Cooking: November 2006 Archives

Tried another pizza tonight. But I still have yet to achieve a qualified success. I like my sauce, the toppings, and how it cooks, but I do not like the dough. I think that there is a basic failure somewhere.

I don't think that it was elastic enough to rise properly on the stone. At that point in the cooking process, the yeast has done its thing and now it is steam's turn to blow that balloon up. Which it didn't because the dough was too tough.

Of course I was side tracked because I tried a different type of flour. An Italian flour called "Belaria: Farina di grano tenero tipo 'OO'". I don't think I am ready to experiment with different flours. It is cool that Central Market offers different types of flours that are not readily available. But I shouldn't be distracted at this point.

So, this time, I went back to King Arthur bread flour. I used a packet of yeast to supplement the sourdough culture (my culture seems to be rather laid back). And I performed a "window pane" test on the dough. Which it seemed to pass.

I shall see how it turns out in less than a week.

Yep, the rotisserie burner cooked the top nicely. But the problem now is that it is done in four minutes. The dough needs a little bit more time to cook all of the way through. So, for the next time, I will try turning off the burners, removing it from the screen, letting it cook, and then finishing it off with the rotisserie. Will that work?

I am starting to get sick of pizza by now...

I made pizza again tonight. I used the dough that I made two weeks ago. There didn't seem to be any problems using it. This time the bottom crust turn out nicely cooked. The pizza stone was at 750 degrees and I used a screen for almost all of the time while it was cooking. I think that I won't bother taking it off for the next attempt.

One problem though. The top didn't cook enough. Well, it did melt the cheese. But I was looking for some nice browning. For the next time, I am going to turn on the rotisserie burner when the pizza is in there. I probably let out all of the heat when I open the grill and put the pizza in (as well when I check on the progress). To bad I dot not have a Salamander burner on top.

Tonight, I whipped up another pizza for dinner. I was already set up with ingredients from last week: sausage, cooked onions, tomato sauce, and mozzarella cheese. So no time spent there. This time, I used a recently purchased pizza screen. The pizza screen worked pretty well. At least initially. I was worried that the pizza might sink in between the holes in the screen and stick to it. But it didn't. However, it was removed from the hot stone (an aluminum screen is not very conductive). So it didn't brown as well as it could have.

There were problems however. Last week, I mixed more dough up and let it sit in the refrigerator over the week. Which was, of course, packed full. So I crammed them in where ever they would fit. And wouldn't you know it but one of them fell down. Yesterday, I noticed that the plastic container had broken a hole in it. Fortunately, the dough was not dried out. So I patched the hole with scotch tape. The second problem was the fact that it is a really wet dough. I thought I was good about sprinkling flour on it when I was rolling it out. But it eventually stuck to the counter. I pulled it off and reformed a new ball and rolled it out again. Maybe the second time around it was a little tougher with that extra gluten from kneading back into shape.

For the next time, I am going to try to "blind bake" the dough. Put just the dough on the screen and then cook it for a minute or two. And quickly pull it off. Put the toppings on, and use the peel to transfer it back and finish cooking it.

Update:
I left the dough in the final shape too long on the counter. The dough absorbed the light flour dusting and stuck to the counter. I did blind bake the dough. But when I took it out and went to put the toppings on it, I learned that the wet dough steamed a lot. Water condensed on the bottom, which was not good. Also, this time I heated the stone for a good 45 minutes. The temperature went up to 750 degrees. And after 5 minutes, I went outside and found that the bottom had burned. There was a thick crust of carbon. Next time, I am going back to the screen and the longer preheating time.