It's been a while since I made my own pizza so I figured it was time to make a go of it again.  I have been reading many posts about using 00 style flour and how it really only works best when you can get your heat source over 700 degrees.  I don't have the ability to do that just yet, so I decided to combine 50% Italian Style Flour from KAF and 50% KAF Bread Flour and see what happens.

I adapted a recipe from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Baking Everyday and after a couple of days with the dough balls resting comfortably in my refrigerator I decided to bake a couple of pizzas for lunch this past weekend.

I recently read another blog by  Steve B. at http://www.breadcetera.com where he suggested to put your pizza stone on the highest shelf of your oven and set your oven to broil.  The purpose of this is to get as much heat as possible to be retained by the stone.  I have to say it worked perfectly so give it a try!

I decided to add some pepperoni and some parmesan cheese to add some extra flavor and I do have to say I was very happy with the end results.  My wife did complain that one of the pies was a little soggy which was due to my putting too much sauce on the pie, but I ate it all anyway!

Heres the recipe:

Ingredients

12 ounces Italian Style (00) Flour

12 ounces Bread Flour

2 teaspoons salt (sea salt or table salt)

1 teaspoon instant yeast

2 tablespoons sugar

17 ounces water (90 degrees)

2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions

Combine all the ingredients in your mixing bowl and mix on the lowest speed possible for 1 minute.  The dough should be rough and a little sticky.  Let it rest for 5 minutes so the flour gets fully hydrated.

Knead the dough on medium low-speed (or by hand) for 2 to 3 minutes until the dough is smoother.  Next put some olive oil on your work surface and your hands and transfer the dough to your work area.  Do a stretch and fold and form the dough into a ball.  Divide the dough into 5 pieces weighing about 8 ounces each and form into balls.  Spray the inside of a mini plastic storage bag with oil and seal each dough ball in the bags.  Put them in your refrigerator overnight or up to 4 days.  You can freeze them also for several months if desired.

About 90 minutes before you are ready to bake your pizzas take how many dough balls you plan on using out of the fridge and put them on your lightly oiled work surface.  Stretch the dough balls and reshape them into a tight ball.  Cover the dough balls with either plastic wrap sprayed with cooking spray or a clean lint free kitchen towel sprayed with some water and let them rest until you are ready to bake.

One hour before you are ready to bake pre-heat your oven to the highest temperature and put your pizza stone on the highest shelf possible in your oven.

Prepare your favorite sauce and get your cheese and toppings ready.  I used a simple fresh tomato sauce consisting of 1 can of diced tomatoes with red peppers, salt, freshly ground pepper, oregano, basil, 1/2 of a lemon and a dash of red wine vinegar.  I also used fresh mozzarella, grated parmesan and pepperoni.

Put some bench flour in a bowl and dip each dough ball in the flour as well as your hands.  Flatten the ball of dough on the work surface with your hands first and if desired either use a rolling-pin or pick the dough ball up and using both hands start stretching it out using your thumbs and the back of your knuckles.   Your thumbs should actually be doing all the stretching and not your knuckles.  you want dough to be fairly thin, but not too thin or it will end up ripping.

Turn your oven on broil 10 minutes before you are ready to bake your pizza and get the stone as hot as possible.  Assemble your pie and brush some olive oil on the crust if desired.  You can either sprinkle corn meal or flour on your bakers peel and place the pizza on your peel before putting the topping on it. Alternatively you can put your pizza dough on a piece of parchment paper and slide the peel underneath when ready to put in the oven.  The worse thing that can happen is for your dough to get stuck on your peel and make a mess in your oven, not to mention ruin all your good efforts.

Make sure you turn the oven off broil before you put the pie inside and turn it back to your highest setting.  Let the pizza cook until the crust is blistering and the bottom is nice and brown.

I strongly advise not to put too much sauce on this style of dough or you will end up with a soggy mess.  Less is actually more in most cases of making a good pizza.

This dough is also excellent for making calzones which I did a few days later.  I added some grilled chicken, mozzarella, ricotta cheese mixed with basil, oregano and garlic salt and parmesan cheese inside and baked at 400 degrees for around 25 minutes.  Just make sure you use a little water to seal the dough and cut some air slits on the top so the dough doesn't built up too much pressure.

I hope you give this recipe a try yourselves.  It is actually fun to make and relatively easy.

This post has been submitted to the Yeast Spotting Site here: http://www.wildyeastblog.com/category/yeastspotting

You can see some of my other posts at my other blog at www.mookielovesbread.wordpress.com

Pizza is one the special favorites we make when my daughter brings her sorority sisters home from college for pizza night.  What they don't expect is a very thin crust that is sourdough, has whole wheat and garbanzo flour, sun dried tomatoes, fresh rosemary and garlic in it.  They also can't believe that they can make their own from a wide range of toppings, most of which are home made including spicy sauce -  and they can load it up with worrying that the crust will not be able to handle it.

This baby is loaded!!!  Lots of sauce, caramelized onions and mushrooms, roasted red green and spicy peppers, home made Italian sausage, pepperoni, Pecorino, Parm and Mozz cheeses, olives and a few other things hardly worth mentioning - except the fresh opal basil on top after the pie came out of the 500 degree oven.  The key is to pre bake the pie crust on a stone for 3 minutes before taking it out, quickly brushing on a thin coat of garlic oil before letting folks load up what ever they want  on top - before chucking the fatso back into the oven for 4 minutes or so to finish browning it off.

Hi Gang,

I'm nuts for starters lately...I got 3 going!   Today we made a covered pizza with my first starter I started, I have 2 more on the ready!   I'm NUTS for the starters.  Tomorrow I'm making Chad Robertson's French Country Bread,  levain is rising as we type, but for now if you have time, please check out the wife's blog, she posted nice pics of the covered pizza!!!  you gotta try one

  http://jewelsinnaples.blogspot.com/2012/01/tonite-on-menupizzacome-oooona-cold.html

Cya,

Frank

Here's my wood fired oven I built last spring. I love using it, and have a blog on cooking and baking.

http://countrywoodsmoke.wordpress.com/

I make lots of my own bread, and have a favoured overnight sponge bread recipe I use.

Have a look at my build and see how cheap and easy it can be to have your own wood fired oven.

Cheers

Marcus

hi all... a quick question.

i'm in the process of opening a small italian bakery/pizzeria.  it wil be take out only.  i need some help choosing a mixer.  i have an opportunity to buy a hobart 60 quart used for a good price.  my only concern is if this will be too large of a mixer.  i plan to make one batch of specialty loaves (~30 loaves) and one batch of pizzas (30 large) on a daily basis.  that is just a guess for when i start.  i could probably get by with a 40 quart, but the price is so good on the 60 that i am considering it.  is there any reason NOT to go for the 60 quart?  i need to jump on this ASAP if i want it... can anyone comment on using the 60 quart for smaller batches of dough?

This is the traditional clay oven I built in my garden. It has been absolutely brilliant for cooking pizzas, roasting meats and baking bread. If you fancy building one yourselves you can read how-to at my blog: http://clayoven.wordpress.com.

Cheers

Simon

Made this lovely pizza on brioche dough... yummy!

I've done a search on perforated pizza pans, and since I can't seem to find the dates of the postings, I'm not sure how long ago this topic has been discussed.

In any event, is there any advice on perforated pizza pans for fresh dough?  Instawares has a large variety, but I don't know what would work best.

I've read enough to understand that perforated pans with large holes work well with frozen dough. I've also seen complaints about not being to use cornmeal to avoid stickiness.

Yes, I actually have a very large square stone that is the length and width of my oven, but I find that not only is the stone super-heavy to remove when I don't bake bread or pizzas  - I can't find a decent place to "store" it in or around my kitchen!

I've read "American Pie" and I know that stone is de riguerer.

Personally, I like a thin pizza crust.

Thanks,

Diane

On Christmas eve I made 3 pounds of  dough for two large batard loaves intending to bake Christmas morning after overnight refrigerator proofing.  In the morning I went to preheat and the electric ignitor that starts my gas oven was broke and it didn't come on!  I wasn't sure if I could freeze the dough at this point.  I was targeting 72% hydration rather than a more typical 75% for a Tartine bake as I would be baking on a stone rather than in a dutch oven and looking to keep dough from spreading too much.  Plus the KAF patent flour I use seems to have a high moisture content with 72% coming working well in past recipes using this flour. 

Flour was 5.5% rye (100% hydration rye starter which made up 6.4% of the recipe), 10% semolina (ground the day prior) and 84.5% King Arthur patent flour (high protein, from a 50 lb bag - have never seen this in 5 pound bags).  Salt was 2%.  I originally intended to coat with sesame seeds and make two 1.5 lb batards. 

Plan B: pizza dough:  Given the 72% hydration is a level I have used for pizza dough and successfully kept in the refrigerator from 3 to 5 days, I thought this would be a good plan B.   Hoping for the best, I divided the dough into four pieces and place individually in lightly oiled containers.  For pizza dough, 3-5 days of refrigerated fermentation works well for optimal flavor and rising power, but have not ever gone longer. 

I ordered the new ignitor part and 5 days later my oven was up and running.   The $15 part ($22 with expedited shipping)  and an easy 15 minute fix was worth the wait compared to the repairman's $200 quote.  And by the way, three different web sites had the same part for for $75 so it pays to shop around...

So last night I made my 7 day old dough pizza.  You could see lots of holes in the dough while looking at it thru the plastic container.  I left the dough out for 90 minutes before starting.  This is a wet dough so I gently stretched to about 8'' size, let rest for 10 minutes and stretched to the final 14" size.  I made sure there was enough flour on the bottom to not stick, while preserving a rather moist dough otherwise.  I used semolina on the peel.  I used my thick soapstone stone which takes 90 minutes to preheat (to 600 degrees as outlined in a prior post).  The pie cooked in 3 1/2 minutes.  The tray above is where I let it rest after removing from the stone.

Surprise number one was how nice and fluffy the baked pizza was.  I thought the long fermentation may have broken down some of the rising ability/cell structure of the dough.  Surprise number two was very flavorful, but not sour or even tart (although I like sourdough more on the full flavor side).  Likely due to the starter being only 6.4% of the recipe compared to 20% or more in a sourdough bread recipe and a 39° refrigerator temperature.  But the flavor was excellent, slightly complex and the high hydration did allow the dough to become slightly gelatanized inside similar to some of the Tartine breads.  It was one of the best pizzas I have ever made.

So a very happy outcome all around and finding that a week in the refrigerator worked out surprisingly well.  And the holiday spiral ham?  Well while the oven didn't work, the broiler did as it uses a different element/burner at the top of the oven.  Wrapped the ham/pan in heavy foil, placed on low shelf, and removed foil after one hour.  Applied glazed and put under broiler for another 10 minutes.  The broiler flame carmelized the ham nicely and Christmas dinner was not only salvaged but came out very well.  Now I need to remake my original recipe and bake those batards!

Happy New Year to all...

Pizza Nirvana.