What are You Cooking the Week of June 17, 2018?

[BakerAunt]

It's too hot and muggy to cook today here. (Thank heavens for leftovers!) However, for those of you in cooler climes who are cooking today, here is this week's thread.

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[chocomouse]

Yesterday I cooked a lot for our celebration party. I made a vegetable tray and salads: seafood, broccoli, and ham 'n cheese macaroni, and baked beans. They were perfect for our first really warm, humid day of the summer season.

[RiversideLen]

Yesterday I made fried rice with leftover round roast, carrots and asparagus.

[Mike Nolan]

We had Steak Diane last night.

BTW, sorry for the downtime today, we had a power failure for around an hour and I'm still finding things that need to be restarted.

[BakerAunt]

For Monday dinner, I made Roasted Potatoes with Panko and Parmesan Crusted Chicken Breasts, with a side of steamed green beans from last week’s farmers’ market.

[Joan Simpson]

Yesterday I picked up BBQ sandwiches & fries from a local restaurant.Today I made hamburger steaks with caramelized onions and baked potato.

[navlys]

We had PF.Changs lettuce wraps for lunch. They were so yummy that I went looking for a copycat recipe. I found one on the "Damn Delicious" blog and it received rave reviews. I'll let you know in a future post if interested.

[RiversideLen]

Yesterday I made a batch of King Arthur's All-Star Pizza dough https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/new-all-star-pizza-recipe. What attracted me to this recipe was it's large amount of semolina. I did make a little alteration to it, instead of the AP I divided that between White Whole Wheat and KA's Italian flour. Of course I omitted the pizza dough flavor enhancer and dough improver. The dough came out really soft and supple, I'm looking forward to baking it for tonight's dinner. However, I have a question about the procedure, I did the live chat with them yesterday about it but it was obvious the person I was chatting to was not familiar with the recipe and was just guessing. So I thought I would put it to the experienced hands here.

Here it is, it says to prebake the crust on parchment and a pizza stone for 4 minutes, then remove and add toppings, return to the oven for about 8 minutes "but not to the stone". Are they saying it should be put on a pan (it doesn't say that), be put directly on the oven rack (again, it doesn't say)? And why not return it to the stone? Any ideas, thoughts or comments?

[BakerAunt]

Riverside Len--I'm surprised that none of the recipe reviewers at KAF commented on that, but then, again, I think that KAF caters to the less experienced bakers these days, those who will just follow the recipe and not ask why. Your experience with the Help people on chat was similar to what I've encountered when I've used that feature--the person is generally not a very experienced baker and is probably trying to handle too many Chats at a time.

Here is my guess, and it's only a guess: If the pizza is not to go back onto the stone, I'm wondering if the direction to put it on the lowest rack means putting it UNDER the pizza stone in order to use the heat from the stone to get the topping browned. Surely they don't expect a baker to remove a hot stone before replacing the pizza in the oven?

[RiversideLen]

Baker Aunt, my experience with baking a thin crust pizza at 500 degrees is that 8 minutes is the usual amount of time to get the cheese lightly browned so I don't think that is necessarily the intent. What I'm thinking is, I'm going to put the pizza back on the stone and see what the results are. Oh, and btw, you all can just call me Len.

[Joan Simpson]

Today we had fried chicken,left over squash and scalloped potatoes and I made fresh green beans with red potatoes.

[RiversideLen]

I forgot to mention one other alteration I made to the pizza dough, the recipe calls for 1 to 2 teaspoons of yeast, I cut it to 1/2 teaspoon as I believe most pizza recipes call for far too much yeast. I was proved right, in fact if I make this again I'll cut the yeast to 1/4 teaspoon. If you are making the dough a day ahead of time, or even early the same day, you can easily use the reduced amount of yeast. However, if you are planning to get it in the oven in the next hour or two, you'd have to use more. So here's what happened. Per instructions I put the rolled out crust in the 500 degree oven on the stone. I looked at it about a minute and a half in and I am glad I did, it was puffing up like a pita bread. I removed it and beat the crust down, then topped it and put it back in the oven on the stone for 8 and 1/2 minutes (it was done enough at 8 minutes for most people but I like the cheese a little darker). The crust was well done so the call to prebake it for 4 minutes (one reviewer even said she does it for 6 minutes) befuddles me. As the recipe makes dough for 2 pizzas, I'll make the second one tomorrow. Next time I will not prebake the crust. The crust had s crispness to it. Overall I enjoyed it but I'm not sure I'll make this one again.

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[Joan Simpson]

Pizza looks good Len!

[RiversideLen]

Thank you Joan!

[BakerAunt]

Thanks, Len, for the detailed recipe review. I think that one of the comments on the recipe also mentioned it puffing up in the oven.

The first pizza crust I ever made, and that I made for years, was from Fleischmann's Yeast. It called for an initial parbake of each of the two crusts after the dough rose. I used this recipe a lot, back in my single days, because I could parbake each pizza crust, then wrap and freeze one for use later. In those days I did not have a pizza stone, nor had I used parchment, so I did the first bake in a greased pizza pan to keep it from sticking. As I recall, sometimes I had that puffing up in the oven as well and had to deflate it as it parbaked. A big difference is that the parbake was at a lower temperature--maybe 350F--then the topped pizza baked at a higher one. I eventually incorporated some whole grain into the recipe. I've been thinking of trying it again, especially since my husband seems to care less and less for pizza. (Sigh.) I often used it for a vegetarian pizza topped with a mixture of red, yellow, orange bell pepper, and chopped red onion mixed with oil and spices. Feta cheese was sprinkled on top.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by BakerAunt. Reason: corrected spellin error

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