Per our tradition, we welcomed in the new year with pizza, once again made the ‘killer grill’ way. We no longer make pizza in the oven because it just doesn’t get hot enough and the pies are inferior in every way.
Dough coming out of the fridge after a 24 hour retard
Lucy even perked up when got to have some crust. She loved it too. The 100% hydration pre-ferment for this one was 9% flour made up of equal parts sprouted Khorasan and sprouted spelt. The liquid was all apple yeast water. At the last minute, Lucy added in a pinch of IDY and 8 g of NMNF rye SD starter to make to make it a triple threat.
We put it on the heating pad until it doubled, then we stirred it down and put it in the fridge for an 18 hour retard. The next afternoon we autolysed the dough flour, half LaFama AP and half BRM Artisan Bread Flour for an hour, adding enough water to get it to 71% hydration with the 2% PH sea salt sprinkled on top.
We started off by doing 150 slap and folds and then let it sit for an hour before doing 50 more and then 25 more an hour later. The dough was placed on an oiled plastic mat, on the heating pad and covered with a SS bowl and a towel between slapping sessions and then we let it sit for 2 hours after the 3rd one.
We punched it down and put it into an oiled SS bowl, covered it with plastic wrap and placed it into the fridge for a 24 hour retard. It had nearly doubled on the heating pad and then doubled again in the fridge. Three and half hours before we needed to make pies with it, we took it out of the fridge, divided it into 3 parts of 250 g each and placed them back into the SS bowl where the pieces doubled in volume again.
This dough was perfect for making pizza, easy to roll out with not much elasticity but strong enough not to tear and make holes either. Earlier in the day we made a batch of Lucy’s Pizza Sauce with fire roasted tomatoes this time, smoked a pound of two kinds of Italian sausage – hot and mild, 12 large Crimini mushrooms cut into quarters and a huge red onion sliced into half inch slices.
Chris Bianco’s Wise Guy Pizza is the inspiration but we put pizza sauce on ours because we like it better than a white pie like Chris’s. We also put fresh basil on our pies after they come off the grill. Since it was so cold and windy outside, the grill only got to 550 F instead of 650 F like usual but the stone was still hotter than 550 F with all 4 burners running at full whack.
The Cheeses were fresh Mozzarella, Full Fat aged Mozzarella and then grated Pecorino on top. I had some nice 3", thin sliced spicy smoked pepperoni too but forgot all about it...... so it never made it on a pie. It is usually my daughter's favorite but she never mentioned missing it.
Normally it takes 8 minutes to make a pizza but this time it took 12 minutes. My daughter said she was disappointed that the dough didn’t have the usual fresh rosemary, sun dried tomatoes and fresh garlic in it and then said that she liked the smoked mushrooms the best and wished there we more of them on the pies. Then she said it was the best pizza she ever had?
She liked picking up the whole pie with her hands and no plate to show her husband how crisp it was and that even the entire pie had so sag. Extra, thin, crisp and tasty is what makes pizza the most popular food ever invented after about a dozen others! Make sue to put the cut slices on a wire cooling rack so that they don’t get soggy and foldable.
Lucy reminds us to have a salad with those pies!
What a great way to bring in 2019 when served with Artful Farmer and Paraduxx red blend wines! The 4 of us polished off the 3 pies and I hate to admit I had 6 pieces. My daughter’s husband now knows all of Lucy’s tricks to making a great pizza. Now he wants some of my SD and YW starters. Happy New Year to all!
