Pizza-Making ?

[Italiancook]

Eureka! I didn't make my artichoke pizza until tonight. I think the dough sat in fridge about 5 days, from frozen. I'm pleased to announce that stretching the dough didn't drive me to distraction. Now that I know the Now or Later crust (KAF) is for a 12" pizza at most, I didn't try to stretch it to 17". I ended up with a 9" x 7" size. I would have rather had a 9" round, but beginners can't be choosers. I put Manchego cheese on top of the artichokes. Next time I'll put it on the bottom to glue the artichokes to the crust. With cheese on top, some of the artichokes fell off during the eating. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread, leading me to become a better pizza-maker!

[Mike Nolan]

When I make lavash pizza I usually put the cheese on top, and yeah, occasionally some of the toppings fall off. My wife prefers to have pepperoni on top of the cheese, so that it gets crisp.

I made a lavash pizza for supper on Thursday, and since I had fresh tomato sauce that I hadn't transferred to the freezer yet (I did that earlier today), I used a pastry brush to very lightly brush the surface of the lavash with tomato sauce. That gave a hint of tomato taste to the crust and was all the sauce it needed.

The toppings were artichoke hearts (quartered), canned mushrooms, tomato slices, diced honey ham and the cheeses were shredded whole milk mozzarella and sliced havarti.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks for reminding me! I made pizza last night and I usually like to put the mushrooms on the sauce and under the cheese but I usually forget. I began doing this to tweak my son but ended up liking it better. I remembered last night thanks to this thread.

As for shapes, a chef friend who was eating my pizzas once said to me - "Don't worry about the shape. They're 'artisan' pizzas." Or now, in our town, they would be "craft" pizzas.

[apilinariosilvia]

I am sharing this Best and simple Pizza Recipe "Cheese Pizza" by ilFornino. Check out some best Wood Fired Pizza Ovens for Pizza Making.

Wood Fired Pizza Ovens

[Mike Nolan]

I don't see any working links in your post. Sometimes getting links to work is a bit tricky.

There used to be a vendor at the Sunday farmer's market near us who had a Forno Bravo wood fired pizza oven on a trailer. (Forno Bravo sponsors Peter Reinhart's Pizza Quest blog site.)

But when the market changed locations two seasons ago, he stopped coming.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks for the link to Pizza Quest. I'm looking at his easy sauce. Have you tried it (sans garlic of course). It seems as if it would be pretty acidic.

[Mike Nolan]

No, I haven't tried it, I have my own marinara recipe that makes a good pizza or lasagna sauce. But it makes a lot, since I start with a #10 can of diced tomatoes.

[aaronatthedoublef]

That is a LOT of sauce. I use about 32 ounces a week. PR says not to cook it but if I make it and we do not use it all for pizza then my wife and one son will use it for pasta.

[Mike Nolan]

I've gotten lazy with spaghetti. I take a can of Hunts Traditional or Mushroom sauce (the only two without garlic as a listed ingredient) and I add a can of petite diced tomatoes (no salt added preferred) and a can of mushroom ends and pieces.

If I'm feeling energetic (or hungry) I'll make meatballs and cook them in the sauce first, but it is also good if I just brown some ground beef and throw it in the sauce, and a little less greasy since I drain the ground beef after cooking it.

It is fairly traditional to put a little red wine in marinara, so red wine vinegar actually makes some sense. I don't see that the quantity being used is going to have a material impact on acidity. I like using marjoram in tomato sauces, I think it is an underused and underappreciated spice, and of course I leave out the garlic, but I add onion.

[Italiancook]

I second you, Mike, on marjoram being "an underused and underappreciated spice." It was that way in my kitchen until I began to put it on top of focaccia. Before that, I only used it in an Italian soup. Now, it's on the lower rack of my spice cabinet so I can reach it easily. But I haven't used it in tomato sauce. Will try it. Thanks for the suggestion.

[BakerAunt]

I use marjoram in my Swedish pea soup. I need to branch out.

[Mike Nolan]

I started using other spices as replacements for garlic a number of years ago, and I've been expanding their use as replacements for salt.

Some spices have been more successful than others. Savory turns out to be too pungent or bitter. In addition to marjoram, I use a lot of bay leaf, thyme and basil these days, but you have to add basil towards the end because it gets bitter if cooked too much.

I've been using a bit more ginger lately, too.

[chocomouse]

Mike, marjoram is one of my favorite spices, too. When I was purchasing herb plants for my garden quite a few years ago, I discovered that almost no nurseries carried it. And several nursery owners asked me how I used it. More recently, a few more nurseries have it, but a lot do not. Savory is also a favorite, and I most often use it with marjoram. And thyme is absolutely the best!

[Italiancook]

Recently, I saw Mary Ann Espisoto on Ciao Italia do a show with a man who had a pizza oven in his home. He made the pizza and Mary Ann helped. When the dough was risen, he scooped out the dough onto the floured board stressing to not deflate the dough. This surprised me, because I always degas the dough before stretching it out for pizza. What do the rest of you do -- deflate or not deflate the risen dough before shaping it for pizza crust?

[Mike Nolan]

There appear to be two camps on deflating dough, most authors are solidly in one camp or the other, although it may depend on the specific recipe. Peter Reinhart has some recipes where he stresses deflating the dough fully and others where he recommends handling the dough carefully to avoid deflating it.

I've always deflated the dough as much as I can during shaping. I've tried a few recipes that stress gentle handling to avoid deflating the dough, those recipes haven't been that successful for me.

The physics of dough bubbles is interesting. There are a number of bread articles out there that say bubbles are only formed by the sheer action of mixing and kneading, and that the yeast doesn't create additional bubbles during bulk or final proof, citing Boyle's Law. According to this theory, the gas generated by yeast increases the size of existing bubbles, but doesn't create any new ones. (Chemical leavening is a different matter, the chemical reaction of an acid with a base does create bubbles.)

I've never figured out how this reconciles with no-knead recipes, though. It does seem to explain why intensive mixing produces a fine grain texture, because you get lot of little bubbles rather than fewer but bigger ones.

Deflating dough doesn't eliminate bubbles, according to these same sources, it just makes them smaller again.

BTW, the 'throw the dough on the counter 600 times' method (see Simon, the sexy French baker does create sheer action--LOTS of it! And it produces dough unlike any I've made using any other methods, it is just a lot of work to do it.

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