"Pizza Eureka!"

Another "Small Step Giant Leap For Mankind" Made In My Humble Kitchen...


As I've written many times before here on this blog and over on my much neglected cooking blog, The Redneck Gourmet, I spend a good deal of time attempting to master the art of cooking Pizza in a home oven.

It's been slow progress over the past ten years.

First there were the issues of the design and consistency of the dough.

Then later I moved off of a metal Pizza Pan in favor of a Pizza stone--today owning two very well seasoned stones.

And then toppings and sauce and so on have been areas of interest through the ages of experimentation, and now with my efforts approaching something in the numbers...a guestimate of around 400 to 500 crusts later...the actual progress has slowed to a snails pace.

That said, that doesn't mean things are bad around here on Pizza night in my household, because the actual QUALITY of my home made Pizzas--dough/crust and sauce--I'd put up against almost any Pizzaria found anywhere in the country.

I guarandamntee you that 9 out of 10 of my Pizza efforts yield a Pizza Pie better than anything made by Pizza Hut and Dominoes and Pappa Johns and most of the local pizza houses in your area...

EXCEPT...

when it comes to really thin crust Pizza in general and when the restaurant kitchen is running a real wood fired pizza oven.

You see, by cooking a pizza in a real pizza oven they are able to attain temperatures between 700 and 800 degrees Fahrenheit, while in my home oven I'm only able to get up to between 500 and 550 degrees F, and that temperature limitation makes all of the difference in the world when it comes to getting the right "crispy crunch" on Pizza Crust.

So any way, I cooked a standard crust Pizza last Thursday Night, and as usual we had a little less than half of it left over.

Then Sunday night I was going to re-heat the left over which had been wrapped tightly in aluminum foil sitting in the fridge since, when I got a wild hair and decided to make a quick test Pizza with a rapid dough rise and attempt another thin crust experiment.

I normally let my dough proof for over two hours including a small batch pre-rise starter ( see my recipe here ), but on this effort I just tossed the yeast into some warm water, let it foam up, then mixed it all together with the salt and white pepper and the rest of the flour and stepped back from the process while "nature took its course."

In the mean time I was Googling around for some ideas on getting my Pizza stone pre-heated in the oven at 550 degrees F while being able to roll out the dough and put the pizza together on another stone or pan, then somehow sliding the finished pizza off onto the hot stone in the oven...without using a Pizza Peal. (I'm buying a wooden Pizza Peal--or paddle--as we speak.)

In the process I tripped over this couples' web site called "Cookography.com" where they told me something I had never thought of in cooking Pizza.

PARCHMENT PAPER.

I knew that bakers used parchment paper in spring form pans and on cookie sheets to keep things from sticking while cooking in the oven, but I never thought about the idea of using the stuff under a pizza crust before.

So any way, I finished up my pizza with a quick hour rise, tossed and wrestled the dough around and rolled it out real thin, then I built the pizza on a stone on top of a wide sheet of parchment paper cut to size while my other stone sat in the oven at 550 degrees F getting smoking hot.

Then with Pat's assistance I picked up the Pizza stone with the raw pizza on top and moved it over to the smoking hot stone sitting on the bottom rack of the oven and grabbed the edges of the parchment paper and the Pizza slid right off into place on the hot stone.

Then you know what we had only TEN MINUTES LATER?

The BEST DANG CRISPY THIN CRUST PIZZA that's ever come out of my kitchen.

I'm SERIOUS.

I'm tempted to cook Pizza every day for the next month...but I can't...

...because I ran out of yeast in that effort (I usually only buy three to six packs at a time to keep them fresh.)

So later tomorrow I'm heading back to the grocery store for more yeast and possibly some different flour.

Rumor has it that the King Arthur Blue Bread Flour like I'm using for my thick crust is inferior to plain King Arthur Red Multipurpose Flour for thin Pizza crust because of the differences in gluten content and the amount of moisture it will hold...but that detail is beyond the scope of this discussion and you need to catch up with me if you want to start arguing things like Gluten while making Pizza.

Regardless, I really think that I'm on to something here with the Parchment paper idea supporting a good thin crust pizza in a 550 degree F oven.  Now I have to cook it another half dozen times in the name of science to prove my theory.

Feel free to stop by about 7 PM tomorrow night for a sample...and so much for losing weight this summer I guess, you know?

Funky Polynesian Chicken Pizza

Yet Another Original Flavor Masterpiece


Just in cace no one noticed, I pretty much took the day off yesterday after spending about six and one half hours Saturday herding Pat and the Turbo Pup back northeast across Alabama and home into Eastern Tennessee.

I did manage to make some interesting home-made rosemary hash browns with onions, Portabella mushrooms, and a splash of good Balsamic Vinegar to go with eggs and bacon at breakfast, but when it came time for dinner preparations to start mid-afternoon I knew pizza was on the menu but I wanted something different in the topping category.

Looking at my options, I ended up settling on a combination of sweet and savory based on the old standard "Hawaiian Pizza."

You know..."Hawaiian Pizza."

Pizza covered with Ham and green bell peppers and onions and pineapple and some sort of sauce.

Problem was, we didn't have any ham and green bell peppers in the house and I didn't want to get dressed and go to the grocery store, so after a little Goggling for other ideas I dug around in my pantry and Fridge and came up with the following ingredient list.

For my standard crust:

Starter Dough
1 pack dry yeast
1/4 cup 100-110 degree F water
3/4 cups King Author Bread Flour

Main Dough
3/4 cup room temperature water
1-1/2 cup King Author Bread Flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp white pepper

For the "Polynesian" Sauce:
2-8 Oz cans Hunts Tomato Sauce
1/4 tsp powdered ginger (or fresh grated ginger root if you have it)
2 tbsp Hosin Sauce
1 tsp Teriyaki Sauce
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/8 tsp Oriental Five Spice Powder

Toppings:
1/2 pound of good whole milk Mozzarella Cheese, cubed/chunked
4 strips of bacon, fried crisp
1 boneless chicken breast, cooked medium and cut into 1/4 strips
1/2 red bell pepper, course diced
1/2 yellow bell pepper, course diced
1/4 pound good feta cheese, cubed or crumbled
1/2 of a 20 Oz can Pineapple slices, cut into 1" segments

When making a good pizza crust, I like to let my dough have plenty of time to rise and more importantly--to get a good rise regardless.

Years ago somewhere on the Internet I came across the idea of doing a pre-rise of a small batch of dough. By mixing the yeast with 1/4 cup of warm (but not hot) water and allowing it to react with a smaller quantity of flour for about 20 minutes, then adding another 3/4 cup of room temperature water to the pre-rise mixture you get a more uniform distribution of the yeast through the entire mass of dough. You add your diluted pre-rise mixture to the 1-1/2 cup of flour/salt/white pepper mixture and you have enough dough for one 15" pizza

I don't know if it's worth the effort to everyone, but I've been doing it this way for six or eight years now and I think I make a better crust than 90% of the Pizza restaurants out there...I'll leave it to you to decide I guess.

So any way, the point is, make yourself a mass of dough--however--and then kneed it out to a good consistency (I also don't over-work my pizza dough contrary to all of the crap published on the Internet demanding that you spend twenty minutes playing with a sticky ball of goo) and toss it out on to a floured cookie sheet, cover it with a clean towel, and toss it into a cold oven or your microwave to rise for about an hour and one half.

Now fix yourself a drink and contemplate your sauce and toppings.

The sauce is pretty straight forward, dump the cans of tomato sauce into a small boiler, add all of the spices and a splash of your pineapple juice from the can, and simmer everything for a half hour or so until it thickens.

Sauce done...wasn't that easy?

Now as to putting it all together.

Preheat your oven to 550 degrees F (500 deg F minimum if you can.)

Punch down and roll out your dough, toss it into the air and get it in your hair if you want to, and keep fooling with it until you have something resembling a round pizza crust.

If I haven't mentioned it before, I highly recommend the use of a pizza stone but whatever you use toss your finished crust onto it, then spoon your funky Polynesian sauce out onto the center of the crust leaving about an inch around the perimeter uncovered.

Heck, cover the whole dang thing up with sauce if you want to, but I leave a clean edge around my Pizzas.

Now evenly spread you chunked Mozzarella around on top of the sauce, add the rest of your toppings, and once your oven is up to temperature slide the whole shebang in and let it cook for 17 to 19 minutes.

Get yourself a pizza cutter and some plates, wait for things to cool down for about five minutes after you take it out of the oven, and EAT!!

Regards Y'all

The Redneck Gourmet