something coming soon.
When I can figure out how to get a list of the other posts in this category here, it will be. For now, just some pictures. =)
flickr stream.
Pizza
Lately our local pizzeria has been experiencing some quality control issues and I reached the breaking point a couple weeks ago. I purchased the book American Pie by Peter Reinhart ( author of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice ) and have been studying his tips about making really good pizza at home. Of course, in my first homemade pizza outing, I chose to follow one of Giada’s recipes. My mistake.
I had purchased a pizza stone, and had it set on the bottom shelf of our oven. I also remembered from some cooking show, to cook pizza at the highest temperature you can get; for example Lombardi’s in New York cooks at almost 900 degrees F. So I made Giada’s dough recipe, and a few hours later made the pizza. It was soggy, the crust was crap, and it earned me nothing but grief around the house. I went back to American Pie.
At the start of the dough section, Peter describes the slow fermentation technique, also mentioned by Alton Brown, which is to let the dough rise overnight in the fridge. I made the New York style dough yesterday morning, and let the dough rise about 36 hours in the fridge. It was soft, very stretchy, and full of luscious air pockets.
In the cooking section, he talks about using the pizza stone. First, he says to let the oven heat for at least an hour, on the highest setting, to get the stone heated thoroughly. He also mentions periodically turning on the broiler, but I didn’t do that. Then Peter tells you how to use parchment paper to help with using the peel. Big, big help. You set the pizza up on parchment on the peel, then slide it onto the stone, then after 5 minutes lift the corner of the pizza up and pull the paper out. Works like a champ, and lets you cook the pizza on the stone.
So tonight I made a simple cheese pizza, mostly mozzarella with a sprinkling of parmigiano at the same time I pulled the paper out. The crust was delicious, airy, thin and crisp in the middle and thick and bread-like on the edge. It cooked perfectly, nothing was mushy or wet, and the whole thing tasted like pizza you would buy at a pizzeria instead of crappy homemade pizza that you dread. The difference was so dramatic, I was in shock for about half an hour.
Basically, if you love pizza, you owe it to yourself to spend the $60 to buy this book, a stone and a peel. I used Bob’s Red Mill unbleached white flour for the dough, some good olive oil, and I actually used brown sugar for the dough instead of white. By far the best pizza I’ve ever made, and I’ve still got to balls of dough left in the freezer. Ready for convenient thawing and baking on a one day schedule. =)
posted to In the Kitchen, at 09:32 PM. permalink
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