hello,

is anyone familiar with freezing formed and topped pizzas (not baked), what would be shelf life at 0 F, type of dough ... any advice is appreciated.

and yes i have blast chiller at -40 F.

thanks in addvance

Hi all, please let me know of good and healthy recipes for pizza, thanks

For the last several years I have been baking focaccio using Peter Reinhart's recipe (with some modifiations). The result has been uniformly excellent, until yesterday. Yesterday's focaccia was terrible; and I have no idea what went wrong.

Here's the scenario:
I make the focaccio in 3 stages: first a pre-ferment, then a shaping and an overnight rise in the refrigerator; finally, the topping and final rise, and the baking. I start off with 325g of flour; use some in the pre-ferment; add the remainder the next day; then allow it to rise for an hour. At that point I divide the dough in half, and store half in the freezer.

This is what I did with the latest attempt. I made the focaccio 2 weeks ago, used half (it was delicious) and stored half. Yesterday I took the second half from the freezer, allowed it to come to room temperature; stretched and oiled it, and put it into the refrigerator overnight. Yesterday I took it out, allowed it to come to room temperature, put toppings on it, allowed it to rise, and then baked it. It was awful!! There was no oven-spring; the dough never appeared to rise; and, when baked did not cook properly. One could still taste the flour, and there was no crumb.

My question is: What happened? Why was the first half excellent, and the second half terrible? How did all the yeast die (if that's what happened)?

Insights will be welcomed.
Tom

We do pizza about once a week at my house, I usually use a crust that is really tasty and comes out quite nice, slightly crisp and chewy.

However, a couple weeks ago my daughter said she wanted hers thinner, crisp and crunchy, Cracker like.

I have tried rolling/stretching the dough, Pre-baking, oiling. These didn't do it, so in my never ending quest to win father of the century I am turning to my friends and peers here in TFL for help.

HELP!

I need a recipe for the ultimate crispy, crunchy, cracker like pizza crust.

I was making dough earlier today and ran short on flour - (I was using all purpose)

So I substituted 1/3 of the flour with course semolina flour. I'll know tomorrow if this was a good move.....wondering if anyone else has done this?.....what do I expect. I would think it would just be a bit more rustic?

thoughts?

thanks
Andy

I had a big baking day yesterday, with a couple pugliese loaves from BBA using mostly durum flour (made a fine breakfast with butter and honey this morning), the largest ciabatta I've ever made, and Dan Leader's Genzano Potato Pizza from Local Breads to come with me to a potluck.

I also thought I should introduce myself, since I haven't really posted much before. I live in Pennsylvania via Kentucky. I bake for fun, therapy, health, and the downright delicious results. I've cooked my whole life and started baking bread regularly about two years ago. I also make beer, cider, yogurt, and have tinkered with cheese, so am interested in all things fermentable.

The potato pizza formula is the same as for Genzano Country Bread (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/4417/genzano-country-bread-local-breads), but after fermentation it is coaxed into an oiled sheet pan and topped with lots of very thin potatoes, onions (red for me), fresh rosemary, and a bit of coarse salt.  It was a lot of fun working the enormous mass of wet dough into the pan.  I actually made Genzano Country Bread a few days ago, and trying to shape this wet beast of a dough into something like a boule and getting it safely into a proofing basket had me laughing like a crazy man.   

I used all KA organic bread flour.  Daniel recommends high-gluten, but I've found that Sir Lancelot is a lot stronger than I like unless I need to offset a lot of rye or similar.  The formula uses a biga naturale that I just made from my firm starter, and is spiked with instant yeast for a vigorous rise.  In the future I'd like to omit the instant yeast and give it a whirl with wild yeast alone.  The dough is pretty sloppy, and needed high speed mixing for about 12 minutes to come together suitably.  After about a 3 hour ferment, it was shaped, topped, and baked immediately at 500 for a shade over 30 minutes.  Sorry I don't have pictures of the whole thing, I cut it in half before removing it from the pan, but hopefully you can get the idea.  I called this one successful, the crust was crisp and delicious and the crumb was ideal.  I've never liked potato pizzas I've ordered out because the potatoes tend to come WAY undercooked, but these were much nicer because of the bake time, and some of those on the top were browned and crisp.  My only addition to this in the future would be garlic, and lots of it.

Logan

Hi,

I am equipped with a turbo convection oven just like that one in the photo.

It's working great while using it for baking my pastries( I'm mainly doing pastry cooking) and as I intend to add some more baked products such as pizza,foccacia and similar flat breads ,was wondering if it works well when using a turbo baking system (baking up to 4 trays at the same time)?

Anyone with previous experience?

I just got a new range that has a convection oven with hidden coils.  Does any one no if it is safe to keep my pizza stone directly on the floor of the oven?  I would think that putting directly on the bottom would make for a very nice crispy bottom crust.  Thank you.

I've been searching the archives and can't find an answer to this.

Has anyone actually had success making very wet doughs (like about 85-95% hydration) for pizza or ciabatta using a light duty hand held mixer?

We are traveling to visit our son and they want me to make them some pizza. The problem is that they don't do much baking and they have only a little hand held mixer. After bragging about my pizza, I wouldn't like to make one that didn't meet standards just because of the lack of proper machine kneading. I can't take my big Kitchen Aid on the plane.

If anyone has had success with a little mixer, I'd love to hear about it ... any problems encountered, how you overcame them, etc. or how you compensated for the lack of power in the mixer. I'll be making a standard small batch, about 500 g. flour. I'd love to do this if it is possible.

Catherine

I wanted to make naan. I pored over the recipes in my cookbooks, the recipes given here at Fresh Loaf,  and decided that I did NOT want to make any straight-through naan. I have been making bread from a pre-ferment for so long that I have come to dislike the tasty of straight-through bread. It's too yeasty. Also, it costs more; yeast, even at my food co-op in bulk, can be expensive. I'm dirt-poor right now, and economizing. That's why the recipe from my Afghan cookbook appealed. It used a pre-ferment and didn't call for lots of expensive ingredients. 

The real Afghan naan is sourdough. They make it every day (send it out to the baker to bake in his tandoor) and just save a pinch of dough from today's bread to put in the pre-ferment for tomorrow's bread. I had let my sourdough culture die (bad mom!) but I could use a little yeast.

So I just made bread dough as if I were making the Fresh Loaf ciabatta (but without the dried milk, which I don't have). Pre-ferment of flour (mix of white and ww), yeast, and water, then added oil, salt, and a little more yeast the next day. Kneaded in KitchenAid. Let it rise once and then baked it in a cast-iron skillet on top of the stove. The pliable dough rolled out beautifully. (4-1/2 cups flour total made 12 naan just the right size for a skillet.)

I've never had tandoor naan, so I don't know what I'm missing ... but THIS naan was dang good. I froze most of it and I've been eating one or two a day. With a sprinkling of salt. Plus some homemade chai. Yum.