Oh man, that sounds good. My parents went on a fresh pizza dough blitz for a while when I was a kid: scientists that they are... we had a lot of different types of little rolls made out of pizza dough experiments. I guess they eventually got bored of experimenting, because they stopped and we haven't done that in years.
Your recipe made me think about how yummy those experiments were (well, some of them). Maybe I'll pick up some yeast at the grocery store tonight. :)
Yay! Fresh bread is among the best things you can make. It takes a bit of time, so weekends are well-suited for this endeavour. But it makes your whole house smell fabulous.
I invited a group of friends over to play geeky games.
Please invite me next time :) Of course, you probably knew I was busy.
(pizza goodness)
You can also make the dough in a food processor, which works well if you're lazy like me. I also bake the crust for 5min or so before adding toppings - I guess your parchment sheet technique solves the same problem of an insufficiently crispy crust.
Actually, I also make the dough in the food processor, because it's relatively fast. The parchment paper doesn't help much if you don't have a pizza stone, in which case you may want to prebake the crust in the bottom rack. Results may vary based on your oven.
Get a wooden pizza peel, dust it with durum semolina, put your stretched-out dough on it, top it quickly, and slide it onto the stone. The parchment paper doesn't result in as crispy a crust, even if you take it off when you can. (Also put a bit of the semolina into the dough.)
Put the cheese on as late as you can, because it tends to brown before everything else is quite ready.
The frozen dough isn't nearly as good as the fresh. I stopped freezing it.
If you have a stone that's a centimetre or more thick, fifteen minutes won't do it. Try half an hour.
Semolina is a good idea, but is sometimes difficult for people to source. I used to buy some, but I've run out. As for the parchment paper, I've found that if your stone is hot enough, it makes little difference.
I keep my toppings fairly thin and don't shred the cheese. This lets some of the cheese brown and the rest of it melt nicely.
As for frozen dough, not all of us can bake fresh bread from scratch on Wednesday nights. But perhaps we should?
As for preheating, you can always turn on the oven earlier in the process, like in the middle of your first rise. But I had a thin 1cm stone, so I found that twenty-five minutes was enough. I had to spend the time rolling out the pizza and topping it, of course.
Your call on the parchment paper. I stopped using it for free-form breads because it was making a difference on the bottom crust. Besides, the stuff is expensive. If you can find a thin reusable silicon sheet, that's an alternative.
It's not easy to find durum semolina. In Waterloo, Bulk Barn has it.
I use the dough cycle of my bread machine for pizza dough, which has the advantage of not requiring any attention after adding the ingredients. Proofing yeast is fiddly. You do have to be home two hours before eating... or use the timer which some of these machines have.
Oh, and with pesto -- the French/Italians are adamant about not cooking it (ie adding it to soup only after it's taken off the heat). While I've made many pizzas with it spread on at the usual time, lately I've taken to either flicking bits over the completed pizza or thinning it and using a squeeze bottle to drizzle over the completed pizza. It tastes different that way.
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Your recipe made me think about how yummy those experiments were (well, some of them). Maybe I'll pick up some yeast at the grocery store tonight. :)
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Please invite me next time :) Of course, you probably knew I was busy.
(pizza goodness)
You can also make the dough in a food processor, which works well if you're lazy like me. I also bake the crust for 5min or so before adding toppings - I guess your parchment sheet technique solves the same problem of an insufficiently crispy crust.
Reply
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Put the cheese on as late as you can, because it tends to brown before everything else is quite ready.
The frozen dough isn't nearly as good as the fresh. I stopped freezing it.
If you have a stone that's a centimetre or more thick, fifteen minutes won't do it. Try half an hour.
Reply
I keep my toppings fairly thin and don't shred the cheese. This lets some of the cheese brown and the rest of it melt nicely.
As for frozen dough, not all of us can bake fresh bread from scratch on Wednesday nights. But perhaps we should?
As for preheating, you can always turn on the oven earlier in the process, like in the middle of your first rise. But I had a thin 1cm stone, so I found that twenty-five minutes was enough. I had to spend the time rolling out the pizza and topping it, of course.
Reply
It's not easy to find durum semolina. In Waterloo, Bulk Barn has it.
I use the dough cycle of my bread machine for pizza dough, which has the advantage of not requiring any attention after adding the ingredients. Proofing yeast is fiddly. You do have to be home two hours before eating... or use the timer which some of these machines have.
Oh, and with pesto -- the French/Italians are adamant about not cooking it (ie adding it to soup only after it's taken off the heat). While I've made many pizzas with it spread on at the usual time, lately I've taken to either flicking bits over the completed pizza or thinning it and using a squeeze bottle to drizzle over the completed pizza. It tastes different that way.
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*giggle*
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