What are you Baking the Week of October 1, 2023?

[aaronatthedoublef]

Great pizza Len. How much dough do you use for one.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Hi Len,

How thin is your pizza? What is your process?

[Mike Nolan]

I wanna know how he gets them so round. 🙂

[Italiancook]

I notice Len's pepperoni is on top of the cheese and wonder why he makes it this way. I put the cheese on top of the ingredients. The reason: When I was a teen, I spent many Friday nights sleeping over at a friend's house. Her parents would go out and spring for us to order pizza and Coca-Cola's. Those pizzas always had a full covering of cheese on top of the ingredients. I never fully cover the ingredients on my pizzas, to save calories. My pizzas look nice with wisps of ingredients peeking through, but Len, your pizza looks scrumptious. And I'm wondering what the greenery is on top.

[BakerAunt]

When I went to eat lunch on Friday, I realized that there was only one piece of bread left, so I had a large bowl of popcorn. (Hey, it's wholegrain!). This afternoon, I baked nine sandwich rolls using my adaptation of King Arthur's Honey Oatmeal Rolls. I substitute in 2 cups whole wheat flour, use ½ cup buttermilk, and add 2 Tbs. special dry milk and 2 Tbs. flax meal. I replace the 4 Tbs. butter with 3 Tbs. avocado oil. I baked them in a 9-inch square pan.

Italian Cook--I started to put my cheese on top so that the ingredients would not slide off as I was eating the piece. These days, with my pan pizza, I cut the mozzarella in small chunks and sprinkle it on after the sauce and Canadian Bacon but before the mushrooms, red bell pepper, green onion, and olives. The pizza then gets grated Parmesan on top.

We should have a thread devoted to "How Do You Assemble Your Pizza."

[RiversideLen]

Thanks everybody. Making pizza is one of my favorite things. Sometimes I worry that I'm posting too many pizza pics.

How much dough do I use? That can vary a little depending on if I want leftovers for lunch. But generally, 200 to 250 grams. I've gone as high as 300 grams. The dough in my last pic was 200 grams. I usually top it with 4 ounces of pre grated cheese. Yeah, you should grate your own but pre grated works and it's so much easier.

My pizza is usually pretty thin. Sometimes (more often) I roll out the dough in-between 2 sheets of lightly oiled parchment paper using a rolling pin with height rings on it. That works out pretty well but it doesn't get a lip on the edge. I'll bake it on a preheated stone (475f) on the parchment for 3 minutes and then slide the peal under it a little and pull out the parchment (gloved hand). Continue to bake for another 6 or 7 minutes. The last pizza I made, the picture last posted, I formed by hand, working the dough with my hands to make it round and making sure it has a nice lip on it. That was baked at 450f. I always treat the dough like I'm making a roll/bun (a boule) before rolling it out. That way I get a reasonable chance of getting it round. They don't always turn out round, but that's ok too, but less likely to take a pic of it!

My doughs are pretty easy to work with. They usually consist of equal parts of rye, semolina, white whole wheat and AP or bread flour, or equal parts of semolina, WWW and AP. Usually AP though, since it's usually King Arthur it has a fairly high protein content. Hydrate it at 65% plus more as I knead it. Used to use all water but more recently I'm using fat free milk, the milk makes the bottom brown more nicely. Using that mix of flour preludes getting window pane dough so it will pull apart fairly easy if it's made too thin. But I've learned how to handle it.

Pepperoni. I'm a firm believer in putting the pepperoni directly on the sauce, so dough - sauce - pepperoni. The reason being that the spices in the pepperoni interact with the tomato sauce, thus making the sauce more yummy. But there is also an argument for putting the pepperoni on last, so your tastebuds get a direct hit from it. On my last pizza, I put it on last to just make it look good. Now, you could do it both ways on the same pie, but I don't want to overdo it as it is high in sodium and fat.

ItalianCook, that little bit of greenery is a sprinkle of oregano.

BakeAunt, I agree, a pizza thread would be great.

[Mike Nolan]

My wife prefers pepperoni on the top as well. It tends to burn off a little of the fat and makes it a bit crisper. And if you've got a half-and-half pizza, having the pepperoni on top makes it easier to figure out where the ingredient boundaries are.

[Mike Nolan]

Maybe we need a separate pizza forum? There are sites that do nothing but pizza.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm going to do a test loaf of Hamelman's semolina bread with the flying sponge divided into two parts, one part will have commercial yeast and the other part will have some of my wheat starter.

I'm also planning to make a regular batch of semolina bread tomorrow, so I'll have something to compare against.

[Mike Nolan]

I made the sourdough cheese cracker dough the other day and it is resting in the fridge. I'll bake some on Monday.

[Mike Nolan]

This is likely to be a busy weekend in the kitchen. I've got a roast planned, two types of semolina bread, and maybe some apple cider challah.

And we're out of peanut butter cookies.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I haven't made pepperoni in a long time. I make sausage pizza the Chicago way - uncooked on top of the cheese. It does make the pizza greasier.

For dough handling it helps if the dough starts out round. This sounds obvious but it wasn't to me. Lately I've changed from dough balls to disks. They are better at keeping their shape in the freezer and my first step was to flatten the balls into disks anyway.

My dough is easier to work with if it is chilled so I defrost it and leave it in the refrigerator.

These days as I am trying to approximate a Chicago thin-crust I've begun to roll out my dough 12-24 hours in advance, place on semolina on parchment, dock it, and put it in the refrigerator.

This works well for creating a thin, mostly crisp crust. It does not on the veggie pizza because there is just too much water in the vegetables. Kate does not like them pre-cooked before they go on the pizza. I may experiment with putting them on part way through.

I put the pizza on directly onto the stone in the middle of the oven then shift it onto a cooling rack on the top of the oven to finish. So I am thinking that may be the time to add the veggies.

Each pizza starts with about 180g of dough and I roll it out to about 11 inches with my rolling ruler.

[Mike Nolan]

Today's semolina breads, the one on the left is a combination of sourdough starter and commercial yeast.

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[Mike Nolan]

The sourdough one is very mild, I can tell which is which, my wife couldn't. It'll be interesting to see how it tastes over the next day or two and how well it keeps. I'll freeze one full loaf and two half-loaves so I should have plenty of bread for the next week.

But I think I might make challah in the next few days anyway.

[RiversideLen]

Those loaves look great.

[Author]

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