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******************PIZZA THREAD******************

75,497 Views | 358 Replies | Last: 2 days ago by Backyard Gator
Buzzy
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notjakefromstatefarm said:

Anybody in this thread have a roccbox? Makes an amazing pie. If your serious about it's a great investment at $500.

Crust looks great, you take a crumb shot?
fav13andac1)c
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AG
notjakefromstatefarm said:

Anybody in this thread have a roccbox? Makes an amazing pie. If your serious about it's a great investment at $500.


OaklandAg06
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AG
Making good pizza at home has been something I have been experimenting with over the last year. I've landed on the Sicilian/Grandma style of pizza as my favorite with the tools I have. I ended up combining two dough recipes together for the dough, and have sort of made up my own sauce recipe.

Tonight's effort:



schmendeler
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AG
Gorgeous
Buzzy
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Beautiful crumb

What is your current dough recipe?

How long are you baking these for and at what temp?
OaklandAg06
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AG
For a single pizza in a half sheet pan like that, this is what I am using. This is about a 70% hydration- I haven't tried it for a neopolitan style pizza, but imagine it would work just fine:

456g Bread Flour
323g water
~2-3g or .5 tsp yeast
~2-3g honey
25g olive oil
1.5 tsp kosher salt

I use a poolish method for making the dough. I combine all the water + matching amount of flour (so 323g water + 323g flour) with the yeast and honey, mix it until combined, and let rise for 1 hour on the counter, then put in the fridge over night.

Next day, when I am ready to start I will combine the poolish with the remaining flour and ingredients in a stand mixer, and mix/knead for 10-12 minutes. Then turn out, slap and fold a few times, and let rise for 1 hour. Then I will transfer to baking pan, which is greased up with a generous amount of olive oil, and coax it to cover the pan. Let rise another 1.5-2 hrs, top and bake.

Baking at 475 for 10ish minutes maybe- until the top looks like the picture above. I then immediately remove from the pan and put on a cooling rack so the bottom doesn't steam in the pan.

-should be thumbs up instead of down
fav13andac1)c
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AG
Hard to follow that up, but I'll try. Was pretty happy with the blistering on this lemon, basil, and ricotta pizza.



Also got a nice crumbshot for Buzzy.

Buzzy
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Gorgeous crumb!!
fav13andac1)c
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AG
Thanks!
Garrelli 5000
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AG
1st pizza on the kamado last night. Used Kenji's NY dough recipe from Serious Eats. Made the dough saturday.

Could have used more sauce and cheese or a little less time on the cook - probably a bit of both - the crust looks good but it cracker crisp.




fav13andac1)c
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AG
Kenji's dough has turned out that way for me before. Including one kamado cook. I found that I was waiting for the crust to brown, which ironically led to it being dry and crackery and the bottom burnt. You might try lowering the hydration (Kenji's recipe is ~67%) as the kamado/higher temp pizza needs less time to evaporate its moisture than a home oven pizza.

schmendeler
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AG
i've had a weird experience with kenji's yeast dough recipes. they all either take a lot longer to rise than he suggests or it's like the yeast completely peters out before it does what it should. strange stuff and i have no idea why because they don't seem that far of a departure from others out there.

his spicy sicilian pizza is really good, even if it does take another hour longer to rise than he says it should.
DonaldFDraper
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AG
What are some of your favorite non-Kenji dough recipes?
schmendeler
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AG
I've have good success with pizza dough and bread dough from "the elements of pizza" and "flour water salt yeast" respectively.
fav13andac1)c
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AG
The basic recipe I use is in the OP and is from pizzamaking.com. Great for a home oven at 550 (convection if you have it) with a pizza stone.

Preheat the pizza stone for at least an hour on the very bottom rack. Switching to the broiler hasn't been necessary in my experience with this dough, but YMMV.
Buzzy
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schmendeler said:

I've have good success with pizza dough and bread dough from "the elements of pizza" and "flour water salt yeast" respectively.
I enjoyed the book but didn't like the recipes as much, go figure. As someone else put it, he constantly repeats "pizza is not bread" in the book, quoting one of the pizzaiolos, and then completely forgets that when formulating his recipes.
OaklandAg06
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AG
I stumbled onto Vito Iacopelli's YouTube channel last year- his recipes are spot on, and he does a great job showing technique in his videos. Granted you may need to scale down some of the recipes he shows (unless you are looking to make 8 pizzas at a time) but it is pretty easy to do since everything is in grams.

I took his poolish technique and applied it to a scaled up King Arthur Flour 72 hour pan pizza recipe for my Sicilian style pizza for the recipe I posted above as I didn't want to make dough that far in advance.

King Arthur Flour has a bunch of good recipes as well for both pizza and bread.
Buzzy
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OaklandAg06 said:

I stumbled onto Vito Iacopelli's YouTube channel last year- his recipes are spot on, and he does a great job showing technique in his videos. Granted you may need to scale down some of the recipes he shows (unless you are looking to make 8 pizzas at a time) but it is pretty easy to do since everything is in grams.

I took his poolish technique and applied it to a scaled up King Arthur Flour 72 hour pan pizza recipe for my Sicilian style pizza for the recipe I posted above as I didn't want to make dough that far in advance.

King Arthur Flour has a bunch of good recipes as well for both pizza and bread.
King Arthur is employee-owned, and as such has an incredible customer support line where they will answer any question you may have. I don't particularly care for their product (prefer Gold Medal myself), but I love the way they run their company and their help line.
Garrelli 5000
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AG
Thanks!

I cooked another last night but this time on the Evo. Much closer to a circle w/the dough.

It was overall a better pizza, but next I need to make it slightly larger/thinner in the middle. This is the same batch of dough but it had 48 hours in the fridge instead of 24.

Crisp on the bottom but then soft/chewy. My wife thought the crust was too thick and I don't disagree if going for NY style. The slice below looks ok but some parts in the center (evidenced by the pepperoni moving to the sides) bubbled up. You don't get the browning on top with the flat top that you get in the egg, but it is still a good pizza. I cook the topping side on the flattop about 1 minute before flipping, adding the toppings, then putting the lid on top.

I also need to experiment w/cheese. Thus far I've used fresh grated Mozz that is whole milk Boar's head from the deli. It works, but I need more flavor on top.

Do you poke holes in the dough prior to cooking to minimize the large bubbles that move the toppings around, or is that considered more detrimental than positive?

Next question - I took the 3rd fermenting container of dough and transferred to a large ziplock. It had pushed the top off the plastic container. I remove the air and froze. I assume that to cook I can let though overnight in the fridge then microwave, microwave a cup of water, then let it rest in a bowl in the microwave w/the steaming water to reactive a bit?



Buzzy
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Quote:

I took the 3rd fermenting container of dough and transferred to a large ziplock. It had pushed the top off the plastic container. I remove the air and froze. I assume that to cook I can let though overnight in the fridge then microwave, microwave a cup of water, then let it rest in a bowl in the microwave w/the steaming water to reactive a bit?
Dear God, no!!!

If dough rises to the point that it pushes the top off a container, punch the dough down, and then put it in a bag. If you're planning on eating it over a week later, I can see why you'd freeze it, but dough can cold ferment up to seven days in a fridge. If you're going to eat it in less than six days, no need to freeze it.

As for thawing the dough, DO NOT microwave it, you're simply cooking the dough. You can let it thaw out in a fridge over night, take it out of the fridge one or two hours before you plan on baking it, let it return to room temperature, then start shaping.

Cold fermenting and fermenting at room temp accomplish the same goal, doing it in the fridge just does it slower. If you plan on eating pizza six days from now, make the dough, let it cold ferment in the fridge for three days, and then you have a three days window thereafter where you're free to use it, just take it out for an hour or so before and let it return to room temperature.

A good guide to whether the dough is the right temp is that it will stretch easily, if it is still somewhat cold and resistant to stretching, you need to let it warm up a little more. DO NOT use the microwave, that will cook it from the inside out, and will ruin the dough.
Garrelli 5000
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AG
Not microwaving the dough, microwaving water then letting the thoughed dough sit in the the microwave w/the still steaming water. It is what I did with a Jimmy's Italian Foods dough that was bought frozen (per their instructions).

If it doesn't need to rise more than I assume I can just let it thaw in the fridge then cook as normal?

I'm freezing to test making dough in big batches to thaw/cook later.
Buzzy
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Garrelli 5000 said:

Not microwaving the dough, microwaving water then letting the thoughed dough sit in the the microwave w/the still steaming water. It is what I did with a Jimmy's Italian Foods dough that was bought frozen (per their instructions).

If it doesn't need to rise more than I assume I can just let it thaw in the fridge then cook as normal?
thawed dough?

If it is done fermenting, just thaw in the fridge, take it out when thawed and let it return to room temperature, then stretch/top/bake.

Quote:

I'm freezing to test making dough in big batches to thaw/cook later.
Why? I don't know of a pizzeria that uses this approach.
Garrelli 5000
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AG
So that I can decide at lunch I want pizza for dinner and have home made dough. The recipe requires a minimum of 1 day cold fermentation up to 5, so making in batch and freezing gives me the ability to not have to plan ahead.

If it tastes like crap then I know to find a faster dough recipe for when I want to make pizza on the fly.

edit: and yes, I'm hooked on phonics. I did correct my moronic spelling choice in the second to last sentence of the post however
Buzzy
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Quote:

If it tastes like crap then I know to find a faster dough recipe for when I want to make pizza on the fly.
Assuming lunch is at noon, have you tried making dough with 6 hour fermentation time at room temperature (traditional in Italy) so it is ready for a 6 pm dinner?

Another option is using baking powder and Sprite (or seltzer water or beer) to make a quick beer dough, which rises when it is baked, and is the basis of DiGiorno pizza.
Garrelli 5000
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AG
No but thanks for the advice! I'm brand new to this and these are my first two attempts. 12 or 13 years ago we made a few using a "mario batali" cast iron pizza pan, using his dough recipe, that turned out ok. Never did it enough to gain any type of proficiency nor did we expirement w/different doughs.

Neither my wife nor I are bakers so anything requiring making our own dough is essentially uncharted territory.
OaklandAg06
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AG
Re: Making, freezing, and using frozen dough this might help:


fav13andac1)c
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I have indeed used Jimmy's Italian Food's dough and followed the instructions you described with heating water in the microwave then letting the dough rest in the off microwave with the then hot water, and it always turned out awesome.

However, if I know I'm going to have a pizza craving for lunch, I'll whip up a dough ball the night before (if you have a food processor this goes by in minutes) then throw it in the fridge overnight. Take it out a couple of hours beforehand, preheat the oven an hour before, then top and bake.

My own attempts at freezing have gone poorly, but that may be something I did wrong. I've found the above "workflow" to be convenient enough for my situation.
Garrelli 5000
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Yup - dough goes in after microwave stops but the steam is still coming from the water.
Buzzy
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Are y'all talking about Jimmy's in Dallas? I love that place!
Buzzy
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Garrelli 5000 said:

No but thanks for the advice! I'm brand new to this and these are my first two attempts. 12 or 13 years ago we made a few using a "mario batali" cast iron pizza pan, using his dough recipe, that turned out ok. Never did it enough to gain any type of proficiency nor did we expirement w/different doughs.

Neither my wife nor I are bakers so anything requiring making our own dough is essentially uncharted territory.
I'm far from a baker. Making pizza dough isn't rocket science, and it can be incredibly forgiving for newbies.

3 cups of flour, half a teaspoon of instant dry yeast (half a teaspoon of sugar if you want it), a pinch of salt, 1.25 cups of water (more or less depending on humidity in kitchen), mix it all together, and you're good to go. Some people prefer to include the sugar to give the yeast to feed on and hasten rising time, some don't, it's up to you. Some include olive oil or cooking oil in the dough, I've found it makes little difference because I coat the dough ball with oil while it is rising.

You can literally pile all these ingredients in a bowl, pour in the water, mix it with a spoon until it all comes together into a shaggy dough, leave it for five minutes, then knead it into a smooth dough by hand. Quicker option is using a standing mixer.

Hardest part of making dough is figuring out the humidity level in your kitchen so you can determine how much (or how little) water to use to get the proper amount of hydration, but that comes with experience. You quickly learn how the dough feels when it is too hydrated or too dry, and to add a little flour or a little water to fix the issue.
Garrelli 5000
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AG
Thawed the dough yesterday and cooked it on the griddle.

Chorizo, hatch chillis, pickled red onions, mozzerella and monterey jack cheeses. For the sauce I mixed Cacique sour cream and some salsa.

It was great. I was uneven in shaping the crust so some areas were thinner, but it was still great from start to finish.

Next time I'll put the pickled onions on post-cook. They didn't really have any flavor.

Edit: I thawed the dough in warm water on the counter - Just made to sure get as much air as possible out of the ziplock and weighted it down under a dish so it wasn't frozen on top and raw below. Once thaw I microwaved a cup of water until boiling, then quickly opened the door and put the dough (now in a plastic bowl, no ziplock) in for about 20 or 30 minutes while I grated cheese, cooked the chorizo, etc. That gave it some more rise before shaping into the crust.


Buzzy
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Looks good.

Good call on the pickled onions, you'll only bake something pickled on a pizza once before you realize your mistake. If you like it pickled, it usually tastes better cold or at room temp, so put it on after baking.

You can cook chorizo in the oven, so it may not be a requirement to cook it on a skillet beforehand. The only downside I can see is some grease on the pizza, but some people like grease.
SpiderDude
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AG
Alright. Y'all inspired me. Made my own crust and it was enough for 2 medium to largish size pizzas. The first one was spicy sausage, pepperoni, sweet peppers and onion with some basil. The 2nd one out of the oven was tomato, burrata, pepper, onion and basil.

OaklandAg06
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AG
Some more Detroit style came out of the oven tonight- cheese on one side, pepperoni and sausage on the other

mic suede
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That looks delicious. Looks more Sicilian style than Detroit IMO.
 
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