A baking and gardening journal. Mostly.
by A.J. Coltrane
Last night’s pizza. 200g AP Flour, 65% hydration, 2% Salt, 3/4 tsp instant yeast, 1 tsp honey, 1 tsp EVOO. 2-1/2 hour rise at room temperature. Baked on a perforated pizza pan for 10 minutes at 500F.
No need for red sauce. The basil, goat cheese, and calabrese salami were tasty by themselves. The crust was cracker thin in the center, it had a nice crunch.
If I were to change anything on this one it would be to add even more pig.
by A.J. Coltrane
Historically I’ve baked pizza for sixteen minutes at 500F. The process would be to bake the dough and toppings except cheese for ten minutes, then add the cheese and bake for another six. For years I had an ancient oven to work with that only went to 500F. These days all the cool kids are using short baking times, so…
This is the first attempt at a six minute pizza. That’s total cooking time. It’s not revolutionary, but it’s different from what I’ve been doing, so it may rate a few posts as I figure out what I think I’m doing.
This pizza uses my “normal” (Smitten Kitchen) recipe. After kneading the dough spent two hours on the counter, then overnight in the refrigerator, then two more hours on the counter to come up to room temperature. The toppings are simply red sauce, low-moisture mozzarella, and sauteed red onion.
I preheated the oven to 550F. While the oven was preheating I stretched out the dough by hand, placed it on a perforated pizza pan, then topped it.
Basil was added after it came out of the oven.
Overall the color was ok, the bottom turned fairly brown.
Things to try going forward will include using a pizza stone, with or without the pan. The broiler may factor into things as well.
Bonus cat pic:
By Iron Chef Leftovers
Hello, hello.
October and November are cruel months for the Seattle dining scene. By the end of November, we will have said goodbye to Iron Chef favorite emmer&rye (where I had possibly the best burger in Seattle one night), the venerable 35th Street Bistro and my favorite pizza place in Seattle – Crash Landing Pizza (whose pies were nearly as good as the ones I grew up eating in NJ – who says that Seattle has no good pizza). Those places will be missed as they were regular stops in the Iron Chef family dining excursions.
Do not shed too many tears though, as we also get to welcome the reopening of Revel Joule in Fremont, the much anticipated opening of The Whale Wins, right next to Joule and Eltana Bagels just a couple of blocks up from Joule. Eltana does a “Montreal” style bagel (if you have not had one, you should try it) and they are as good as the ones I have had in Montreal.
by A.J. Coltrane
I just liked the way this one looked… It reminded me of the pizza that I loved when I was small.
It’s the leftover calzone ingredients from the other night: sausage, bacon, sauteed onion, sauteed red pepper, “pizza sauce” with additional oregano and roasted tomato flakes, and mozz.
And a bonus picture of the princess.
by A.J. Coltrane
Two links to Serious Eats —
The very cool Del Popolo food truck serves wood-fired pizza out of a 5,000 lb oven — the oven is inside the truck! Includes a slide show and an interview.
This is an older post that I just ran across today: Donna Currie has a 12-part post discussing many different baking surfaces for home oven pizza. Includes a slideshow overview highlighting the pros and cons of each surface. There’s a lot of useful information both in the posts and in the comments. Well worth the reads.
…and a bonus animal pic!
FlatbreadGarden 