Home style pizza

[rwsaunders]

Indoor pizza...I can’t get the heat from my oven when compared to my Kettle Pizza of course, so the crust doesn’t spring as much. Still a decent pie for the money. erik$...do you have a crust recipe as I’m always up for trying other dough mixes?

[guido]

Best home crust I ever made was a 24 hour in the fridge final proof on 1/2 of the Forkish Saturday white recipe. Even in my gas oven it had tons of spring. My SO is trying to minimize bread products (silly girl) so I have held off getting the Forkish pizza book. But someday.

[Too Tall]

Erik$
We are on vaguely similar wavelengths. Dinner tonight is tandoori masala chicken sandwiches on homemade bread with warm feta. We did not suffer.
For my money this, with small deviations in hydration, is hard to beat. This dough takes heat well and likes a few hrs. rest but does fine overnight in the fridge....just go easy on yeast:
(Four 320 g dough balls)
60% recipe follows -
Flour - 785g
Water - 471g
Salt - 24g
Yeast 1.4g

I've made this with a stand mixer for same day dough on short notice or all day and no stand mixer. Both are great. A smidge of whole wheat makes it chewy if that's your thaing.

[erik$]

@rwsaunders

erik$'s significant other:

440-450 g flour
1 tbsp sugar
0.5 g dry yeast
300 ml cold water
1 tbsp salt

We first mix about 200 g of the flour with the sugar, the yeast and the water well in the kitchen machine and let it stay in room temperature for a couple of hours. Then we mix in the rest of the flour and the salt and let the machine kned the dough for a minute or two. The dough then rests for 10 minutes or so. Then knedding again followed by resting and again knedding, before it's put in the fridge for about 40 hours. The pizza friday morning we take the dough out and divide it into four lumps that are left on the counter until pizza friday evening.
About the flour: we basically don't have any selection where we live, so we use the regular baking flour we find around here (~11% protein), but we tried manitoba once, using approx. 420 g flour, which turned out awesome.

[erik$]

Tandoori sandwiches sounds awesome! We sometimes buy half baked French baguettes and fill them with various things, but never tried tandoori ... yet! One of our favorites is based on baking the baguettes with some mozzarella, removing them from the oven and topping off with rocket salad, half dried tomatoes, seared slices of beef marinated in balsamic vinegar and some shavings of parmesan.

[guido]

After casting aspersions at my SO for her anti-pizza stance, she asked for one today. With-out adequate lead time to do something more elaborate, I grabbed a TJ's dough did a pre-sauted onion, pepper, shiitake/crimini mushroom base topped with low moisture moz and no tomatoes.



The crust got zero rise which is slightly surprising since I generally get at least some from these. Oh well at least the topping got favorable notice from my SO...

[rwsaunders]

I gave up on TJ's crusts Guy, as I couldn't get them to do anything. Try making your own and freezing a few to see if that makes a difference, for when that pizza urge arises.

[rwsaunders]

Definitely some rise out of this dough...18 hour fermentation at room temperature and a 1 hour rest after shaping. Played with the broiler function during the last few minutes of the second pie in an attempt to evenly bake the pie, which was on a pizza stone. Oven at 500F.

[Too Tall]

R.W. you had me at olives on the pie.

Sometimes you just have to say no to red sauce. What's your line?

This is the eggplant base I use most often.

1. Peel and slice eggplant pinky finger thick. Place not touching on a cookie sheet lightly oiled with EVO. No need to brush the eggplant with anything. Toss a few onions ontop for good measure.
2. Season the eggplant generously on one side with salt/pepper/oregano.
3. Cut the top off an entire hand of garlic exposing the tips of each clove. Add this to the pan, trust me.
4. Bake all in a 400F oven until the eggplant starts to burn.
5. Allow to cool than place the eggplant and onions on a cutting board.
6. Squeeze the garlic out of the hand like toothpaste. Too much is just enough. Baking makes it mild tasting.
7. Rough chop all, season with salt and course pepper to taste. Maybe some chili flakes.

Smear this mixture on your pie for a base. Goes great with meats and strong cheese.

What cha' got?

[dgaddis]

Preheat and bake photos only as the scoundrels cut and ate the pizzas before I could snap some decent pics.

Alrighty RW. School me on the PizzaKettle. How are you setting yours up? Do you know your stone temp? Do you have anything above the pie? Any deflectors or anything below? What fuel are you using, and how are you distributing it in the grill, even layer of coals on the bottom, all pushed to the back, etc?

I've used mine a few times and haven't quite got it how I want it yet. My stone is always hotter than the air above it, which isn't ideal.

Here's two from this weekend. Not super happy with them, but they were edible. Did a sourdough crust, and my starter wasn't active enough so I didn't get a great rise in the dough. Didn't stretch them thin enough either. AND...since I had the toddler "helping" me make them I forgot to chop the tomato slices for the basil/tomato/mozzarella pie. So I just threw them on whole near the end of the cook, and the mozzarella bits could have been smaller. 2nd pie was sautéed leeks and mushrooms with fontina cheese. Good flavors, just didn't cook the top enough on either IMO and didn't get the rise I wanted from the dough.

[rwsaunders]

Dustin...best information that I can give you, but I’m no pro.

A. Use about a chimney and a half full of charcoal briquettes...add some lump charcoal after the briquettes are good and hot to get the temp even higher.
B. Place the stone (Emile Henry something or other is what I have) on the grate then I spread the briquettes.
C. Shove the briquettes as much as possible near the back of the grille or I get hot spots on the stone and burn the bottom of the pie.
D. Place a couple of pieces of seasoned hardwood at the back of the grate and let them catch fire...if I don't use the hardwood I can’t get the grille above 600-650F...been there, done that too often and the pies take too long.
E. Rotate the pie while on the stone or the section that faces the hardwood burns.
F. I use cornmeal on the stone.
G. I don’t measure the stone temp, but the gauge on the grille indicates 750F+...below that temp and it takes too long and the pies are soggy.
H. If I’m baking more than two pies, I restoke the hardwood in between, as that has been the secret to keeping high temps.

If I had the the toy that Nick Crumpton and Too Tall have...I’d be eating pizza every damn night.

[dgaddis]

Cool, I'll try again. I think my issue is not putting the fire at the back of the grill, the stone (sitting right over top of the coals) gets too hot relative to the air above it. So if I leave it on long enough to cook the toppings the bottom is burnt so bad it turns to charcoal. I only use lump, and can easily peg the thermometer but my stone temp is too high, the first time I used it I hit over 900*F! I wonder if a deflector on the normal grill rack (which sits below the Pizza kettle insert) could help keep the stone from getting too hot.

Ideally, I think 900*F air flowing above a ~600*F stone would work great. A real wood fired brick pizza oven works more like that, you're heating the air in the oven which heats the floor, but you're not heating the floor directly.

Pics from the first time using it. Plenty of lump, plus some wood chunks. I had my steel on the rack above the stone trying to keep the heat over the toppings. It worked LOL. The temp reading was after the flames died down, I knew that was way too hot.

[rwsaunders]

You are definitely on the right track with the temps. Another trick that I learned that is that if the stone is too hot and the top of the pie hasn’t caught up with the bottom of the pie in terms of cooking, I slide the metal peel under the pie as an insulator or sorts to slow things down. In terms of pushing the charcoal to the rear, I use the trusty old ss charcoal dividers.

[erik$]

Those semi dried tomates sure makes for a good sauce substitute:
image.jpg

Nduja and olives on one, mozzarella, cured ham and pine nuts on the other. Really happy with these ones!

[Too Tall]

Dang Erik you speak the truth. Nice

Anyone have experience with the two pizza inserts made for Kamado Joe Jr. ?

DoJoe >>

Pizza Porta >>>

[rwsaunders]

Erik motivated everybody...it was a pizza night in Pittsburgh.

[rwsaunders]

Cool, I'll try again. I think my issue is not putting the fire at the back of the grill, the stone (sitting right over top of the coals) gets too hot relative to the air above it. So if I leave it on long enough to cook the toppings the bottom is burnt so bad it turns to charcoal. I only use lump, and can easily peg the thermometer but my stone temp is too high, the first time I used it I hit over 900*F! I wonder if a deflector on the normal grill rack (which sits below the Pizza kettle insert) could help keep the stone from getting too hot.

Ideally, I think 900*F air flowing above a ~600*F stone would work great. A real wood fired brick pizza oven works more like that, you're heating the air in the oven which heats the floor, but you're not heating the floor directly.

Pics from the first time using it. Plenty of lump, plus some wood chunks. I had my steel on the rack above the stone trying to keep the heat over the toppings. It worked LOL. The temp reading was after the flames died down, I knew that was way too hot.

Dustin...coals placed in the rear, stone nearer the front and one too many logs on the back. Next time, one log, as I really had to work hard to limit the char. I always appreciate how fast the real pizza makers work when they’re dealing with multiple pies and serious heat.

[bbillington]

Pizza night tonight. I made the dough yesterday, first ride in the fridge.

Rather simple cheese and basil for the ladies of my house.
8CE5C639-E9B4-4398-9BC8-D597BA476ADD.jpg

Carmelized onion, raw garlic, smoked mozzarella, basil and a bit of salami for they boys and I.
1AE5BC69-665A-45E2-A5CA-96EF39E17DC5.jpg

[rwsaunders]

Tried a new sauce recipe tonight rather than using off the shelf sauce...much less salty and it let the topping do the talking. Yes, the Osterizer is so old that it was made in the USA.

[Tom]

When I homebrewed I did extracts with grain. Similar. Perecca's dough, Casa Viscous sauce, leftover fresh basil and flat leaf parsley chopped up about a cup,, Cappiello's mozzarella, marinated artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, a bulb and a half of garlic sliced up and four plum tomatoes cored and sliced. Tasty.

Named vendors are from town. We got good eats around here.


Pie by Tom Ambros, on Flickr