Cooking report... homemade pizza!
Using the calzone/pizza dough recipe and my spicy red pizza sauce recipe, along with a healthy smattering of grated four-cheese (Mexican mix), I baked up some dinner with these ingredients:
* 13 oz. of Mom's calzone dough
* 4 regular spoonfuls of spicy red pizza sauce
* sufficient grated cheese to lightly cover the sauce
* five slices of salami
* 12 - 15 slices of pepperoni
* 2 oz. of fresh sliced mushrooms
* 1/6 of one green bell pepper, diced
* ... with more grated cheese on top to serve as binder for all the toppings
After 14 minutes of baking at 450 degrees, it turned out to be not bad combination pizza!
I say "not bad" because, well, on account of having worked in various pizza joints for more than a year all told I'm a bit of a pizza snob. On the whole, this turned out quite well. However, some notes:
* This iteration of pizza dough was made with 1/2 all-purpose and 1/2 white-whole-wheat flour, as I ran out of all-purpose in the midst of making the batch of dough. It's... different. Nuttier. Almost a little more sour, too; I'm not sure if I liked that in my dough.
* To get the pizza into the proper shape, I kneaded and pounded it out on my pizza stone with the heels of my hands. If you want to get that proper "slightly higher at the edges than in the center" look and feel for your pizza, you really have to do that. You can't use a rolling pin, as the pin will more or less flatten the dough equally on all sides.
* Moreover, unlike with making a calzone, you don't want to roll the pizza out on a cutting board or something similar and prep it all before moving it over to the heated pizza stone. With all the sauce, cheese, and toppings, trying to do so is just asking for a mess.
* However, the fact that the pizza stone wasn't pre-heated in the oven may have had something to do with why the dough turned out as it did. It wasn't crisp on the bottom yet still breadlike on top, not the way that I'm used to for pizza crust. It was more bread-like throughout. For my next attempt, I'm contemplating putting the pizza stone in for pre-heating and placing the prepared dough on a pizza screen. Screens are customarily used in those big rolling ovens they have in pizza parlors, since the amount of time it takes for a screen to roll through the conveyor belt under that intense heat is usually just about enough to cook the crust to crisp-yet-not-crunchy.
Overall, pretty good considering. I'll just have to figure out a way to get the stone pre-heated next time and then put the prepared dough-and-toppings onto it.
Originally crossposted from http://kitchenklutz.dreamwidth.org/8347.html. Please comment here if you first read the post here.
* 13 oz. of Mom's calzone dough
* 4 regular spoonfuls of spicy red pizza sauce
* sufficient grated cheese to lightly cover the sauce
* five slices of salami
* 12 - 15 slices of pepperoni
* 2 oz. of fresh sliced mushrooms
* 1/6 of one green bell pepper, diced
* ... with more grated cheese on top to serve as binder for all the toppings
After 14 minutes of baking at 450 degrees, it turned out to be not bad combination pizza!
I say "not bad" because, well, on account of having worked in various pizza joints for more than a year all told I'm a bit of a pizza snob. On the whole, this turned out quite well. However, some notes:
* This iteration of pizza dough was made with 1/2 all-purpose and 1/2 white-whole-wheat flour, as I ran out of all-purpose in the midst of making the batch of dough. It's... different. Nuttier. Almost a little more sour, too; I'm not sure if I liked that in my dough.
* To get the pizza into the proper shape, I kneaded and pounded it out on my pizza stone with the heels of my hands. If you want to get that proper "slightly higher at the edges than in the center" look and feel for your pizza, you really have to do that. You can't use a rolling pin, as the pin will more or less flatten the dough equally on all sides.
* Moreover, unlike with making a calzone, you don't want to roll the pizza out on a cutting board or something similar and prep it all before moving it over to the heated pizza stone. With all the sauce, cheese, and toppings, trying to do so is just asking for a mess.
* However, the fact that the pizza stone wasn't pre-heated in the oven may have had something to do with why the dough turned out as it did. It wasn't crisp on the bottom yet still breadlike on top, not the way that I'm used to for pizza crust. It was more bread-like throughout. For my next attempt, I'm contemplating putting the pizza stone in for pre-heating and placing the prepared dough on a pizza screen. Screens are customarily used in those big rolling ovens they have in pizza parlors, since the amount of time it takes for a screen to roll through the conveyor belt under that intense heat is usually just about enough to cook the crust to crisp-yet-not-crunchy.
Overall, pretty good considering. I'll just have to figure out a way to get the stone pre-heated next time and then put the prepared dough-and-toppings onto it.
Originally crossposted from http://kitchenklutz.dreamwidth.org/8347.html. Please comment here if you first read the post here.