bake on the steel for five to seven minutes.
Use semolina to slide it off the peel. Do not press a rim; maintain an even thickness. The dough will aggressively inflate like a balloon. Remove it before it takes on deep brown color.
- 07
Cool the puffed bread for exactly three minutes before slicing it horizontally and layering your fillings.
Slicing immediately turns escaping steam into gummy water. Once sliced, load the bottom half with chicken cutlets, sauce, mozzarella, and Pecorino, then return it to the steel open-faced for three minutes until the cheese is bubbling and the exterior achieves a crisp, golden crunch.
Notes
For those measuring by baker's percentages, this is a 72 percent hydration dough.
It uses 80 percent bread flour, 20 percent high-gluten flour, 2.5 percent salt, 2.0 percent oil, 1.5 percent diastatic malt, and 0.4 percent instant dry yeast. This precise ratio compensates for the thermal limits of a home oven.