Bingo! That was my problem. In the end it just turned out really tough for mines - as hard as a cracker.

OK, so my inaugural pizza didn't turn out quite right. It tasted good...but I couldn't figure out how to do the nifty turn-and-stretch maneuver to get a nice round pie. So I made a rectangular one. So far so good. But apparently I hadn't floured the cutting board enough, so the dough stuck to it. And I didn't realize this until I had all the ingredients on it and was tipping it into the oven.

Long story short, I used a spatula to get the pizza off the cutting board, and wound up with a misshapen calzone thing.

http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot..._5453926_n.jpg

:rolleyes: BUT I did have enough dough for a second pie. I floured the cutting board (probably excessively) and got it all ready. I'll slide it in the oven tomorrow when I have had a chance to clean the pizza stone. :)

:confused: Normally you just scrape off anything loose with a metal spatula after you take the pie off the stone and it's done. Any remaining residue is incinerated the next time you heat up the stone.

Well done for persevering - and let me assure you that the WHOLE point of home made pizza is for it to be irregular shape. This is to prove to the world that you made it. That pizza is nothing to be ashamed of! The bread mix looks good to me .....

I suggest that you prepare your final pizza base (prior to cooking) on a cutting board so your only moving the cutting board to the oven rather than a wobbly pizza on a spatula! Use lots of flour or if you have it semolina is better. Semolina, or very fine ground polenta or any flour made from corn or maize but not thickening cornflour. If you look closely semolina is what many pizzaria use for the final stretching as it adds crunch to the base. If you see what looks like a yellow tinged flour then they're using semolina.

Having kneaded and had a first rise of the pizza ball in a covered bowl then spread and pull your mix on the heavily floured board. Another trick which genuinely works. Pull the pizza out and stretch it as much as you can. Let it rest for a few minutes ... then stretch it further again. Repeat the process of pulling and covering and resting a few times. Each time you do this the stretchability will seem to be rejuvenated ie the allowing to recover and rest adds more to the ability to pull and stretch. It's something to do with gluten. Keep pulling and stretching and when it keeps springing back give it a rest for a few minutes then try pulling and stretching again. You want the base as thin as possible but preferably not as a result of using a rolling pin which kills the elongated air bubbles which is a requirement of good pizza.

When big and thin enough cover with oiled cling film for 30 to 40 minutes. It's important that the pizza should still be able to move around on your chopping board so it must be well floured. Ensure your tomato mix has been cooked down to a intensive flavour and apply the leanest of smear so the base doesn't get too wet. A simple canned tomato mix with sugar, salt a touch of tomato paste, garlic or garlic salt, and if you have a bottle - a small drop of ouzo adds an intense aniseed undertone which is as good as basil. The tomato mix must be a cold mix when you add it to the pizza base. Then whatever else goes on top .... but please ..... less is more ... but from the picture I think you understand that! The whole pizza can now be taken to your pre-heated base and slipped and coaxed onto it.

You may also want to keep a small basil plant by your window to help with your pizzas!

Finally ...... if you can bring yourself to ....... try and save some of your current dough to use as a sourdough starter for your next set of pizzas. Add some more liquid and perhaps a few grains of sugar and try and make it forment again ie leave it in a warm place. The aging of the dough is what adds the real flavour to pizza dough and is prized in pizza making. It's called a biga in Italy when used for Pizza or bread making and poolish in France when used for baguette making. It's the main secret for giving character and flavour to dough/bread.

edited to add: Salt kills yeast and an error made by many pizza makers is to add too much salt to the dough mixture.

I'd suggest stretching the dough on to the pizza stone directly (once it is hot - watch your fingers tho!) and then topping it, quickly, before putting back in the oven. No trying to transfer the dough laden with toppings. Use semolina under the dough on the stone to make it slide off again once cooked too.

Thanks, all. Next time I'll remember to use semolina or corn meal under the dough...I remember that my mom used to do that, but I thought I could get away with just using regular flour. Guess not!

I am baking the second pizza now (the dough recipe was enough for two). I had to weasel a sheet of foil under it to be able to keep it in pizza form as I transferred it to the oven.

And I"m going to have a friend who is an accomplished Italian cook show me how to make pizza properly...along with his tiramisu. :)

gfunkdave
I also noticed that you had green peppers and mushrooms on your pie in your first attempt, just a note that these vegetables in particular leech out a lot of moisture while cooking and can make you crust soggier than expected. I would suggest using very thinly cut slices of green pepper and perhaps pre-roasting or sauteeing your mushrooms beforehand.
I have also recently bought a pizza stone though yet to use for pizza(have baked a bit of bread on it though), but it'll help with your oven temperature issues that most home bakers run into.
Have a look at these forum's lots of good info for pizza making
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/forums/g...nd-flat-breads
http://ruhlman.com/2010/05/homemade-pizza-2.html
http://www.pizzamaking.com/
Good luck and let us know how the latest attempt turned out.

Mmmm, homemade pizza! I've been making my own for years. I used to make my own dough, but later found it easier to just buy a freshly prepared dough from an Italian grocery store. Cheating perhaps, but if you find the right dough it can save a lot of time. I like to stretch it nice and thin. I keep the sauce exceedingly simple: crushed tomatoes. Any brand imported from Italy should do, but the good ones always seem to come in jars as opposed to cans. On top of that, I add some mozzarella, then maybe a topping or two. Some of my favourites are sautéed mushrooms, roasted red peppers, grilled aubergine and courgette, grilled chicken. I preheat my oven to 500 degrees F for at least half an hour, slide my pizza on to the hot pizza stone and cook it until it's done. Delicious!

I initially form the dough on a greased (olive oil spray works great) & cornmeal-sprinkled pizza pan, spread a thin-layer of cheese over the dough*, then cook it at 475 for 5 minutes on the pan. The pie is then removed from the oven and the sauce and toppings are added. The pizza is then slid from the pan onto the pre-heated stone in the oven and cook for another 7 or 8 minutes. Since using this method I've never had a problem with the pie sticking to either the pan or the stone.

*I learned this method from Washington, DC's old AV and Fio's ristorantes. By baking the cheese onto the crust first you avoid the hazard of having a layer of hot melted cheese slide off the slice onto your lap or chin.

All great ways to make home made pizza. I make it pretty regularly - having a food processor with a dough hook certainly makes light work of kneading dough. I make my base as thin as possible, stick it on a red hot preheated baking sheet in the hottest oven possible & bake it on its own for 2-3 minutes to dry it out before adding my toppings.

I reduce my tomato sauce until it's like jam to get rid of as much moisture as possible to stop the pizza going soggy. Loads of recipe ideas for you here on my blog

what is the proper treatment for using mozzarella di bufala (not dairy cow mozzarella) on a homemade pizza?

we just tried some & even though I used a paper towel to try & dry the cheese ball a bit before slicing and cooking, the pizza was still very 'watery'.

The issue sounds more of limited oven temperature than how wet the cheese is. Pizza cooking tempatures optimally start at 450 degrees C upwards ie they can cook a pizza in around 90 seconds or so - but anything above 300 to 350 normally is fine and so lower temperatures found in domestic ovens often result in sogginess. My indoor pizza oven is set to around 400 degrees and is about right for me.

If you don't have access to a pizza oven - even home table top pizza ovens can be relatively inexpensive and some reach very high temperatures - then a work around would be to put an upturned frying pan or the underside (flat side) of a cast iron steak griddle in an oven that has a top grill and let it heat for twenty to thirty minutes or so under full grill heat - then turn the grill off, and oven on exactly as you carefully place the pizza onto the upturned frying / griddle pan. This will ensure that the base crisps as well as the top is cooking. So the heat may dry your top.

If the temperature is still a challenge then a starting experiment point for the cheese would be to make the pieces smaller so that more surface is exposed to the heat even down to grating if all else fails. On most people's home made pizzas it's the tomato sauce and raw mushroom and raw onion that gives the most moisture problem.

Hope this helps.

thanks for the input, I'm fairly certain the issue wasn't temp as my grill (w/pizza stone) was at 550-600F, I did let the stone get to temp before placing crust on stone.

I think I might try Babaduck's suggestion about getting some moisture out of the sauce before placing on pizza, as well as slicing the cheese into thinner slices.

The sauce should really be cooked down to a thick consistency that you use very thinly - and even at 290 - 300 C (550 to 600F) it's still quite cool for a grill and for pizza hence my suggestion of using metal. Moisture simply oozes and becomes water rather than evaoparates so you might also think about frying things like mushrooms before you add them as a topping. People see raw mushroom added at pizza places but they are obviously cooking at a temperaure which can cook and evaporate off the water.

Not certain how long your grilling the stone for but you might try it for longer and if you have acces to a high speed Ray Temp or something - that would help. Also if you are using a fan / convection oven and if you can use it in "traditional" mode that will produce a dryer heat.

Good luck.

uk1 you have some amazing info in here. I've been making pizzas on a pizza pan (the kind with holes in it) for years, but I can't wait to try your biga dough on a stone... should be a dandy.

I spent all night last night making a huge vat of sauce base (I like to incorporate onions into mine, but to each their own, right?), and as soon as my stone arrives, it's pizza time!

Thanks so much .... appreciate your post :)

Can't recall whether I mentioned the "secret weapon" ie a touch of ouzo or other anise based drink in the sauce. It adds a sort of intense basil but with some other wonderful tones.

Hope your pizzas go well.:)

Remember that if you have a lovely biga dough base (keep it going in the fridge as a constant starter) that when it comes to the topping less is more. I know Amercians like it piled high ...... but you can always have two .....

Yip - stick to the "Supermodel Pizza" rule - very thin and not much on top :p

My pizza sauce is as thick as jam or chutney so you have to spread it rather than slop a ladleful of sauce on top of the dough.

Homemade pizza sounds like a great idea... I will have to check that out when I get back home from business

Don't do it if you are a perfectionist. It becomes an obsession to produce the perfect pizza, which of course is absolutely impossible ......:D

Enjoy your pizza travels and report back!

I think my first biga starter died on me. I had the yeast proofed, it bubbled up and doubled in size and all that, but when I stirred it up, it sort of collapsed, and now I have a jar of milky liquid. I guess I'll try again, but that puts off my pizza-eating activities by at least another day! :mad:

No it doesn't sound like it died. It's just patience. You need to think of your bigga mix in a different way to the way you think of a standard yeast starter. Nothing was wrong with it - in fact it sounds perfect. Your biga was saying to you "Hi, I'm your new baby, be patient with me and I'll reward you with exceptional character ........"

Biga and poulish are used in Italian and French pizza and bread bakers (and US and British bakers specialising in sourdough bread) who have been using the same started mix often for generations. It's prized and inherited. So in some of the old established French bakers for example you could be eating bread that is from a starter of a hundred years old or so. And if for some reason they lose their mother mix another establishment will give them a bit of fresh starter to get started again.

To get your initial biga started I'd suggest you to be really patient and start to plan it a few days out perhaps a week if you can. As I think I said earlier I cheat a little and start it with a few grains of dried yeast.

In your situation, when it collapsed when you stirred it, you were simply still dealing with a very young and inexperienced baby biga that needed to be allowed to regrow for another day or so. In fact the longer it takes the more character will be in your starter when you eventually use it.

Once you have it you split it and save half in the fridge for another day - which you again split. The bit you save you dilute with more flour and water to nourish and feed it. This of course also provides you with a life long supply of sourdough bread as well as baguette. With baguette you simply introduce steam into your oven by putting a heavy baking tray in the bottom to warm up and then just pour water on it as you put the bread in.

Too much info from me again - but intended to encourage you to persevere and experiement with your biga!

You absolutely must not give up on this because it's intended to be challenging in order to only give the prize to those that learn and persevere .....

dry them after you slice, you can also let it sit out a while too to dry up

Thanks uk1 I will definitely perservere... and I'm a perfectionist in the kitchen too, so this is perfect for my obsessive personality! :D

I'm so pleased ... because I realised when reading my own post how it might make people edge a few inches further away for fear that I might actually be as mad as I appear to be.

If you can, try and think of the biga as something that you simply have to master and then try and keep it fed.

If the obsession really takes over - throw off all abandon and find a supplier of Caputo Flour from which virtually all good pizzas in Naples originate. Then learn to "add more water, add more water ....". I originally ended up having a large bag of Caputo flour flown from Naples I became so obsessed and desperate. But now you should find it more local. The combination of Caputo flour, your biga starter, a hot oven can change your life ........:(

This does make me sad and I recognise in the eyes of others potentially dangerous .....:D

I'd given up hope on homemade pizza but this has inspired me once again. I like thin crust, and every time I make it, it comes out more doughy than crispy. It's almost a bread texture, and i end up wanting to cut some of it off. For being so close to Chicago, that's not the kind of pizza i'm trying to go for!

I share your pain. I hate thick pizza and getting it thin is a struggle. And if like me you don't have the room to do that tossing in the air stuff then I hope this helps.

Firstly, make the dough mix wetter than you feel comfortable with. Then, if you can use polenta to stretch the dough ball on - this also helps with the crispness. Thirdly, the dough behaves very strangely although it has a memory. It seems to say "OK, you've pulled me around a bit give me a rest."

So once you start stretching it after every stretch let it rest for a few minutes, then stretch again, then rest it - then again. It seems to allow you to stretch it more once it's rested. Try and avoid rolling if you can because you want long air bubbles.

Earlier I suggested a few ways of getting the heat underneath if you do not want to acquire one of the small pizza ovens. If your pocket and enthusiasm allows Ithen this will really give you the temperature you need but I'm not certain they are sold in every country due to the very high temperature it reaches.

WARNING:

Good luck and report back.

Remember ...... you're not a real man until you can make a proper pizza.;)

I made one in my kiln once, no problem getting the 500C, just set the ramp and waited for the beep when it was hot. according to my son it came out nice, and he's had pizza in different parts of Italy with his Granny. I dont really like pizza so I didnt try it, I teach Calzone and Stromboli at school for pizza dough recipes

Getting a pizza stone changed my life! Well that, and becoming lactose intolerant.. so I have to make my own pizza... mmm I'm hungry now.

Made a delicious mozzarella, mushroom, and sausage stromboli for dinner tonight. Used dough from a local pizza shop - cheaper and 1000X easier than making homemade dough.

But I don't want easier! ;) :p

uk1 I hate to bug you, but is the biga supposed to grow at some point? I just have a jar of watery milky stuff with flour at the bottom. It *smells* yeasty, but it's not growing (after the initial spurt, that is...)

I once had a roommate who asked "why would you bother making pizza? It's so cheap to order one."

"Exactly," I replied.

She didn't get it.

Ha ha ha so true! ^

And no, making pizza at home is not cheap, in both time and money. Even before I tried this new method, I would spend $50-$75 for fancy toppings and flours just to make an "okay" (in my book) pizza dinner. The one benefit was always that I could make so many pies that I would make it up in volume. (And in waistline :) ).

It's no problem at all ..... I'm more than happy to help!:)

I think your expectations of speed may be a bit too optimistic - so some background.

Pure biga relies on the natural yeasts in the air. The same yeasts that will make cheese become blue cheese or stilton, are the same air-borne natural yeasts that will find the nutrients you put out for it ie a little flour and perhaps some sugar in some lovely friendly warm water. So in real time it would take as much time to make cheese go blue as it would to make your first biga. That's why it's prized and fed daily. And the reason why when you make bread from a biga or poulish it's sourdough is because it's sour because of the same causes of making cheese blue. That's not technical talk it's just my idiot's view of it. But obviously you want your pizza this year ... or this week. Hence my sort of cheats biga.

My suggestion is that you make a few of starters at the same time so the slowest one becomes your pizza in a week or two and the one that you help on a bit will give you a pizza in a few days. If you want something to start your pizza for today or tommorow it's simply going to have to be a bolt standard yeast starter which will be good enough but will never develop the character of your biga.

So I suggest you get three tumblers. For some reason in my experiments short or if you have none tall but narrow tumblers seem better than short squat ones. 7oz to 10oz is fine. Mix a table spoon of flour with a half teaspoon of sugar with some warm/tepid water so it's around a half way up the tumbler. In one glass add a quarter of a teaspoon of yeast. In the second add a teaspoon. And in the third add the full 6gms ie a sachet. Stir them all so they throth a bit.

The full strength one will give you your todays pizza fix but nurture the other two each day. Stir them each day. Ocaisionally give them a little flour to feed on. When the leansest eventually froths, split the mix and retain a half for further feeding and dividing. The other half will be a pizza starter. But even with that starter it may take a day. In Naples people will know where they sell pizza at lunch time using yesterday dough. In the evening it will always be todays dough.

This level of obsession and perfection and it's obvious frustrations takes tremendous patience. But the first time you get your first crispy pizza using a proper biga mix will make it all worthwhile, although I do understand why most proably wouldn't bother.

If this isn't clear or you need any further help just ask.

Real obsession!

I ended up with a garden oven, a kitchen small oven, flour from Italy no end of temperature probes .... and don't talk to me about tomato smears ........ just to produce a bit of bread with topping. But when you get it right nothing compares with the thrill. Well .... not in my sad life.:D

Wow. Impressive tips in this thread. It is indeed inspiring.

Now, while I know this is heresy by some definitions - I have to ask.

Trader Joes pre-made pizza dough (plain, herbed and whole wheat) - Thoughts?

Similar question for Whole Foods pre-made regular pizza dough.

Worth it or sad results?

But at it's simplest .... anyone can buy a pack of bread flour and some dried yeast ........................:confused:

For quick-and-easy pizza, this is a very doable solution. I've only *seen* it used by others, but the results, which I tasted (and tasted, and tasted again, this is pizza after all :D ) were just fine.

But as uk1 said, flour and yeast are easy to come by...

Having been in retail venue where I let my stomach get the better part of my brain for yet another moment, I bought a Pizza-making for dummies kit. Haven't used it once. And I haven't had the stomach to have anyone use it on my behalf yet. But you contributors here have inspired me to give it a go, from dough onward.

Or a real lady :) As of now, I have a traditional gas oven that we used this weekend. I did the wet dough trick, with polenta as a base. Set the oven to the highest setting and it seemed to get a bit crispier than normal. I didn't have the dough/bread quality that has broken me in the past, and I suspect it was a combo of more water + new flour. I'm going to try grilling this week - will report back on how that does.