-A.J.
I’ve been experimenting more with the pizza stone lately, trying to get more comfortable with it. (Most recently, these hearth breads.) It’s definitely a better cold weather activity, when the kitchen and house can use the heat from the oven.
For reference, the pictured flatbread is about 12″ across.
One “trick” that I noticed making this Flat Bread “Pizza” is that if I lightly dust the counter with flour before rolling out the dough then that little bit of flour seems to help keep the dough from sticking to the pizza peel when it comes time to slide the dough into the oven — the dusting of flour removes some of the tackiness from the bottom of the dough. As an added benefit, the pizza peel then requires less corn meal for slipperiness, so I’m less likely to set off the smoke detector with burning corn meal. Win-win!
Not exactly a “Eureka” moment, but I’ll gladly take any new nuances like that one.
During the initial bake this flatbread had only a bit of oil and a couple of thinly sliced shallots as toppings. By the five minute mark it had poofed to between 3″ and 5″ high in places, so I stabbed it with a knife a few times and beat back the bubbles. The herbed goat cheese was added at the ten minute mark and the flatbread was allowed to cook for another five minutes. (15 minutes all total.)
The crust came out nice and crunchy — in places the crust was separated from the top by big bubbles. I was very happy with the texture overall.
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300g bread flour, 190g room-temperature water (63% hydration), 7g salt, 1 TBP “Italian Seasoning”, 1 tsp instant yeast, 1/4 tsp diastatic malt.
Mix on low speed for 8 minutes. Let rise one hour. Stretch and fold the dough. Let rise one hour.
Preheat oven and stone to 500F, 30 minutes prior to baking. Roll out the dough to ~12″ across. Bake for 10 minutes, top with cheese and bake for another five minutes.
I think the stretch and fold definitely encourages the “poofiness”.
FlatbreadGarden 