It's been too long! Pizza!

Epicurean Exploits - Food and Recipes
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In honor of Bastille Day.

The sauce is a cassoulet ragu thickened with puréed white beans. Topped with homemade Toulouse sausage, fol epi cheese, toasted Tartine bread crumbs, and drizzled with walnut oil after baking.

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Got the stone and the peel at the CIA here. I think I am ready - from scratch it is. I can make the dough later today or in the morning, pour wine for a couple of fellow Berserkers who are coming this way [cheers.gif] early afternoon, and by evening have homemade pizza and the leftover Cabs. Sounds like a plan. Not sure if either of the 2 markets here sell dough - Trader Joe’s is 40 minutes away.

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Bill, Viva la pizza!

:slight_smile:

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Black olive, fresh herbs, capicola, and San Marzano’s

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Fresh sweet corn & homemade salsa verde pizza cooked on the grill

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Interesting Idea Mel…

Did it make the crust at all soggy ?

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Mel,

Please don’t take this the wrong way, as I am sure it was utterly delicious. However with the texture of the corn it sort of looks like a pile of vomit, you know, the rubber kid joke kind. Sorry…

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Hah Eric… (NO PIZZA FOR YOU! :wink:…)

Paul, not too soggy partly due to hanging the salsa in cheese cloth for about 10 min to remove moisture. Secondly, I used sliced mozzarella as a barrier between the crust and the wet toppings. this was more of an experiment using the turned over pot as a heat collecting dome so the top of the pizza would cook at a closer rate to the bottom. FWIW, I don’t think it worked too well as the bottom of the pizza was pretty BLACK
a tasty crust with great texture but burned a bit beyond my comfort level. Or, I just left it on too long (5 min 30 seconds) The first pie for my son turned out just fine with that time so I figured I’d be OK but no… not OK burned… I guess the extra 15 min of heat between pizza was a factor…

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[basic-smile.gif] [thankyou.gif] I was refraining from saying it, but many of the photos posted on this thread could turn me off to pizza were it not so ingrained in my ideal/holy grail trail of cooking.

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Can’t have that now can we, Stuart? [cheers.gif]

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That one is almost as pretty as your July 15th pie: http://www.wineberserkers.com/viewtopic.php?p=653211#p653211

And to be clear, I am sure that Mel’s corn pie was delicious, and I would happily snarf it down without even closing my eyes. It’s pizza after all! It just had the “fake puke” look with the lumps…

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Burrata Pie:

So… a little experiment I did.

Was to cook this pie on my SS Plate ( I designed )

Dough was an AP flour dough; roughly 2C flour, 1/2C water, 1/2 t yeast, pinch of salt, squeeze of honey!! This dough I added a T of EVOO. This made a really nice feeling dough, I let the dough come together by hand and then put it in my dough hook mixer for 7 min, Lovely feeling dough. I placed in a container and off to soccer game. 2 hrs later I had a lovely rise. I cut a portion and floured and this one I rolled ( sorry ).

Mean while I had my grill heating, I IR gunned my SS plate @ 525, put the pie on and cooked it for about 8 min.

Well, the bottom of the pizza looked well but the dough turned a bit soggy or was under cooked… I am thinking the SS plate doesn’t ( did allow the moisture to release from the pie )…plus I didn’t Dock my dough and got bubbles.

But I like the combination… Of marinara and burrata, and fresh basil. The cream add a bit of sourness/ to the pie with a good balance of the sweetness of from the basil and sauce. Oh probably not enough salt .

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Paul, the tops are the issue. What I have been doing is finishing off in my broiler. Strange, I have a bud with a 5 burner (left to right) Weber that does tops well with the WS stone, and yet my Weber (3 burner front to back) the top needs help. I have been tenting with aluminum and it seems to work as long as you don’t check too often. I am not a fan of the docking of dough. Keep up the experimentation!

This weekend I have a blind tasting competition with a friend. We will be six people and a child. The first pies from both him and I are a regular cheese pie. This is the pie we are tasting blind. We may use blindfolds. Then we have our esoteric pies part of the program. Mine is a provolone, orecchio pasta with my broccoli rabe/guanciale combo interspersed with cherry tomato quarters and parmigiano regiano. I am bringing 4 bottles of wine. The kid drinks a lot… [cheers.gif]

Should be fun.

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It’s been a while since I posted a pizza. I’ve been having problems getting the BGE too hot! I’m talking burn the bottom of the pizza within 4 minutes while the top is still uncooked. Worse, this happened while I had company over. I think the problem was, I put in a lot of effort with company coming to build a really hot fire. The thermometer read only 650º but it’s either off, or the reading at the top of the dome is irrelevant.

So, I decided to go back to putting little thought into the fire, and cooking the pizza with the dome reading about 550º. The pizza cooked well in about 11 minutes.

This is the (late) start to our garden celebration! Ingredients were: Heirloom tomatoes, banana peppers, & oregano from our garden, basil pesto (basil from our garden). Add in some sea salt, red pepper flakes, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and Mozzarella…
Here’s my dough recipe, which I finally typed up:

775g AP Flour
465g Water (warm)
4t Sugar
2t Salt
¼ oz Active Dry Yeast
2T Olive Oil

Mix sugar, warm water and yeast in a stand mixer. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients.

Once yeast has bloomed (about 10 minutes), start the mixer on low, and incorporate dry ingredients and olive oil. Mix until a dough ball forms, about 2 minutes.

Knead for 10 minutes. Separate into 2 or 3 dough balls, then freeze or let rest in an oiled bowl in the fridge for ½ to 16 hours. Remove from the fridge an hour before using, or if frozen, let sit for 8 hours at room temperature.

Makes 3 14” thin crusts or 2 14” thick crusts.

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FWIW, almost all of my favorite pizza places cook at 550…as do I. Depending on the style goal: I want think, crispy with a slight charred look…this temp allows even crisping, etc. Though I like them, I like the 800 degree oven pies less usually…as the crisping/cooking can be more on the outside than inside the shell.

FWIW.

Looks good!

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I think I agree with you. I have not quite ‘gotten’ the advantage of speed cooking, and seeking the 90 second pie…

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Last night… made a pie with meatballs/ shoulder bacon . This time I cooked it on a pizza stone.

The process of dressing the pie was-- brushed a light amount of olive oil on the dough, then I place grated Romano, then the dice meatballs and shoulder bacon, small bit of Italian Seasoning, and a we bit of red sauce then fresh mozzarella and more Romano.

I heated the stone 45 min, and cooked on my 5 burner Weber for 8 min… much better!! Mike I didn’t use the broiler… nice crisp crust ( slightly charred ) and getting some( again top issues ) browning of the Moz.

Couple things:

  1. I not sure I’m a real fan of AP flour in my dough, after using " 00" Caputo flour… the dough crust just seems to dense.

    \
  2. Has anyone ever added Vodka to your Pizza Dough Mix? Like maybe 50/50!! That will be my next experiment, again using test AP flour… for me. The idea being to evaporate the moisture from the dough ?
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Paul, sounds good!
Have you tried the KA Bread flour yet? After much experimenting this one gives me the texture I seek. Glad the Weber worked out. The extra room must be responsible for the easier browning.

Be careful with Vodka around flames! :slight_smile:
I think your dough will go brittle.

Too bad we live so far apart, we would have some fun!

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Thanks for the Vodka tip :slight_smile:… Mike

The flour I had worked with was some generic stuff, so you could be correct. Otherwise I used Bob’s Red Mill . It’s fun to play this time of the yr with all the nice garden stuff and nice weather ( today only a high of 75 --better than the 100’s we have had ). True… A gather together would be nice!!

Best Wish for you and the fam…

Paul

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My “holy grail” pizza, which is probably very different from the ideal of other members, was burned into my brain at the age of 14 when I had my first Neapolitan-style pizza from a brick oven. Don’t get me wrong - I have greatly enjoyed many pies from pizzerias in NYC/NJ, but they are entirely different animals. The magic here is intense heat (900F+), high hydration, and long fermentation using starter cultures.

Here is my latest effort which is probably the best I have ever made. The crust has the thinnest layer of crisp which immediately melts in the mouth, yielding to the soft, airy crumb that delivers a slight, buttery, complex tang from the natural starter. It plays against the sauce, slightly cooked, which is made with tomatoes from my garden. Basil from my garden. Fresh mozzarella. Splash of Frantoia Barbera after baking. Nothing else.

These pies are exceedingly hard to get perfect and most of mine fall short. At these temperatures there may only be a few seconds between undercooked and overcooked. By the time my pies have as much char as those I see in photos of the famous Neapolitan joints, they are usually overcooked. Visual cues from the outside of the pie are not particularly useful. This pie may not appeal to others, but I dream about being able to make and eat more like this: