Genzano Potato Pizza
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
It looks great! ! ! I'm looking at the potato pizza and wondering how you managed to bake it for 30 minutes at 500 degrees! It would seem to me that the potatoes would have to be a little pre-cooked because a bread that thin would bake fairly fast at 500 degrees???????
I would like to try the recipe...it looks like my kind of food.....rosemary and potatoes is a marriage..
I also really like a focaccia with red grapes and fresh rosemary, I reckon this dough would be quite good like that as well.
I was worried about the bread cooking way before the potatoes (they weren't precooked), but it really wasn't an issue in the end. They were very thin, sliced on something like a mandoline, and a few layers thick all over the top. I oiled the dough pretty generously, and it seems like that and multiple layers of potatoes shielded the dough a bit while the potatoes cooked through. A local place here with a wood oven makes very thin pizzas with potatoes that always seem raw to me, but it really wasn't an issue in this case. Their other pies are fantastic, but it seems like for potato pizza it's best to start with a dough that's going to stand up to a longer bake time.
Logan
Hi Logan, your pizza is a winner. I recently baked potato pizza(potatoes were 3 mm thin) with just a smattering of potatoes over carmelized onions, fontina under the potatoes and blue cheese crumbled on top. I think it came pretty good, but your really wet dough with all the holes, wins. Hands down. I let my dough rise till it was light and airy, but I concede yours looks better.
Ray
Thanks Ray, I like the caramelized onion and cheese idea. I'm pretty ambivalent about blue cheese, but something like brie and asiago would be pretty killer, I think.
How creative! Looks delicious. I'll have to try it with garlic!
Welcome to TFL.
Summer
Got the idea for my version from a French style pizza (pissaladiere) and since have been using carmalized onions as a base for many pizzas. One had walnuts and blue cheese, nicoise olives,and so on. My wife outright dislikes blue cheese, so I can understand your ambivalence. I have fun with the various trys and sometimes they actualy work.
Ray