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Looking back through my posts in this thread, thought I'd hit a couple revelations that have totally changed my pizza game over the years: I had no idea about proofing the dough - I figured you could rise it, beat it up, and still get a nice crust - nope. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4lL5I-UYbk&t=81s This guy's video is actually really good (his whole channel is) if you can ignore the music; the big takeaways here are: 1.) You can make a pizza dough in 2 hours, or 2 weeks. It all depends on your yeast, which you can tweak to no end. 2.) Always, always, always do a final rise with the dough portioned and shaped into balls. They should at least double in size during this step. If they don't, you goofed somewhere previously (see previous post) 3.) Once the balls have risen, handle them GENTLY. I used to pound them out to get the bubbles out, because they would burn (which is why my pies earlier in the thread are so flat looking). Watch how he scoops up the dough with the paint scraper - most proofing trays come with a similar tool. Honestly, using proofing trays were the biggest step forward in my dough. 4.) Once the ball is nice and floured, remember, you're trying to keep the air inside the dough - watch how he starts from the center and gently presses the air out into the crust; he's not pinching, or "forming a disc" like a lot of lovely internet recipes say - he's coaxing the air from the inside out with gentle pressure. This was HUGE for me. This technique works (and is critical for) all styles, including Neapolitan, NY, New Haven, etc. 5.) Remember, you're trying to keep the air in the dough - so err on the side of being gentle. Dressing the the pie THEN moving it to the peel, with a final size-adjustment, actually does work much better (which is why it's how it's done in basically every good pizzeria) FWIW I still can't do the "slap" style of stretching the dough - I just drape the dough over my knuckles after pressing the air to the crust and let gravity do the work. Another easy way is to let the dough hang over the edge of a countertop and rotate it evenly. forbidden dialectics fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Mar 25, 2019 |
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Mar 25, 2019 06:54
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ogopogo posted:The brief window of time where the weather is perfect in Vegas means as many backyard pizzas as possible. Hot drat. Sourdough is definitely my next project. What starter are you using, and who's instructions have you been following? Also, what kind of cheese are you using? How are you spreading it on the pies? I love that melting pattern. forbidden dialectics fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Mar 31, 2019 |
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Mar 31, 2019 07:08
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ogopogo posted:big and beautiful God drat, beautiful. The bottom one especially reminds me of a classic New Haven pie from Pepe's or Sally's. Man I miss New England
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May 14, 2019 01:32
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sourdough cheese and pepperoni. 
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Alright, like most normal people, I'm loving sick of Kitchenaid's bullshit "dough hook" trash that results in dough that still needs a ton of manual kneading before it's ready - so naturally, being a normal, cool person, I bought this 66 lb thing: It's a Famag IL-5S spiral hook mixer. The trick with these is that the dry ingredients go in first (all the flour and yeast), then you let it go for about a minute while slowly drizzling in the water. After all the water's in, you watch the dough around the breaker bar next to the spiral to start looking like a "garlic bulb" - then dump in the salt and when it's all in, you're done. I got a final dough temperature of 78F, I probably should have measured everything so I could figure out a friction factor - but I got the silkiest, smoothest dough I've ever seen. And the pies? Well...they were a bit undone by my homemade mozz that refuses to melt, but the crust was...     Need to work on my mozz, and fine-tune my dough procedure with the new mixer, but I'm pretty goddamn happy with how those pies turned out.
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Aug 20, 2019 03:07
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Stefan Prodan posted:I've been trying to do the Ken Forkish method but I have a problem where like I feel like by the time my crust achieves the brownness I want, it's a bit overdone and dry inside. One of the major revelations that changed the way I made pizzas was understanding what actually gets added to flour. A common misconception, which, I have repeated in this very thread, is that 00 Flour (e.g., Caputo) doesn't brown at 550 because of how it's milled, or water absorption of the starch, or a whole host of other nonsense. A big factor? It's unmalted. Basically every store-bought (or commercial, for that matter) flour has a whole host of additives in it - vitamins, conditioners, and critically - sugars, like diastatic malt. Only, it's about a billion times more complicated than that. A huge game changer for me was incorporating the "desired dough temperature" concept into mixing and kneading dough. King Arthur has an excellent article about this: https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2018/05/29/desired-dough-temperature Basically, the final temperature of your dough, after mixing a kneading, has a MASSIVE effect on the final dough itself - so much so, that it likely outweighs almost every other factor. Think about it - if your dough temperature is very high, the yeast will consume all of the sugar in your dough, rising it super fast (which ends up popping all of the gluten bubbles you worked so hard to make), and leaving you with beige-white, flat, cracker crust (because all of the sugar, which browns quickly, has been converted to alcohol or other compounds). Add a temperature check after you knead - it gives you a measure of control, and a fixed variable you can tweak (e.g., with ice or different mixing methods) that will completely change the way you make pizza dough, and help to remove the "hmm this batch turned out great but the same method i used on another day turned out terrible, this dough poo poo must be magic" confusion that surrounds baking, in general.
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Sep 14, 2019 07:22
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Uhh...pickled herring(?), corn, asparagus(?), olives - you got natto and century egg on there, too?
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May 20, 2020 00:45
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The 'Roni quarantine has been the best time of my life. Also made probably the most delicious pizza I've ever had. This one was homemade mozzarella, using a thermophilic culture in raw Jersey cow milk; the dough was the first time I used a 'biga', with just instant yeast. Basil grew in my aerogarden, which as far as I can tell, is the only thing it's actually good at:
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Jul 4, 2020 07:16
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Jamsta posted:Homemade mozz? Pizza also looks like a boss too! Oh, yes. It's tremendously time consuming to make and basically impossible to plan - it could take 6 hours, it could take 20. But when it all comes together, it's really quite delicious. You can control for moisture content, meltability, fat content, how easily it browns, etc, depending on the culture you use, what pH you add the rennet and drain whey at, what temperature you cook the curds to, and how low you allow the final pH of the curd to get. Not to mention, the flavor of fresh, cultured mozzarella is really something special. This video shows the general process (and also how...temperamental it can be, especially without a high quality pH meter...which cost ~$500 for something accurate enough): https://youtu.be/CluOhy1zu9Q If you are interested in cheese making in general, Giancarlis Caldwell's book, "Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking" is more or less the bible of home Cheesemaking and most internet recipes are more or less plagiarised (often poorly) from it. Only thing I'd caution is that the vast majority of grocery store milk is not usable for Cheesemaking. It's either pasteurized to too high a temperature (even if it's not "ultra" pasteurized), or homogenized in such a way that makes the curds far too fragile to use. Look for non-homogenized, "vat" or "low-temperature" pasteurized milk.
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Jul 12, 2020 19:18
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mls posted:I tried following Jeff Varasano’s dough recipe with caputo flour yesterday to put in my Koda 16. Based on my reading, he likes the dough more hydrated so that it holds up to the high temperature of the pizza oven. Dough was perfect and it easily stretched to shape on the marble counter, but when I tried to transfer the 10-12” pie to the pee, it was all over the place and starting to stick to the counter. Ended up adding flour (probably too much) and re-making it on the peel but by that point it was tougher to spread and had a lot of recoil to it. It seems like when I stretch it, it exposes moist dough that doesn’t have a coating of flour on it and sticks to the surface. I know I’m doing something wrong, hoping one of you experts can help explain how to properly prepare the dough. Pizza turned out great in the end, but I imagine it would’ve been even better. Yeah, the problem is that he doesn't know what he's talking about. 62-64% hydration is typical in Naples with 00 flour. I've heard that some famous spots like Da Michele go as low as 59%. I've spoken to a bunch of pizzaiolos stateside at least, and 65% is the absolute max I've ever heard. More water actually gives you a worse rise, and leads to the problem you experienced. This isn't a baguette - a pizza is supposed to cook really fast. forbidden dialectics fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Jul 12, 2020 |
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Jul 12, 2020 20:19
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ogopogo posted:So glad the days are getting longer, been brutal going dark so early. One of our awesome pizza makers came up with this pizza yesterday - Holy moly, my man. I've been watching your pizzas in this thread over years; this...is art. I'm not a layperson when it comes to pizzamaking. Given almost any variable, I can turn out a pretty good pie. I couldn't make this in a million years. Pizza Picasso. God drat that is a beautiful pizza.
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Jan 29, 2022 09:20
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I recently hosted a pizza party for my office, with ~15 guests, I made 20 pizzas and ended up with 9 leftover...not sure how that's possible, but hey, leftover pizza isn't a real problem. Seattle in early January wasn't exactly great pizzamaking weather, though...  My favorite from the night...extra cheese, extra sausage: 
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Jan 29, 2022 09:31
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If you live near a Costco business center this is the best/cheapest cheese I've used on pizza (and I've used a LOT of different, mostly bad, ones):
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Jan 14, 2023 06:42
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I've been moving away from Neopolitan, mostly because I deeply regret getting a tiny, outdoor, wood-burning oven (I should have splurged and bought a huge, gas-burning one, instead). The one I have (Pizza Party 70x70) is just way too small to comfortably cook pies in - it doesn't retain heat, requires fastidious wood management, and is just too much of a schlep to be worth it. Instead I've been working on a deck-oven style, corner slice kind of pie. I like the results.  And yes, (fresh) pineapple belongs on pizza.  This one was insane, though, probably the best pizza I've ever made: 
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Feb 26, 2023 06:26
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PurpleXVI posted:Oh that looks good, tell me more, I wanna know the meatballs and the cheese and the sauce you used. The meatballs are actually just bulk Italian sausage; I like to put it on in irregular chunks like that. The cheese I use is a bit upthread; it's Bella Rosano whole milk mozzarella from Costco. I think only the business centers sell it; it comes in 6 LB blocks. It's by far the best dry mozzarella I've tried for pizza. The sauce is a modification of Kenji's NY pizza sauce. I start with olive oil/butter, sweat some garlic until the pungent, acidic aroma dissipates, then add dry oregano and fry for 30 seconds or so. I puree 2 cans of whole peeled tomatoes and toss that in. At this point I taste for bitterness, and add sugar a little bit at a time until the bitterness isn't detectable. For really good tomatoes this takes zero to maybe a teaspoon of sugar, but it varies can-to-can. I then add about 1/4 cup of Vietnamese fish sauce, some black pepper, and let it roll at a full boil for about 30 minutes or until the fat is emulsified and the sauce is as thick as I like.
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Mar 7, 2023 18:00
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 13:11 |
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flashy_mcflash posted:Those little shakes lol. If you're using a peel you gotta eject with confidence or don't bother. With a floured wooden peel, the little shakes are the way to go. With perforated peels, you gotta be decisive.
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May 14, 2023 06:30
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