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So, after a series of curing fires, I got my oven up to raging heat yesterday evening. I started the fire around 2:00 for a 6:00 cook. At the same time I made a batch of caputo based dough, using the measured recipe.
4 cups caputo
1 1/2 + water
2t salt
2t ady
I had set out in search of good yeast at lunchtime, the idy we hear so much about. I first went to Trader Joes ("Yeast is a seasonal item" sniffed the sales clerk "come back in late October") but still spent 20 bucks for stuff I didn't need.
My local classy grocery store (Kings) had packets labeled "Oetker Yeast Levure" which on the back said no need to disolve yeast, just add to the dry ingredients. That sounded like the stuff.
I stirred it together, let it set 10 minutes, kneaded it briefly, and put it back in the bowl, with a piece of cling wrap on top to avoid that nasty crusty skin. I put it in a warm place, and went back to shoving logs in the oven with wild abandon.
At five o'clock I divided the dough ball into quarters (It had risen a LOT and had a pronounced alcohol smell, like the co-worker no one wants to work with on Monday morning) I formed nice balls and left them on the counter for an hour or so. Come six, I pushed the fire, which at this point was mostly coals and a couple of half burned logs, over to the right side, and concerned about getting the pizza on the floor while it was still hot, rushed back into the kitchen. On my new wood peel, i stretched out one of the dough balls. Boy is this stuff extensible. It was as thin as a condom in the center before I got it stretched out at the edge. I splotched some crushed tomato, and put some slices of mozz and peperoni on, and after some aggressive shaking, got the pizza onto the oven floor. It immediately started puffing up on the edges, and soon after starts bubbling like a volcano in the center. I try to do the rotate with the turning peel thing, but it's sort of like trying to rotate a puddle. So I'm sitting there trying to rotate this thing, waiting for it to turn brown around the edge, and it doesn't occur to me to lift the edge and look underneath.
Here's the white on top - black on the bottom result. I guess I didn't have to worry so much about how hot the oven floor was. Not all was a disaster, the edge had really good puffiness:
And the overall look was pretty good:
Slices from my first two pizzas.
4 cups caputo
1 1/2 + water
2t salt
2t ady
I had set out in search of good yeast at lunchtime, the idy we hear so much about. I first went to Trader Joes ("Yeast is a seasonal item" sniffed the sales clerk "come back in late October") but still spent 20 bucks for stuff I didn't need.
My local classy grocery store (Kings) had packets labeled "Oetker Yeast Levure" which on the back said no need to disolve yeast, just add to the dry ingredients. That sounded like the stuff.
I stirred it together, let it set 10 minutes, kneaded it briefly, and put it back in the bowl, with a piece of cling wrap on top to avoid that nasty crusty skin. I put it in a warm place, and went back to shoving logs in the oven with wild abandon.
At five o'clock I divided the dough ball into quarters (It had risen a LOT and had a pronounced alcohol smell, like the co-worker no one wants to work with on Monday morning) I formed nice balls and left them on the counter for an hour or so. Come six, I pushed the fire, which at this point was mostly coals and a couple of half burned logs, over to the right side, and concerned about getting the pizza on the floor while it was still hot, rushed back into the kitchen. On my new wood peel, i stretched out one of the dough balls. Boy is this stuff extensible. It was as thin as a condom in the center before I got it stretched out at the edge. I splotched some crushed tomato, and put some slices of mozz and peperoni on, and after some aggressive shaking, got the pizza onto the oven floor. It immediately started puffing up on the edges, and soon after starts bubbling like a volcano in the center. I try to do the rotate with the turning peel thing, but it's sort of like trying to rotate a puddle. So I'm sitting there trying to rotate this thing, waiting for it to turn brown around the edge, and it doesn't occur to me to lift the edge and look underneath.
Here's the white on top - black on the bottom result. I guess I didn't have to worry so much about how hot the oven floor was. Not all was a disaster, the edge had really good puffiness:
And the overall look was pretty good:
Slices from my first two pizzas.
), but the Peter Reinhardt recipe for Pizza in the bread bakers apprentice calls for using cold water and only a small amount of yeast, mixing/kneading the dough and immediately shaping and retarding. This is a very low maintenance way of doing it, since I can create a big batch of dough and get it into the fridge shaped right away. For example, I can get home from work on Friday night and make dough, shape it, get it into the fridge and still make my poker game at 7 PM...Then Saturday around 1.5 hours before I am ready to cook, I take the pizza balls out of the fridge and let them rise. Also, I found the SAF instant yeast both at williams sonoma and mail order from King Arthur flour. Much much cheaper (well, same price bigger box) from KA.
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