Yesterday I tried the ciabatta pizza that trailrunner posted about a week ago. I was very impressed with the results.

The pizza formula has a lot of yeast in it and went through bulk fermentation like a rocket (I had to put it in the fridge to slow it down.) When it had tripled (after about 3 hours in fridge--probably faster but I just let it sit there until I was ready), I heavily floured my counter, literally poured the glutenous dough onto the flour, and then sprinkled more flour on the top. I patted the blob into a circle about 1/2 an inch thick. Then the trick was how to get the blob onto the pan-sprayed parchment. I did the best I could but had to reshape it a bit after it landed. Didn't seem to hurt it any. I topped it with tomatoes and basil (topping basil was an obvious mistake at this point because it dried out in the oven--next time I'll put it on as a garnish; sometimes in the heat of the moment I do stupid things).

I baked it on a preheated stone on the bottom rack for 8 minutes. (Trailrunner had warned me that I needed to bake the moisture out of the tomatoes and that was good advice.) After taking it out of the oven with my peel, I removed the parchment paper, topped it with some of TJ's marinated rope-type mozzarella, and slid it back in the oven for another 8 minutes. It rose up real nice in the oven and produced a delicate, soft, thickish pizza crust. The pizza as a whole didn't have as much flavor as I was hoping for but my tomatoes weren't home grown (I used an heirloom supermarket variety), so I'm not surprised as the topping was so plain. Next time I think I'll reduce the yeast to 3 g (I used 7 g by mistake) so it will take longer to go through bulk fermentation and perhaps develop a little more flavor. But all and all I was pretty happy with the results. Thanks trailrunner for posting this great pizza!

Topped with tomatoes and ready to go into the oven.

After 8 minutes

After 15 minutes (TJ's cheese had some oil in it so that's why it browned; regular mozzarella probably wouldn't brown.)

Crumb (or is it slice?)

250 g AP flour

227 g water (I might reduce to 210 g next time)

3 g yeast (I misread the recipe and used 7 g by accident)

7 g salt

tomatoes, thinly sliced or halved cherries, or a combination of both

mozzarella cheese, grated or thinly sliced

fresh basil leaves, for garnish

olive oil

kosher salt

Put the flour, water, salt, and yeast in mixer bowl and mix with paddle to incorporate. Let dough rest for 5 minutes to hydrate. Knead with dough hook on speed 2 for 10 minutes. (My dough never formed a ball like trailrunner's so next time I'm going to use a little less water).

Put dough into a container and let triple.

Place dough onto a heavily floured countertop, sprinkle top of dough with flour, and pat into a round about 1/2 inch thick. Transfer dough to pan-sprayed parchment paper, top with thinly sliced tomatoes, and bake on a stone in a preheated 500º oven for 8 minutes to drive off the moisture from the tomatoes and set the dough. Remove pizza and parchment from oven, discard parchment and top with mozzarella cheese. Return pizza to oven and bake until done, about another 7 to 8 minutes.

Garnish with fresh basil leaves, and a light sprinkling of kosher salt and olive oil.

Makes one pizza (serves two people).

The original post is from LilDice.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/3621/quick-rustic-ciabatta-pizza-recipe-full-howto-pics

http://hollosyt.googlepages.com/quickrusticciabattapizza

I also found another link to this pizza with pictures and discussion. NB: the reduced amount of IDY.

http://www.prurgent.com/2009-04-15/pressrelease36039.htm

--Pamela

  First pizza I have made for a long time, we don't like the pepperoni in slices so I put it through the Cuisinart , also made the crust in Cuisinart.

I finely chopped a fresh zucchini and basil leaves from the, garden home made sauce, chopped pepper,  asiago cheese. 450 convect.. qahtan   

     I considered myself a fair baker having started over 30 years ago with my good friends mothers apple pie recipe. I have worked in the food and beverage industry for about that same period of time in various positions, front and back of house. While very open minded, I have not sought to expand my baking acumen beyond what I already knew, which is mostly pies, cookies, cakes, and crap loads of pizza. I am sooooo going to break out into breads it is not even funny!

     Since finding this website and trolling alot of the posts I have come across some fantastic, innovative techniques, as well as some great references to cookbooks on baking. The first techniques I have used are the the autolyse as well as the the French fold as shown in Richard Bertinets great video posted by ehanner, sorry, don't know how to link pages yet. Wow! What a diffefence this has made to my pizza dough! It was supple and much more stretchy than I am used to. Got a great windowpane after just a few minutes of kneading.

     I cannot wait to make my pies tomorrow! FYI, i am using the recipes from Reinharts American Pie book. The only difference is that I incorperated an autolyse with 80% of the flour and all the water for the first mixing. Waited 30 minutes and added the remaining flour and other ingredients and followed with the Fench fold for about 7 minutes. All mixing was done by hand as I have a pretty good feel for dough, plus my KitchenAid mixer is the suxor for bread, especially a 10 cup batch. Before I had always used an active yeast with the sponge method. This time I used SAF instant yeast directly to the dough. I think this will be a transformational change in my baking as well.

     This is my first post on a website devoted to baking. Normally I just troll and have a grand old time learning what I can. This time, however, I wished to share some of my success and with others that have the same passion as I do with food in general and baking specifically. I wish to develop a relationship with all of you passionate bakers and learn and share as much as I can.

     Hopefully I will have some good pictures of my pies in the next few days, going on a camping trip this weekend. If anyone has any questions, please ask, I will check my post and respond to all inquiries. While I am new to this site and have alot of things to learn, I have been and avid dessert baker for along time. Also, I have made hundreds of pizzas in many variations. So please avail yourself if you have any questions. I'd love to help anyone make better pie, pizza pie that is!

     Thanks for your time!

Kerry Young

Anchorage, Alaska

Hello,

I made some pizza dough (starter, oil, flour, salt) and let it sit out overnight with the full intention of using it the next evening.  However, my family and I went out to celebrate that next evening, and the pizza was never made.  Due to an overfilled schedule, the dough was left out in rather warm temperatures.  By the time I got to it, the dough had a very alcohol-y smell to it, and there was NO gluten structure to it (basically, it was a batter).

Is there any chance of saving this dough?  I was thinking of adding some bread flour to it and trying to bake it, basically treating it like a firm starter.  Should I bother using my flour on this dough, or should I cut my losses and move on to the next loaf?

I appreciate your input.

-nate

Results of my latest pizza making adventures.

Recipe is on my wordpress blog for those who are interested.

Cheers,

FP

http://www.thecookingphotographer.com/2009/05/purple-pizza-dough-sneaks-in-vegetable.html

I've made the sourdough pizza cust at Mike Avery's site twice and it came out really nicely, however it came out a bit crispy, kinda like a cracker.  Is there anything I can do to make my crust thicker and fluffier?  Would it work to just use twice the dough? (his recipe makes two crusts-- I could just make one with it of a similar size)

Any other suggestions?

Last night, I refreshed a liquid levain with the intension of baking a batch of Pat's (proth5) baguettes today. I made a slightly higher hydration dough with Giusto's Baker's Choice flour and 10% KAF White Whole Wheat.

This morning, I mixed the dough, did the autolyse, stretched and folded, and put the dough in a bowl to bulk ferment. After the first folding, my wife and I dashed out to run a couple errands. As we drove, we discussed dinner and decided we felt like pizza.

Sooo ... Pat's baguettes turned into the best pizza crust I've yet made. It was so good! It stretched beautifully thin without tearing and baked up crisp with a chewy crumb. The bottom was cracker-thin and crisp. The slight sourdough tang in the very flavorful crust was lovely.

I finally mastered "more is not better" with the toppings: a very thin film of the sauce in Floyd's "Pizza Primer" with a little fresh mozzarella and quite a lot of mushrooms. A sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan. The photos were taken before I added some leaves from our basel plant.

I also made one pie without mushrooms. It was also yummy.

Pat's formula can be found here:

http://tfl.thefreshloaf.com/node/10852/baguette-crumb-65-hydration-dough

David

Copied from my wordpress blog:

Makes: three 13″x9″ pizzas

Time: 2 days (longer if using refrigerated fermentation) although only about 2 minutes actual mixing time.

Biga Naturale

• 22g mature storage starter (100% hydration)
• 100g all purpose flour
• 50g water

Mix all ingredients evenly and leave to mature overnight (8 to 12 hours) at room temperature until it at least doubles (may triple) in volume.

Sauce

• 600g peeled whole tomatoes 
• 2 tsp sugar (to taste)
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp salt 

1. Separate out the peeled tomatoes from any liquid in the can.
2. Carefully open up each tomato and scoop or lightly rinse out the seeds.
3. Remove the tough part of the tomato (where the vine stem attached to the tomato).
4. Gently squeeze out any excess water and place in a bowl.
5. If the remaining liquid in the can is thick enough and ’sauce like’, pass it through a sieve (to remove seeds) and into the bowl of de-seeded tomatoes. 
6. Crush the tomatoes by hand (or kitchen utensil of choice) until no large lumps remain.
7. Stir in the salt, sugar and oregano.
8. Allow the sauce to sit at room temperature for a minimum of 2 hours.

Toppings

• 6 cloves of thinly sliced garlic
• 300g partially dried mozzarella (shredded)
• 300g fresh mozzarella (cubed/torn into small pieces)
• other toppings: pepperoni, onion, olives, sausage, mushrooms etc.
• olive oil
• fresh basil 
• grated parmigiano reggiano, grana padano or pecorino cheese (optional)

Final Dough

• 396g bread flour
• 284g all purpose flour
• 532g water
• 170g biga naturale 
• 16g salt

Desired dough temperature: 76F

1. Mix the flour, water, salt and starter until even and leave to rest for 30 minutes.
2. Knead the dough in the mixing bowl by taking the dough from the edge, stretching and folding it over the centre. Continue working around the edge of the dough (turning the bowl with your other hand) until you have stretched about 20 times.
3. Rest the dough for another 20 minutes.
4. Knead the dough as before, one more time.
5. Bulk ferment the dough until doubled in volume (7 to 8 hours at room temperature, ~75F). During bulk fermentation, fold the dough two times (once after an hour of bulk fermentation and again at the 3 hour mark).
6. If you wish to refrigerate the dough, you can do so after 2 hours of bulk fermentation at room temperature. Ideally the refrigeration temperature should be between 40 and 50F where it can stay for 24 hours or so. Give the dough one fold during refrigeration. When you’re ready to take the dough out of the refrigerator to bake, allow it to come to room temperature before dividing, stretching etc.
7. Preheat the oven with a baking stone on mid-shelf to 550F (or as high as it will go) for 1 1/2 hours.
8. Divide the dough into 3 equal portions (roughly 460g each).
9. Grease each pizza tray/pan generously with olive oil. (I used disposable aluminium pans)
10. Stretch each portion over the greased baking tray/pan. If the dough will resists stretching, rest for a few minutes before continuing. It’s easier to stretch the dough if you use wet or oiled hands to push the dough towards the edges.
11. Cover each pan with cling film and allow the dough to proof for a further 30 to 45 minutes.
12. Cover each pizza with a third of the shredded mozzarella.
13. Divide the sliced garlic between the pizzas.
14. Spoon the pizza sauce over the surface in ‘blobs’.
15. Add any other desired toppings.
16. Arrange the fresh mozzarella over the pizzas.
17. Drizzle olive oil over each pizza.
18. Bake the pizza on a baking stone for 12 to 15 minutes until the top is bubbling and the edges have turned crispy and brown.
19. Remove the pizza from the oven and top with fresh basil and grated cheese.
20. While preparing the next pizza for the oven, switch on the broiler to heat the pizza stone for a few minutes before switching back to ‘bake’.
21. Repeat steps 12 through 20 for the other 2 pizzas.