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Needless Pizza
May. 18th, 2009 12:29 pmLast night, we once again mounted our chargers, had pages bring forth the sharpened lances, and headed for the windmills.
Oops, I meant to say we tried to make pizza again.
The sauce is perfect --- some onions and garlic and calcium-free tomatoes cooked for a long time (or pesto from home-grown basil).
Cheese, ditto (Polly-O).
But the crust, on the other hand...
We tried Rose Levy-Beranbaum's version. Tastes excellent, but not really pizza to us.
Some things we found on the web were too scary to try, like the guy who disconnects the safety interlocks so he can cook with his oven set to "self clean."
The time we tried Jim Lahey's no knead pizza dough. It did not work out so well. The dough seemed right; I could pick it up and stretch it out into a circle. But it developed holes as I stretched it and ended up very thin. And the first one never cooked under the sauce, even after ten minutes at 550 degrees. Precooking the crust before adding the sauce on the second pizza helped a lot.
His quantities seem weird. He has 3 cups of flour for 4 12 inch pizzas. Most recipes use that much flour for 2 pizzas that size. Next time, smaller pizzas, and let the dough rest more when it stops wanting to stretch.
Bread flour seemed good. Using huge amounts of flour on the pan and the surface of the dough also seemed good. The recipe was quite easy to make, too.
We took the rest of the dough and precooked little pizza crusts and tossed them in the freezer for snacks or lunch another day.
Oops, I meant to say we tried to make pizza again.
The sauce is perfect --- some onions and garlic and calcium-free tomatoes cooked for a long time (or pesto from home-grown basil).
Cheese, ditto (Polly-O).
But the crust, on the other hand...
We tried Rose Levy-Beranbaum's version. Tastes excellent, but not really pizza to us.
Some things we found on the web were too scary to try, like the guy who disconnects the safety interlocks so he can cook with his oven set to "self clean."
The time we tried Jim Lahey's no knead pizza dough. It did not work out so well. The dough seemed right; I could pick it up and stretch it out into a circle. But it developed holes as I stretched it and ended up very thin. And the first one never cooked under the sauce, even after ten minutes at 550 degrees. Precooking the crust before adding the sauce on the second pizza helped a lot.
His quantities seem weird. He has 3 cups of flour for 4 12 inch pizzas. Most recipes use that much flour for 2 pizzas that size. Next time, smaller pizzas, and let the dough rest more when it stops wanting to stretch.
Bread flour seemed good. Using huge amounts of flour on the pan and the surface of the dough also seemed good. The recipe was quite easy to make, too.
We took the rest of the dough and precooked little pizza crusts and tossed them in the freezer for snacks or lunch another day.
