Ok, it isn't pizza, but I had dough leftover from dinner so I baked off a loaf of bread with it this morning.

Wow, I just discovered this thread. Some amazing pizza shots. I have a couple on my phone. I pretty much use this crust recipe from Ina Garten since I grill about 90 percent of the pizzas I make at home:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina- ... index.html

I'll usually grill one side of the crust for about 1 minute on high then remove it from the grill, flip it over and add toppings to the grilled side. Then I turn the grill to low to finish the pizza.



Recent pizza with mixed tomatoes (no sauce) from my garden, home cured pancetta, arugula, goat and mozzeralla cheeses. Wish I had snapped an after pic but we ate it pretty quickly.

Here is a pile of home cured pancetta and bacon fresh off the meat slicer:

pre-Bears game pizza
sausage(pre-cooked) with roasted peppers (both hot and sweet) from our garden over a fresh tomato (uncooked) sauce



for the sauce I diced a big homegrown tomato and added about a teaspoon of salt and let it sit in a colander
for 1/2 an hour then mashed about 1/2 of the tomato and added it back to the chunks. I added some ground pepper and Italian herbs and was done...
the crust was a 4 day cold ferment using
500 g bread flour
325 g water
10 g salt (I use sea)
3.5 g of dry yeast
For me, this yields four pizzas

4 days-I bet that crust was really good! Do you use bread flour?

Yes

Roasted kabocha squash, Fra mani sopressata, goat cheese, red onion (I added some fried leeks to the top after taking the picture)







I intended to make a margherita pizza but I didn't have any mozzarella. So, I decided to use some raw milk havarti I had in the fridge (+ cooked san marzano sauce, parm, basil). It turned out great.

A little Chicago style deep dish....



With Italian sausage from Bari, pepperoni and kalamata olives.

Chantrelles from Costco, my second pound were sautéed and put on a pizza

sliced burrata added for the last 3 min
finished with some thyme from the garden.

Porcini-infused Baby Bellas



Honeycrisp Apples with Dulce de Leche:

Wow....those look amazing
How do you infuse the baby Bella with porcinis?

thaiobsessed wrote:Wow....those look amazing
How do you infuse the baby Bella with porcinis?

Thank you. Soak dried porcinis in water to re-hydrate. Slowly cook baby Bellas with butter (lots) and garlic (lots) until all the liquid is released. Add strained soaking liquid and chopped porcinis and saute over high heat until all liquid is cooked-off and mushrooms are covered with glaze. S&P, cool, slice, top pizza, bake, eat, bliss-out, repeat.

Thanks to a sourdough starter from gastro gnome (who got it from thaiobsessed?), I've been playing around in the kitchen with pizza again. I'd never used a starter before, so I went with Jeff Varasano's recipe/technique, which calls for a starter, and went from there. My first attempt, using 00 flour, was a total failure. Horrible. I switched to King Arthur bread flour and a longer cold ferment. Good, but not great. The flavor was good, but not enough oven spring. I left a couple of balls to cold ferment even longer (4 days), then allowed them a longer rise on the counter, and jacked the heat in my broiler (~825 surface temp on my tiles). Success.



Sliced mozzarella on bottom, simple crushed tomato sauce on top, and a couple of anchovies


(yes, this was a small pizza done with a half-sized ball of dough. I started doing them smaller so I could experiment more without ending up with too much pizza)

Nice charring on the bottom (forgot to snap a pic), nice bubbly spring, pleasing chew, and well-developed flavor. I'm thrilled, and looking forward to more experimentation.

-Dan

Pizza number two - with leftover ragu and some Bari giardiniera

Assembled


Post-bake


Underside


Side shot


So happy...

-Dan

Turns out I can get my oven too hot. Tile temps measured at ~875-900 - the bottom started to char long before the top could brown. I held the pizza up off the stone on a metal peel by the broiler until the top cooked. Unfortunately, the uneven heat didn't do wonders for the oven spring.

Next time... back to ~800

-Dan

Dan,

It may be worth tweaking the ingredients and your technique to bake at the higher temps. You may want to try a flour (such as Caputo 00 Pizzeria flour) which is milled to withstand higher temps without burning. Also, at higher temps, dough ingredients such as sugars, milk, oils, etc. will cause burning. Of course it is a matter of taste, but I'd mess around with the ingredients and technique rather than lowering the temp. It isn't easy to find just the right balance, but many think it is worth the effort.

Bill/SFNM

Thanks Bill. This dough had no added sugar, milk, oil - just King Arthur bread flour, salt, water, and starter. Well, the little bit of oil greasing the container I cold fermented it in, I suppose.

I've tried 00 flour before, but had serious issues with texture. Maybe it's time to try again...

-Dan

Dan,

Not all 00 flours are milled for high temp pizzas. What kind are you using?

Also, the hydration level of the dough can be critical - both as a buffer against burning, but also in the final texture. You might want to crank it up as high you can without ending up with an unworkable dough.

Bill/SFNM

dansch wrote:Thanks Bill. This dough had no added sugar, milk, oil - just King Arthur bread flour, salt, water, and starter. Well, the little bit of oil greasing the container I cold fermented it in, I suppose.

I've tried 00 flour before, but had serious issues with texture. Maybe it's time to try again...

-Dan

I'm pretty sure KABF is malted which usually means it can't the high temps as well.

first attempt at clam pizza (sort of like Pepe's in New Haven)
Next time, more clams & a hotter oven 475˚ not hot enough!

mhill95149 wrote:first attempt at clam pizza (sort of like Pepe's in New Haven)
Next time, more clams & a hotter oven 475˚ not hot enough!

Looks delicious, though I'd add a shake of crushed red pepper.

Both the white clam and the ragu with gardiniera really appeal to me. They look great! The latter combo is ingenious. I need to get back on the pizza-making horse and try those. Dan, what kind of stone are you putting under the broiler? I'm a little nervous about cracking mine. I've been contemplating getting a piece of sheet metal cut (a la Cathy2's reference to Nathan Myhrvold's tip on this thread).

thaiobsessed wrote: Dan, what kind of stone are you putting under the broiler? I'm a little nervous about cracking mine. I've been contemplating getting a piece of sheet metal cut (a la Cathy2's reference to Nathan Myhrvold's tip on this thread).

Just a guess, but based on the pics I'm going to say unglazed quarry tiles. I used to use them, and if one broke under the broiler it was no big deal.

Jeff

Ok, you guys have been posting for years. I want to know what is the best way to start making pizza at home. I have a normal convection oven. I have a stone. Please give me the easiest (best) recipe for a newbie to make a pizza that will make me forgo ever wanted to order delivery again. I have seen Alton Browns pizza recipe, where should i go from there.

dradeli wrote:Ok, you guys have been posting for years. I want to know what is the best way to start making pizza at home. I have a normal convection oven. I have a stone. Please give me the easiest (best) recipe for a newbie to make a pizza that will make me forgo ever wanted to order delivery again. I have seen Alton Browns pizza recipe, where should i go from there.

Hi,
I am so happy that I have started making homemade pizza for a couple years now. The first few times were a disaster but I hung in there. One site that I learned a ton from was pizzamaking.com. Another trick to the trade is the preheat your oven at least 45 minutes before you bake your pizza and get your stone nice and hot, so the bottom will crisp up.

I also still use parchment paper to transfer the dough to the stone since my pizza paddle skills aren't there yet. A couple minutes after, I can yank the parchment paper out from under the dough since it already starts to crisp.

Grate your cheese from a block and try not to buy the pre-shredded. As for making dough, that's a life long learning process that you will conitnue to tweak. If I'm lazy, I buy the pre-made dough balls from Trader Joes. It's fresh dough and I have had good results, the pricing can't be beat either at $1.25 per ball.

Smoked pepperoni, 3 cheeses, flavored oil on American-style crust, baked on stone in conventional oven:

I have spent the last two Saturdays in a row making homemade pizza. The first was a for dinner party at my house. Nothing fancy. Just mozarella, sausage and mushrooms. Used a friend's recipe for dough but was not crazy about it though the basis was a good solid recipe. Couple that with the Aldi bought ingrediants for the pizza and the effort was not bad but not great. The next week I tweaked my friend's recipe, adding some kick of spice to the dough and lightly brushing it with olive oil before putting my toppings. I also went to Caputo's and bought a mix of shredded Mexican cheeses (don't recall which ones but they melted fantasticly!), jalepeno and cheddar sausage, cremini mushrooms and some smoked chipotle gouda to sprinkle on top. The result was a flavorful melt in our mouths pizza with a nice flaky crust. Can't wait to experience some more.

"leftovers" pizza mushroom duxelle, creamed spinach, herb goat cheese

Did another pizza on Monday with some Pinot Grigio salame and horseradish cheddar. The leftovers are still divine.

sausage, mixed peppers with onion over smoked provolone

Mmm...some great looking pizzas recently. Bill, where are you getting your peperoni? That looks great!

I tried the barbeque chicken pizza recipe in the latest issue of Lucky Peach using some leftover Tartine country loaf dough.

I thought it was a good combo: gouda, roast chicken, BBQ sauce, red onions, cilantro and jalapenos (my addition).