Pizza

The place to share culinary tips and advice
Alan
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Re: Nice work

Post by Alan » April 19th, 2016, 8:57 am

dfw_pilot wrote:That looks like it was worth waiting for.
+1

That is a lot of cheese :D.

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Re: Pizza

Post by Alan » April 19th, 2016, 2:33 pm

I think I'm going to make pizza tonight. I'm going to give the old parchment paper a try, although it says it's good up to 420ºF, hmmmm. Are you guys putting any meal between the paper and the dough? Or will the dough slide off of it pretty easily without? I'd like to keep mine on parchment paper just until the dough gets firmed up then do the quick pull, leaving the pizza directly on the stone for the remainder of the cook.

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Re: Pizza

Post by scottcgrable » April 19th, 2016, 3:34 pm

What your planning on should work. I leave the parchment in for the whole cook and it does not stick at all. The paper starts to burn but its not a big deal. I usually cook around 500ºF.
Alan wrote:
dfw_pilot wrote:That looks like it was worth waiting for.
+1

That is a lot of cheese :D.
I love cheese. Looks great!

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Re: Pizza

Post by Alan » April 19th, 2016, 5:08 pm

I left them(I cooked two pizza's) on the paper:

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Sausage(sage), Yellow Onions, Olives, Peps and of course cheese.

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Re: Pizza

Post by trussin » April 19th, 2016, 6:54 pm

Looks delicious, fellas!

I usually remove the paper so the crust doesn't get too retain too much moisture and dries out (but we're shooting for cracker like crust).

I add a little cornmeal on the stone but not between crust and paper.

If your family approves of your pies (and they will from the looks of it), you're going to get LOTS of chances to experiment and perfect your technique in the coming months and find what works best with your set up.


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Re: Pizza

Post by Alan » April 19th, 2016, 7:36 pm

I've noticed that the burnt(cooked)part of the paper gets really brittle and flakes off pretty easily, but I'm not sure how the paper is under the pie itself. I guess if I tried to do the quick pull I would have found out whether it would have stayed in one piece or if it would tear off. The crust of today's pizza's is far from cracker like, so I guess it's a Neapolitan style.

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Re: Pizza

Post by Green_Disease » April 23rd, 2016, 6:44 pm

Finally was able to make some pizzas...had the needle buried on the thermometer and pizzas were cooking in under 2 1/2 minutes! Wife and kids started eating before i could get pics.

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Re: Pizza

Post by Alan » April 23rd, 2016, 6:50 pm

Awesome. Looks like a party!

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Re: Pizza

Post by Kathy56 » December 7th, 2016, 7:12 am

It looks delicious. This reminds me of the Feast pizzas ( http://www.freshslice.com/feast-pizza-menu/ ) which I had last week. I have tried to prepare pizza from home. But it hasn't come out well yet. It's my long time wish to prepare pizza at home. Can you please tell me the recipe of your pizza?? It will be really helpful for me.

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Re: Pizza

Post by j4c11 » December 8th, 2016, 11:57 am

I've been working on achieving the perfect pizza for about 8 years now . Obviously "perfect" is going to mean different things to different folks, but along the way I have learned quite a few valuable lessons that I think apply to all pizza making. Some of the lessons were already out there when I first started, but I considered them snobbery and went the easy route. The easy route takes you into the weeds, as always.

Here's my tips for a great pizza:

The cook
Never blindly follow recipes. Conditions vary from kitchen to kitchen, ingredients vary, tastes vary. If a recipe calls for 20 minutes cook time and it's starting to look done after 15, don't let the stuff burn just because the recipe said 20. If the recipe calls for 3 minutes mix time and it still looks lumpy, give it some more time. Have your common sense with you and apply it.

Dough
For pizza dough it is best to use a sourdough yeast. Sourdough yeast not only imparts flavor to the dough, but it also changes the dough characteristics by making it more acidic. Sourdough feels different, stretches different, caramelizes different, tastes different. It is a bit more work but well worth the effort. I have been using an "Ischia Island" sourdough culture for the past 8 years. Care is easy, I store it in a couple mason jars in the fridge and it has gone up to 8 months without feeding. Some flour, a little bit of sugar and some warm water and it never fails to resurrect to once again produce the perfect dough. The culture is available commercially and if you do decide to go that route, follow the directions to the letter for activation and have patience, it will take a while and it will smell bad before it smells good.

Pizza dough is made with high protein flour, salt, water, yeast and nothing else. The process is simple: add the flour, yeast and salt to your KitchenAid bowl and an equal amount of warm water by volume(e.g one cup flour, one cup water). Mix with the paddle attachment on medium for 3 minutes, this will result in a very wet mixture. Cover the whole thing and allow to sit for 30 minutes to absorb the water and hydrolize. After 30 minutes rest time, begin mixing again at high speed for 3 minutes, then switch back to medium and add flour one tablespoon at a time until the dough begins to form a ball on the paddle. Switch to the hook attachment. Continue to add flour one tablespoon at a time until the dough no longer sticks to the bowl. Dough consistency should be that of a baby's behind - soft and smooth.
PRO TIP: when using a KitchenAid, the dough tends to form a ball on the hook and then just spin around. To overcome this, lift the mixer head slightly every 15-20 seconds, it will "throw" the dough off the hook.

Once the dough is well kneaded, it should be cold fermented for about 3 days. Bummer, but this is not something you want to skip if you want that light crisp bubbly crust. Cut the dough into individual portions, form into a ball and store in the fridge inside lightly oiled plastic containers. The containers should be sealed, leaving one corner slightly open to allow gasses to escape. The dough should be used no sooner than 3 days and no later than 7 days after placing in the fridge.

Sauce
The pizza sauce is the hardest to master, but the secret lies in its simplicity. Use whole peeled canned tomatoes which you can crush with a fork into a rough sauce. Drain out about 90% of the liquid and add garlic powder, salt, pepper, italian seasoning and fennel. Put it in a jar and allow it to sit for 3 days with the dough in the fridge. The sauce will cook on the pizza.

Cheese
Good mozarella is hard to find. Do not use the Bel Gioso Mozarella balls in whey, as tempting as they look, they have vinegar as a preservative and taste awful on pizza. Get the best whole milk mozarella blocks you can find. BUY BLOCKS, NOT SHREDDED. This is important.

Prep
Cut a rectangular piece of cardboard large enough to hold your pizza. Flour the cardboard well. Take the dough out of the fridge, uncover and let sit at room temp for 30 minutes. Stretch the dough ball into pizza shape using flour to keep it from sticking to the surface and your hands, place it on the cardboard and apply the sauce. Cut the cheese into chunks, about pinky finger size, and spread evenly over the pizza. For a 16" pizza you should use about half a pound of cheese.

(Let's take a detour here and explain why were not shredding the cheese. Shredded cheese immediately melts and forms a layer on top of the sauce. This layer prevents moisture from evaporating out of the sauce, which has 3 effects: first, it makes for soggy pizza. Second, it limits the temperature at which the tomato cooks, basically boiling it. Loss of flavor ensues. Third, it causes the cheese to slide off the pizza when you take a bite.)

Apply toppings as desired. Once pizza is assembled, shake the cardboard back and forth to make sure pizza is not stuck to it.

The more you use the cardboard, the easier it gets and the less the dough sticks.

Cooking
Pizza should be cooked at 550-600 degrees Fahrenheit on a pizza stone. The stone help to draw moisture out of the dough and create a crispy crust. At this temperature, cooking time is ~5 minutes, but will vary depending on conditions. When the stone has been pre-heated and is up to temp, slide the pizza off the cardboard and onto the stone. The pizza is done when the crust caramelizes and the cheese is uniformly melted.

Enjoy!

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Re: Pizza

Post by Alan » December 8th, 2016, 5:27 pm

I use regular AP flour and make enough dough for 2 large pizza's, probably about 18" in diameter. I use about 5 cups of flour to 1-2/3 cups of water, regular yeast(comes in a brown jar at the grocery store), salt, sugar and a little olive oil. I use the dough hook exclusively on the kitchenaide. I do let the dough rise once for several hours at room temp. and then I punch it down and let it rise a second time(still at room temp.). Once it's risen a second time I split it in half and put it in separate oiled plastic containers and put it in the fridge for a couple days to up to five.

Try this dough recipe Kathy:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/ ... ugh-237338

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Re: Pizza

Post by milln » December 13th, 2016, 12:43 am

I love homemade pizza it reminds me of the weekends when we where children.

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Re: Pizza

Post by Pway » April 17th, 2018, 5:18 pm

andy10917 wrote:
December 3rd, 2015, 10:13 pm
My youngest son is a Culinary Institute ("CIA") grad, and swears by them. I wanted to see if any "normal" people use them.
Andy and others. I’m bumping this to ask about further experiences with the pizza steels. I have theee ceramic stones, as I may have mentioned, but am intreged by the rave reviews I continue to hear from experienced cooks. Does the thickness matter other than the thicker it is the longer it should retain heat? I see pizza steels from King Arthur, Nerd Cheif, and others. I’m guessing that steel is steel as long as the dimensions are the same (but there are big differences in price, is this just marketing? ) Any new thoughts on the pizza steels? Thanks in advance!

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Re: Pizza

Post by Pway » January 9th, 2019, 1:03 pm

Just thought I’d provide an update. I’ve been making pizza (homemade dough and sauce) for a few decades using a pizza stone. Santa brought me a pizza steel, which I have tried twice. I do think the pizza seems to cook a bit faster but in all honesty, neither I nor my family has discerned a difference in crust or taste. Having said that, I’ve only gone to 500 degrees and will up that to 550 or so next time. I will say the steel is harder to clean than the stone, at least in my opinion. I’ll continue to use both the steel and stone and will report back any new or noteworthy findings.

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Re: Pizza

Post by Pway » July 25th, 2020, 10:35 am

Quick update: having had seven months and a few dozen cooks, I’ve decided I like the pizza steel better than ceramic. I think the crust is better and cooks faster. My steel is a little smaller than my ceramics but I can live with that and am getting a better feel for the adjusted measurements. Friends and family have weighed in too and the consensus favors the steel.

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Re: Pizza

Post by ken-n-nancy » July 25th, 2020, 2:06 pm

Thanks for sharing the info! We've always used a pizza stone. Maybe we should give a pizza steel a try. Is it stainless steel?

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Re: Pizza

Post by Pway » July 25th, 2020, 3:20 pm

https://slice.seriouseats.com/2012/10/t ... pizza.html

K&N, here is a pretty good article that reviews various makes of pizza steel. Mine is not stainless and I’m not sure if others are (they can rust so I hand wash and dry them, much like a cast iron pan). This article and others have stated that the thicker the steel the better. I got mine for Christmas and it’s about .25 inches. Mine is 14”x14” and frankly if I were buying it now I’d get a little bigger one. I think they range from about $35 to maybe $100 depending largely on thickness.

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Re: Pizza

Post by Turk » April 20th, 2021, 5:36 pm

Yum, I fired up the oven an hour ago to preheat the stones, the aroma is hitting me while reading this thread and my mouth is watering like crazy!

Made Neapolitan dough a few days ago and it's been enjoying the slow fermentation in the fridge. (Recipe from Peter Reinhart's "American Pie")

Tonight will be making a Neapolitan pizza and (my wife's favorite) mozarella w/ roasted red peppers, chopped green onions, sautéed mushrooms w/ garlic.

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Re: Pizza

Post by edslawn » April 20th, 2021, 6:20 pm

Great to see this thread active again. For years, we have had pizza Sunday's with homemade dough and sauce. Last year, I splurged on the Breville Pizzaiolo Oven. Awesome little electric that gets close to 800 degrees on your kitchen counter and makes really special pies. Here's a recent pic...

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Re: Pizza

Post by Turk » April 20th, 2021, 7:34 pm

Turk wrote:
April 20th, 2021, 5:36 pm
Yum, I fired up the oven an hour ago to preheat the stones, the aroma is hitting me while reading this thread and my mouth is watering like crazy!

Made Neapolitan dough a few days ago and it's been enjoying the slow fermentation in the fridge. (Recipe from Peter Reinhart's "American Pie")

Tonight will be making a Neapolitan pizza and (my wife's favorite) mozarella w/ roasted red peppers, chopped green onions, sautéed mushrooms w/ garlic.
Dinner is served :D
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